Missy Keene, soprano songbird, is back with her cabaret show “As Long As I’m Singing,” performed at the grand opening of the new Cutting Room located at 44 East 32nd Street in New York City.
Keene, who trained at The Julliard School, credits include, Sandy in Grease, Kim in Bye Bye Birdie, and a Principal in Godspell, is no stranger to the stage or the cabaret scene of New York City. With sold out performances at New York City’s Feinstein’s at Loews Regency and performances at the legendary Copacabana, Laurie Beechman Theater, Don’t Tell Mama, and Backstage at Dopo Teatro, Kenne adds to her list the gorgeous venue that is The Cutting Room.
The Cutting Room is a vintage space which creates an environment of the nostalgia that New York City once represented. From the dim lighting which creates a sexy atmosphere and encourages one to let their inhibitions go, to the beautiful architecture of the stage, which looks like an enchanted merry go round one would see in the classic Rodgers and Hammerstein musical Carousel, the Cutting Rooms space alone is one the stars of Broadway will one day want to perform in. I was personally in awe of the space. At times it felt like I was on the inside of a snow globe with a merry go round and a pretty blonde woman spinning around it at its center singing from her heart. Enter Missy Keene.
At the piano, Radio City Music Hall music director and Broadway veteran, Ken Lundie plays for Keene, at times even joining in with her. The relationship, admiration, and respect, Lundie and Keene have for one another is quite apparent from start to finish. The established friendship the two share seemed genuine and relatable to that of a modern day Will and Grace.
Missy has established her relationship, but she’s not done. In fact she has only just begun. She then goes on to sing songs such as “New York, New York”, “Lullaby of Broadway”, “Don’t Rain on My Parade” from Funny Girl the 1964 Broadway musical later adapted to screen in 1968 that made Barbra Streisand a star and an Oscar winner, “Let Me Entertain You”, and numerous other songs telling of her experiences living in New York City and how she came to meet her musical director, Ken Lundie.
With an occasional murmur from Lundie, Kenne shares the story of how she came to work with him and how their lifelong friendship started a conversation that is still going on today. One of my favorite moments of the evening was when Keene sits atop the piano with a spot light lit on her porcelain skin, as she looks into the light and sings the song she and her father would sing many times around the piano together at a young age, “Somewhere Over the Rainbow”, of course made famous in the 1939 blockbuster The Wizard of Oz by another one of Keene’s childhood idols, Judy Garland.
And with that, Missy Keene sings a song in her heart, about secret love, the sentimental journeys of her life past and present, beautiful blue skies, and how the strings of your heart can really go “zing!”
I really appreciated Missy’s honesty when she shared with us that at a young age she was actually diagnosed as being legally deaf. She is no longer considered as being deaf, but due to her loss of hearing at a young age, her other senses were only heightened, allowing Baby Keene to only touch, taste, see and smell. She shared that due to being deaf and her other senses only being heightened, she remembers as a baby, pressing her head against the floor as her father would play the piano, trying to hear the vibrations on the floor and learning to understand and feel the music of Dorris Day, Judy Garland, Nat King Cole, and countless others Missy would eventually grow to admire.
“Que Sera Sera!”, the song which was introduced in the Alfred Hitchcock film The Man Who Knew Too Much in 1956, starring Doris Day and James Stewart, shows Kenne, along with Lundie and her audience, singing along to this infamous song as she really cuts loose before she, to my approval, sings a rendition of “I Am Changing” from the currently touring show Dreamgirls, which was adapted for screen in 2006 starring Beyonce Knowles, Eddie Murphy, Jamie Foxx, and Jennifer Hudson, who won the Oscar for Best Supporting Actress for her role as Effie White. Missy belts the bridge all the way to the very end of the song, holding out a note that could be heard miles away. Missy goes on to sing “Miss Celie’s Blues (Sister)” from The Color Purple and “I’m A WOMAN” made famous by songstress Peggy Lee before going into the song that I thought was the most genuine and sincere moment of the evening.
“For Good”, from the hit Broadway musical Wicked written by Stephen Schwartz, not only causes Missy to shed tears of gratitude out of the love and admiration she has for her mother, who was in the audience as well, but she also causes those around her to feel that love and shed a few tears in the process. Missy goes on to belt out the songs “The Glory of Love”, “Moon River”, “NYC” from the current Broadway revival of Annie, “You Made Me Love You”, “I Don’t Want To Walk Without You”, and ‘Rock-A-Bye Your Baby” before she goes full circle and closes the evening with an encore of the song she started the evening with, entrancing her audience in a melodic hum of song in “Orange Colored Sky.”
Keene, who impressively is the Director of Market Strategy at KPMG, LLP, at one of the largest global professional services firms, both entices and flirts with her audience while connecting with them on a level of intimacy with the heartwarming stories she shares about growing up listening to Judy Garland, Dorris Day, and the admiration that she has for her mother, and in particular her father, who would play at the piano with childhood Keene and was instrumental in how she would learn the songs she would grow up to sing. Personally I rather enjoyed myself at Missy Keene’s “As Long As I’m Singing” at the grand opening of the new Cutting Room in New York City. As long as Missy Keene is singing, I intend to be there. A gorgeous woman with a beautiful voice, sing on Missy, sing on.
Missy Keene’s work can be heard on her two recorded albums, Christmas Wishes and As Long As I’m Singing. Keene is currently working on her third album to be released at a date in the near future.