Sandy Stewart sings cabaret, which melds many genres.

STEPHEN HOLDEN ESSAY

When the 19th annual Cabaret Convention began with the first of four concerts at Jazz at Lincoln Center on October 29, a genre that has struggled for years lifted its collective voice in an annual appeal for attention and respect.
“Please listen,” that voice politely implored. “ The magic I can conjure in a romantic cubbyhole where the lights are low, the wine flows and loved ones are at hand is like no other kind.
The Rose Theater, the modern auditorium inside Jazz at Lincoln Center where the convention takes place, wasn’t a cozy candlelit club, but it was close enough. Each evening roughly a dozen performers sang two songs each. Karen Akers, Paula West, Marilyn Maye, Mary Cleere Haran, Julie Wilson, Barbara Carroll, K T Sullivan, Tommy Tune and Barb Jungr were among this year’s most eagerly anticipated guests.
Most of the genre’s important male stars were absent from the roster. But one of its most promising young male performers, Tony DeSare, a Sinatra acolyte in his early 30s who sings Prince as well as Johnny Mercer, appeared.
Cabaret venerates maturity more than other forms of entertainment. Ms. Maye, Ms. Wilson and Ms. Carroll are all in their 80s, as are three of the genre’s other godmothers, Barbara Cook, Eartha Kitt and Elaine Stritch, and its unofficial godfather, Tony Bennett. All are old enough to remember and have participated in the golden age of live entertainment that faded with the incursions of rock ‘n’ roll and television.
As the nightclub world has shrunk, the informality of those performance spaces is largely a thing of the past. The question is whether there is a young generation to carry on the tradition. Besides Mr. DeSare, the genre’s other most promising younger performers include the sultry pop-jazz singer Jane Monheit and Maude Maggart .
The Cabaret Convention is produced by Donald Smith . Mr. Smith’s attitude toward the tradition he nurtures is upbeat. He said recently that he was encouraged by an increase in the number of cabarets outside New York .
But the dwindling coverage of cabaret in New York’s local newspapers is a bad omen. “We’ve never had any corporate sponsorship, Mr. Smith lamented. “And we haven’t gotten a nickel from any government arts program.
Mr. Smith’s concept of cabaret is only one of many in a genre that also shades into Broadway, traditional jazz, rock and even world music.
In the shouting, brawling world of mainstream pop, the essential qualities of a cabaret performance - intimacy, emotional vulnerability and interpretive subtlety - have little place.
For the majority of Americans, live music is now an arena-ready event that exalts raw physical energy . The typical concert is an orgiastic rite of communion between the public and celebrity. Demolished to make room for coliseums where blood sports rule, the romantic cubbyhole has become as anachronistic as the notion of privacy itself.