The British singing sensation Barb Jungr, who just earned Time Out NY's Best of the Year honors for her two Metropolitan Room shows in 2008, is moving uptown to the Café Carlyle at the Carlyle Hotel where she premieres a brand new act from March 11 to 28. In "The Men I Love" Jungr promises to reach beyond our common assumptions about the male species to appreciate the surprises of men and manhood while marveling at the astonishing topographic variety of what she calls "the male terrain."
The composers and songwriters she's drawing her inspiration from are a diverse lot. She and her New York music director Charlie Giordano are constructing a show with songs by Bruce Springsteen, Bob Dylan, Leonard Cohen, Iggy Pop, Joni Mitchell, Paul Simon and Harry Nilsson among others. All the songs in the show Jungr has not heretofore performed in New York. Playing for three weeks "The Men I Love" is Ms. Jungr's fifth New York engagement since debuting at the Metropolitan Room in January 2007. It's here that she has emerged as one of this town's most original and forceful singer-entertainers.
In his New York Times assessment of Jungr's artistry at the time, Stephen Holden said, "She is a gregarious stage personality with a comic streak in the tradition of the English music hall (...) She is a wonderful comic storyteller too. A typical show is a series of emotional hairpin turns with spontaneous patter that can break you up laughing. In the next moment you may find yourself choking back tears." He also calls her "a complete entertainer."
Her departure from the Metropolitan Room is likely to be a closely watched in the cabaret community, with the Café Carlyle banking on the British hipster's ability to bridge her alternative style with her new uptown environs.
