http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/29/arts/even-with-54-below-and-joes-pub-cabarets-future-is-unclear.html 2014-12-28 23:55:01 Even With 54 Below and Joe’s Pub, Cabaret’s Future Is Unclear Cabaret is alive, stirring up excitement and receiving transfusions — thanks to young newcomers and old rockers — but no one can honestly say it’s in great health. === Descending the staircase into There is nothing like the thrill of discovery, and during the past year 54 Below and its alt-cabaret equivalent, Joe’s Pub at the Public Theater, have been the best places in New York to find talent potentially strong enough to overcome the barrier facing singers outside the pop-rock-hip-hop mainstream where the fastest route to stardom is exposure on a TV talent show like “The Voice.” The most promising rising star to appear at 54 Below this year is A tough cookie with a soft center, the fearless, Colorado-born Ms. Ashford, 29, is part of a lineage that stretches from Jean Harlow through Judy Holliday to Bette Midler, Madonna and Because Ms. Ashford, currently stealing the show as the ballet-addicted daughter in the Broadway revival of Other younger performers who came to 54 Below and Café Carlyle from Broadway or from television shows like “Glee” and “Smash” have included Jarrod Spector, Kate Baldwin, Katie Finneran, Sierra Boggess, Megan Hilty, Jeremy Jordan and Laura Osnes, all of whom have enthusiastic fan bases. Artistically, they may be a mixed bag. But whether good, bad or indifferent they represent the young blood that cabaret needs to lift it above the radar in a media climate that is blatantly, unapologetically ageist. Anyone who has seen Marilyn Maye, a longtime favorite guest of Johnny Carson, and a regular at 54 Below, can attest that she is a pop-jazz powerhouse who, at 86, can outsing almost anyone of any age. But getting her on television is virtually impossible. Fitful attempts to bring cabaret to television in a variety-show format have fizzled. The pace of contemporary life is too fast and too loud to showcase new, rising talent in an intimate, convivial atmosphere. Nowadays, singing on television is a competitive sport. In 2014 traditional cabaret continued to sputter along at the The convention’s new artistic director, the singer and actress K T Sullivan, has been a tireless and effective fund-raiser for the Mabel Mercer Foundation, which produces the festival. This year the cabaret stalwarts like Ms. Maye, Andrea Marcovicci and Steve Ross performed before enthusiastic audiences. But they were joined by a raft of questionable hopefuls who padded the concerts’ running time to four hours, the sort of thing that can give the genre a bad name. Even among the die-hard cabaret aficionados, complaints were widespread. The convention made a brave effort to showcase young male talent in a female-dominated field. But the only men to generate real excitement were the proven theatrical performers Jason Robert Brown and Within the backbiting hothouse of cabaret, the generation gap that performers like Linda Ronstadt breached three decades ago when she recorded popular standards and was savaged by the rock establishment as a traitor still roils. One of the most talented younger performers, Lauren Fox — whose eerie 2014 show, Meanwhile, the staid Ultimately the problems bedeviling the cabaret world are structural and have more to do with the cost of doing business than with any dearth of talent. In show business, as in life, youth inevitably wins the game.