| . | 04/14/2008
BARBARA SCHOTTENFELD: “A WICKEDLY FUNNY EVENING ABOUT LOVE”
By: Linda Amiel Burns
Barbara Schottenfeld, is a multi-talented composer, lyricist, librettist, performer, writer for Broadway, Off-Broadway, wife (Emmy & Grammy winning music man Paul Bogaev) and mother of three boys. She is tall, thin and beautiful to boot – who said that life is fair?
It’s been quite some time since Barbara performed a cabaret act as she has been concentrating on composing and her family life. So it was a treat to see her new one-woman show “A Wickedly Funny Evening About Love” on April 6th at Feinstein’s Supper Club, which was packed to the rafters. Barbara was accompanied by David Harris on piano and vocals and Joe Choomack on bass.
Barbara opened the show with the title song from her show Sit Down and Eat Before Our Love Gets Cold that set the tone for the evening of witty and brilliant material. She managed to weave the story of her life, including the single years in NY looking for love, with songs from different shows that she has written. The audience laughed heartily to the lyrics of “Boy To Love” (I’m looking for a boy to love who isn’t looking for a boy to love) and a song acknowledging that her biological clock was ticking with “First Child by 35.” One of her signature comedy tunes, is "I Want You to be the Mother of the Children I'm Not Sure I Want to Have.” Barbara is at home on the stage and her patter was as clever as her songs, describing one man in her life as a “gay agoraphobic who came out but wouldn’t go out.”
Barbara Schottenfeld has received many honors including fourteen ASCAP Musical Theater Awards. She began writing at Princeton University, where she was a composer, lyricist, and performer for the renowned Triangle Club. An Honors Graduate and University Scholar, she penned the book, music, lyrics and orchestrations for I Can't Keep Running In Place as her undergraduate thesis. The show became an off-Broadway hit at the Westside Arts Theatre starring Helen Gallagher, Phyllis Newman, and Marcia Rodd. She performed a song from that long-running show “I Can Count On You” (not to be there).
Another show, Catch Me If I Fall (book, music, lyrics), received an NEA Award and played successfully Off-Broadway at The Promenade Theater. Barbara sang the title song from that show, the lovely and optimistic “Isn’t It Strange That We Can Love Again?”
Barbara performed two songs from her latest show, Hot and Sweet, about an all girl band in Chicago in the 40’s. The bouncy “C’est La Vie, C’est L’Amour” with a red boa and then a tender song about the thing that never lets you down, “Music Will Always Hear Me.” Barbara is a fine singing actress and she can go from being comic one moment like in “Next Time Around” (God Make me a Lesbian) to singing tender ballads like “Two Lifetimes” (music by Jule Styne). Another collaboration was with Henry Mancini, a beautiful song “The Thought Behind Your Smile.” Barbara closed with the funny “No One Remembers The Lyrics” stating the fact that people forget the names of the songwriters who pen the words.
Barbara Schottenfeld is one of the most talented woman on this planet. There are not many people in this business who write both music, lyrics, and the book of a musical, can sing in a variety of voices and styles, put on a terrific solo show and knows how to keep her audience entertained.
Visit her website http://www.BarbaraSchottenfeld to see where she is playing next and don’t miss it!
Feinstein’s at the Regency, 540 Park Avenue, 212 339-4095
To contact Barbara: Info@Barbaraschottenfeld.com
Linda Amiel Burns
Founder and Director of The Singing Experience, popular cabaret and musical theater performance workshops since 1977, has been featured on “CBS Sunday Morning” with Charles Osgood and, recently, the subject of a profile in Back Stage by David Finkle. Linda is a sought after vocal coach & director and has written, booked and directed hundreds of cabaret acts, was a MAC nominee as “Best Director” of 2007 and will be presented with a special Board of Directors MAC Award by Danny Aiello at the MAC Awards ceremony on May 6 at BB Kings. She produces and stars in The Singing Experience Cable TV Show on MNN and RCN and is President Of The New York Sheet Music Society (http://www.NYSMS.org .) and a Trustee of Arts Horizons, bringing art programs to schools. (http://www.artshorizons.org ).
E-mail: SingLAB@aol.com Phone: 212 315-3500
Website: http://www.SingingExperience.com
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