POINTS OF VIEW

Danielle Grabianowski made her mark this past summer as the first runner-up to the winner of the eight-week MetroStar Talent Challenge.  If inexperienced on a cabaret stage, she’s young and personable, and has a striking voice with a tremulous vibrato. There’s plenty of potential there that will be realized with more seasoning. She’s a work in progress, and a promising one.

The title of her show reflected the variety of songs she elected to sing, very possibly to showcase her abilities with songs of different natures. The ambition may be understandable, but it created a problem. The opening medley, Rodgers’ “I Have Confidence,” written for Maria as she leaves the convent to enter the real world, and Hague and Horwitt’s “This Is All Very New to Me,” seemed symbolic: a setting out, Grabianowski’s first-ever cabaret show of her own. An equally seeming entrée to a new world followed, “We’re Going to Be Friends,” nicely done as a duet with accompanist Nate Buccieri.

Troubles arose when the fresh-faced “here I am” persona created at her opening elected to sing songs usually reserved for femmes fatale: “I Want to Be Evil,” and “Sugar Daddy” (“Don’t you come home, I can’t take it no more”). It was difficult to decide whether Granianowski was a grown-up Shirley Temple or a young Eartha Kitt. Conceivably, she could have carried off either successfully: it was the dovetailing of the two possibilities that created the confusion. And, either way, “Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?” a Depression-era song about a cycical out-of-work war veteran (“I was the kid with the drum…”) isn’t a song for any young woman to sing.

Possibly Grabianowski’s most successful song of the evening was one that could have been age-appropriate for almost any woman, Amanda McBroom’s touching “The Portrait,” a longing for mother long gone.

There’s little doubt about Grabianowski’s talent or her way with music.  Like jazz vocalists, she often took liberties and put conventional renditions behind her, working well with Buccieri and his accompaniment. She’s truly a diamond in the rough who, with more experience on the cabaret stage, will shine increasingly brightly.

Peter Leavy
Cabaret Scenes
November 4, 2009
www.cabaretscenes.org

Whether winking or wide-eyed—with wonder or delight or mischief—I found Danielle Grabianowski immensely watchable. She has that sensibility of an audacious little girl trying on Mommy's high heels or a storybook character’s attitude. So, I was bewitched, not bothered or bewildered, when she “borrowed” (as her act’s title suggests) different mindsets or perspectives. “I Want to Be Evil” worked for me because she set it up as the rebellious fantasy of a child with a constrictive, restrictive religious upbringing—which, she explained, is exactly what she had. Her daring to be dubious was cemented with a feisty, nose-thumbing “It Ain’t Necessarily So.” Her sense of self in her patter is winning. Winner of last year’s 1930s Idol contest (she does have a curious other-decade quaintness) and first runner-up in this summer’s MetroStar competition, she wisely retained the latter’s skillful pianist/Musical Director, Nate Buccieri, as her own. With ebullient, supportive Nate as mate, they duetted joyfully on “Shuffle Off to Buffalo.” Danielle has a distinctive timbre and vibrato and some posturing (for a song's effect) that might be distancing or daunting for some. An acquired taste? Maybe. Certainly not vanilla. There’s spice to savor and a sparkle that spells “special.”

Rob Lester
Cabaret Scenes
November 4, 2009
www.cabaretscenes.org