Aaron Valentine
Who Are You Again?: Learning to Sing Through Life
Don’t Tell Mama, NYC, May 2, 2026
Reviewed by Bart Greenberg
When experienced cabaret attendees encounter a new singer and a new voice, it may take them a song or two to decide whether the performer deserves their attention. When Aaron Valentine took the stage at Don’t Tell Mama, it took all of four notes to let us know that attention must be paid. The winner of 2025’s Mama’s Next BIG Act! talent contest proved that the judges and the audience were absolutely right in choosing him. His easy smile, his imposing physical presence, his evident intelligence, and especially his towering voice that evoked the youthful Brian Stokes Mitchell and Norm Lewis added up to a truly thrilling debut. He was strongly backed by director Lennie Watts and music director/pianist Tracy Stark. Valentine is the real deal.
He established himself on stage with a slightly bluesy and slightly suggestive “I’m the One You’re Looking For” (Lynda Carter). He then quickly moved on to the autobiographical nature of the show and is life in show biz with a highly effective blending of “Music and the Mirror” (Marvin Hamlisch/Edward Kleben) and “Let Me Be Your Star” (Marc Shaiman/Scott Whitman). The vulnerability and desire he put into this number showed his heart and the audience responded accordingly. He followed this with a clever and somewhat sad tale of the endless rounds of auditions every aspiring performer faces and another mashup of “Waiting for the Girls Upstairs” (Stephen Sondheim) and “Maybe This Time” (Fred Ebb/John Kander) with well-honed, appropriate refitted lyrics by the singer. This was good storytelling.
Also smart was a story, at times self-mocking, about his studying with a vocal coach in Italy who told him his attempts at singing “Go, Lovely Rose” (Roger Quilter/Edmund Waller) and “Die Neugierige” (Franz Schubert/Wilhelm Muller) were misguided but his beautiful rendition of “Rain” (Stephen Flaherty/Lynn Ahrens) was perfect. He also offered a portion of “Lonely House” (Kurt Weill/Langston Hughes); it was just enough to make us regret that he didn’t perform a full version of this challenging piece.
He did perform full versions of some of the other numbers for maximum effect, including an achingly yearning “I Cannot Hear the City” (Marvin Hamlisch/Craig Carnelia) and a passionate “Mississippi Goddam” (Nina Simone). The latter had some updated lyrics that we can be sure the composer would have approved of. The anger just below the surface was contagious, and the audience spontaneously echoed some of the lyrics. He also sang a pair of love songs dedicated to his husband: “So Easy (to Fall in Love)” (Olivia Dean/Amy Allen/John Ryan) and “When I Look at You” (Hillary Lindsey/John Shanks). He delivered both with simple and honest emotion.
There is no doubt that Valentine is indeed a new star, and his next show is happily anticipated.
