Maude Maggart

Maude Maggart (born Amber McAfee Maggart February 24, 1975), is an American cabaret singer and recording artist who performs throughout the United States and Europe, but most often in Los Angeles, San Francisco, and New York City.^[1][2]

Biography

Maggart was born in New York City to Broadway veterans Brandon Maggart and Diane McAfee and is the sister of singer/songwriter Fiona Apple. At the age of twenty, she changed her stage name to Maude after her paternal great-great grandmother, Maude Apple.^[1]

Maggart's brother, Garett Maggart, starred in the TV series The Sentinel. In addition, her maternal grandparents were Millicent Greene, a dancer with the George White's Scandals, a series of 1920s musical revues similar to the Ziegfeld Follies, and Johnny McAfee, a multireedist and vocalist of the big band era. Her grandparents met while touring with Johnny Hamp and his Orchestra. She went to the Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School of Music & Art and Performing Arts, in New York City. Her 2001 cabaret debut in Los Angeles prompted critic Les Traub to write that she is "destined to become a major cabaret star."

She has been described as a "strikingly beautiful and poised performer," and has been widely praised for her vocal talent, her intelligent, emotional, witty interpretations, as well as for her taste in song selection primarily from the American popular song book featuring the works of Irving Berlin, George Gershwin, Jerome Kern, Harold Arlen, Johnny Mercer, Vernon Duke, and Rodgers and Hart. She has paid vocal tribute in her concerts to such popular singers and predecessors as Helen Morgan, Annette Hanshaw, Ruth Etting, Alice Faye, Helen Forrest and lryicist Marshall Barer. Her 2006 concerts have featured established standards as well as exquisite renditions of songs by Jackson Browne and Joan Baez.

Her first album Look For the Silver Lining focuses on songs of the 1920s. The selections on her second album, With Sweet Despair, range in era and style. Her third album features a repertoire of standards and unearthed gems and is titled Maude Maggart Sings Irving Berlin, which included "When I Lost You," Maggart's rendition of which is featured in the movie Spike. In 2007 she released Maude Maggart Live. Her latest recording is a collaboration with Brent Spiner, entitled Dreamland.

Embraced as a protégée and colleague of such other performers as Michael Feinstein and Andrea Marcovicci, she has been profiled on National Public Radio, in the New York Times and Time Out New York and has appeared on such shows as Prairie Home Companion. In 2005, she received the Backstage Ira Eaker Award, The Tony Award for Outstanding Achievement in Cabaret and the Manhattan Association of Cabarets and Clubs (M.A.C.) award for Best Female Debut. She performs regularly at the Oak Room of the Algonquin Hotel in New York, the Gardenia in Hollywood and the Plush Room in San Francisco.

Discography

Albums

• Look for the Silver Lining (2003)
• With Sweet Despair (2005)
• Maude Maggart Sings Irving Berlin (2005)
• Maude Maggart Live (2007)
• Dreamland (2008) with Brent Spiner

Cabaret shows

Each Maude Maggart show has a theme running through the show. The songs are put together to tell a story from the beginning of the evening to the end.

• Shaking the Blues Away: A 1920s Cabaret (2003/4)
• Irving Berlin: The Songs of Irving Berlin (2006/7)
• Good Girl Bad Girl, explores the emotional complexities of songs written for both naughty and nice, and others open to interpretation (2007/8).
• Speaking of Dreams, love and dreams are connected in song (2008/9).
• Parents and Children (2009/10)
• Three Little Words, songs with three-word titles (2010).
• Everybody's Doin' It (2011)
• Into the Garden, inspired by the recent centenary of the Titanic (2012).

Other notable appearances

• "Pale September", backing vocals on Fiona Apple's 1996 album Tidal
• "The Very Thought of You / When I Fall on Love", a duet with Tim Draxl on his 2001 album 'Insongniac'
• "Moonlight", "I'm Outta Here" and "Please, Don't Let It Be Love" with Ray Jessel on his 2003 album The First Seventy Years
• "Baby", a duet with John Lithgow on his 2006 album The Sunny Side of the Street
• "My Ship", "The River Is So Blue", "Buddy on the Nightshift" with Andrea Marcovicci & vocal ensemble on her 2007 album Kurt Weill in America
• Johnny Mercer: The Dream's on Me, Television special, 2009 (Turner)
• "Finding Words for Spring" with Ray Jessel on his 2009 album Naughty or Nice
• "Find Your Song", "Not the Star You Thought I'd Be" with David Lucky on his 2011 album Kill 'em with Kindness
• A Prairie Home Companion (NPR)
• Fiona Apple's The Idler Wheel... on the track "Hot Knife" (2012)
• "Hushabye Mountain", "Sing for Your Supper", "Save Your Sorrow / Look for the Silver Lining", "Ready for the River", "Was That the Human Thing to Do?" as guest vocalist on the Molly Ryan album Swing for Your Supper (2013)
• "I'm In The Middle Of A Riddle" with Fiona Apple on the Starbucks-sponsored album Sweetheart 2014 (2014)

References

External links

• Official website
• Maude Maggart on Myspace
• NPR interview with Maggart