Karen Jacobsen bills herself as the “GPS girl,” and it’s little wonder, since hers is the voice on a million auto’s navigation systems.  A big audience, but what’s it like, we pondered, when instead of “prepare to turn left,” she sings?  We were not to be disappointed.

It was an unusual and unexpected beginning for a cabaret show. With animation and verve, and with more than a hint of her Australian-bred origin in her voice, Jacobsen sang an a cappella “Star Spangled Banner.”  One wag in the audience punctuated her closing note with a humorous “play ball!,” but there was no doubt about Jacobsen’s sincerity.  Nor about her attractive and wide-ranging singing voice.  Between that tribute to her adopted country and her encore number, a tribute to her adopted city, all but one song in the show were her own compositions.

Jacobsen is a pop singer, not one immersed in the Great American Songbook of Gershwin or Porter.  On stage, she’s exudes the vivacity and occasional musical variations of that genre that even carried over into a well-handled rendition of “Over the Rainbow,” her sole nod to a standard.  While her songs may be characteristic of a 21st-century pop songwriter, she has not abandoned a concern for melody for the primacy of the beat.  True, in familiar contemporary style the rhythmic beat of the songs is noticeably present, but it doesn’t monopolize or subjugate the melodies to second place.  And, with a relieved nod, I confirm that Jacobsen’s lyrics are written for those over the age of puberty. Her selections included “I Am Who I Am Because of You” for her father, “Being Brave," commemorating her venturous move to New York, and “Your Body Over Mine,” no explanation needed.

In addition to her pleasing way with songs, Jacobsen has a lot going for her.  She’s a very attractive young woman, personable and easygoing with her chatter (“I do like talking”), animated and mobile when she sings, a competent pianist when she takes over the instrument from pianist Michael Mancini to accompany herself, and as noted, an acceptable songwriter to boot.  To be certain of my opinions, at one point I asked myself, would I have been as taken with this performer if she hadn’t been so strikingly good-looking?  My thirty-second, eyes-closed conclusion: yes.

As pleased as I was with Jacobsen and her cabaret show, it would benefit from attention to two areas.  She gets more than passing grades in the mandatory audience contact department, both in her ad-libbed banter and while singing.  Her band – Michael Mancini on piano and electronic keyboard, Gary Haase on bass and Josh Dion on drums – left little to be desired as instrumentalists, but periodically played at a volume that submerged much of Jacobsen’s lyrics and consequently took the spotlight away from where it deserved to be.  And Jacobsen herself occasionally (thankfully, not too often) fell into the rock star singing technique of “eating the microphone,” holding it so close to her lips that the words were garbled.  A cabaret room calls for a different kind of performance from that given in a concert with a thousand or more in the audience.  In all, adapting the performance to the size and intimacy of a cabaret room would be a highly useful – and easily achieved – target for this very promising young singer/songwriter and her musicians.

Karen retuns to the Beechman Nov. 18 at 9:30 and Nov. 30 at 7:00.

Peter Leavy
Cabaret Scenes
November 16, 2010
www.cabaretscenes.org