A Trip through the Great American Songbook with Tina deVaron

Tina deVaron is in her second smash year as resident entertainer at Madeline’s Tea at the Carlyle Hotel, where she raises the 14-carat-gold roof with a scintillating combination of jazz for kids and her own warm, funny originals about motherhood. She was recently the subject of a segment on CBS TV’s Family Matters, which dubbed her “The First Mother of Songwriting” and on ABC’s Eyewitness News, where her music was called the “Perfect Mother’s Day gift — just for Mom.”

Tina was born and raised in Cambridge, Massachusetts, the daughter of world-renown choral conductor, Lorna Cooke deVaron. She began her performing career as a Princeton undergrad, opening for Tom Waits at the Ivy Club. After graduation, she played Cole Porter’s piano nightly at the Waldorf in NYC for six years, where her fans included Frank Sinatra (with whom she sang an impromptu duet). While developing a working repertoire of over 2,000 standards, Tina gave birth to Nick and Joe, who inspired her to start writing songs. Within a few years, Tina’s first major label cover, “Adore You,” sung by Grammy-nominated Anointed, reached #1 on the Gospel charts. In July 2004, Tina’s song “If I Close My Eyes” reached #2 on Dance Radio charts.

Tina believes her Pop writing success has much to do with the fact that, night after night at her steady gigs, she was playing and singing her way through the oeuvre of Johnny Mercer, Hoagy Carmichael, Irving Berlin, Cole Porter.

In concert, Tina loves to tease out, for an audience, why great songs become standards. What makes “Night and Day” or “Embraceable You,” or “Unforgettable,” so unforgettable? How do the lyrics, harmonies and melodies interact to elicit such emotional responses from us? What is the singular unmistakable quality that makes a Rogers and Hart song a work of art? Or one by Gershwin? Or Irving Berlin? What about those Jerome Kern melodies, or Harold Arlen’s fascination with the blues?

Tina delights audiences with obscure intros to best-loved songs, and biographical tidbits that bring the great Tin Pan Alley writers to life. And with over 20 years of experience playing the best songs at the best pianos in the best hotels, Tina throws the floor open to requests. She is almost never stumped.

Tina’s Standards Concert is the perfect way to bring a large or small group closer together. No one else working in jazz or cabaret delves into the guts of songmaking the way Tina does — and at the same time sings and plays them in an unforgettable style that makes them living works of art.