Review: Kuhoo Verma Specializes In SOUNDS OF HEALING At Feinstein's/54 Below

Friday night's show at 54 Below was not your average cabaret show. Friday night's show at 54 Below was not your average concert. Friday night's show at 54 Below was not your average anything because Friday night's show at 54 Below was by Kuhoo Verma. Titled SOUNDS OF HEALING, Ms. Verma's show was a completely original night of entertainment, music, community, and, yes, healing - she wasn't kidding with that title. With no script of spoken dialogue, Verma's show was better structured, with more purpose and more concise vision than many shows that play the clubs of Manhattan, and many other cities. Perhaps that is because Kuhoo Verma knows who she is and what she wants to say with her artistry. That is an assumptive statement, as Ms. Verma was a total stranger to me before I walked in out of the rain on Friday night, but not when I left the basement to walk the slick streets of Manhattan, the unbelievable effects of the evening still coursing through my veins and rolling around inside my brain.

Cabaret comes in many different forms, and as the years have journeyed on, the lines that define cabaret from concerts and concerts from club acts have grown fainter, blurred, with a broader scope of acceptance, thus welcoming evolutionary styles of entertainment that happen in small (and not-so-small) venues. An artist's story - musical, poetic, prosaic, comedic, terpsichorean, or otherwise - can take any form, be welcomed by an audience, and change the molecular space inside of a room. Friday night's show at 54 Below will forever stand out as one of the most original, fascinating, individual, and transformative evenings this writer has spent in a nightclub. Thanks to Kuhoo Verma's vision, both artistic and humanistic, there was more spirituality in the basement at 54 Below than I have ever felt in any church. This show, Sounds of Healing, could not have been more appropriately named because heal is precisely what Kuhoo Verma did during Friday night's show at 54 Below... through music and through her own inimitable force as a person and as an artist.

For an hour Ms. Verma stood at the microphone singing everything from George Shearing to John Denver, from Duke Ellington to Bruno Major, almost every song leading directly into the next, as though Kuhoo were a living DJ doll, creating the best playlist an audience has ever sung along with, and (with all due respect to the songwriters of "Orange Colored Sky", "Dusty Trails" and every other song), the most beautiful compositions of the eve were Kuhoo's many improvized vocalises. Even when Verma had something to say that was not a stanza from a song, her personal rhetoric was all-sung in all-improv'd vocalized vocabulary emanating from a voice possessing of clear, crisp-as-mountain-air high notes and deep, throaty low notes that pierce the innermost parts of the soul. No mere music set was this show: this was an hour-long guided meditation, including harmonious call and response conversation with the audience and spiritual visualization that requested closed eyes from all which, surprisingly (or maybe not-so-surprisingly) nearly everyone committed to. I know because I, as a reporter, had to keep mine open in an act of observation. Kuhoo Verma had the captive and captivated audience in the palm of her hand, and it was a safe and happy palm in which to be; she created a forcefield of love, not just through the music but through her own energy, brought into the basement to help them heal from the past and to stay strong in the future. She used the music, her humor, her intensity, her gentility, and all that comes with her when she enters a room, but she didn't do it alone, and since the show was based on the art form of music, she is extremely fortunate in having a three-piece band that sounds like a fourteen-piece orchestra.

Verma has placed a strong trust in her musical director Justin Ramos, leading from the piano while Noah Hadland (drums) and Jarrett Murray (bass) had her back at all times. When an artist (or a prophet) needs to focus on the music and the healing, it is essential that they have a symbiotic relationship with the musicians. With her eyes either closed (much of the time) or focused on her disciples (all of the time) throughout the evening, Kharismatic Kuhoo had to know that the band was with her. And they were - they really were, especially Ramos, who has more energy than, perhaps, any MD I've ever seen before... and a seriously cheeky grin that is infectious as all hell. This foursome created for the program that was expertly and intimately written, directed, and produced by Kuhoo Verma herself is a formidable one that I expect she will hang on to and nurture for future performances. PLEASE, whatever spiritual force we all believe in, may there be future performances of this show. The world needs more Kuhoo Verma and more performances of Sounds of Healing. And when there are...

I'm bringing all of my friends and family.

Dear readers, you should, too.

Kuhoo Verma SOUNDS OF HEALING was a one-off but you can find more great shows to see at the 54 Below website HERE.

Find Kuhoo Verma on Instagram HERE

Photos by Stephen Mosher

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