Last week, I was, fortunate enough to see Mary C. & The Stellars perform in concert, and, indeed, they were nothing short of stellar.
This summer has been a busy one for Mary C. & The Stellars, bracketed by opening for Grammy-nominated band Thievery Corporation in Montego Bay, Jamaica at the beginning of the summer and performing at the prestigious Cape Cod Jazz Festival to a sold-out crowd last week.
Growing Up Mary C.
Mary C. is a lifelong New Yorker, having grown up on the UWS and attended the prestigious Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School of Music & Art and the Performing Arts (which counts among its esteemed alumni Liza Minnelli, Al Pacino, Jennifer Aniston and Nicki Minaj, just to name a few). The daughter of famed jazz singer Mercedes Hall and sister of consummate 80’s actor Anthony Michael Hall (Sixteen Candles, Weird Science, Breakfast Club), you might say that talent is in her genes. (Little known fun-fact: Mary C’s first on-screen credit came at an early age when she played her real-life brother’s little sister in one of Breakfast Club’s opening scenes.)
Close to her family, Mary C. loves telling the story of how her parents, Mom Mercedes, and Dad, Tom Chestaro, met at The Copacabana in the 70’s, where her Dad worked on the business side of creative management, and her Mom performed.
Mary C. needs no introduction as anyone’s daughter or sister, however. Her talent, stage presence and gregarious (read: she is a total sweetheart!) personality stand on their own.
Growing up, Mary C. was exposed to a wealth of music from her mother’s Etta James, Ella Fitzgerald, James Brown, Jackie Wilson and Miles Davis albums to her brother’s favorites, such as The Beastie Boys, Led Zeppelin and Jimi Hendrix. She has been a performer all her life, playing piano since age 5 and attending Teacher’s College for piano and dance from the time she was five-years-old until she was fifteen. She remembers writing songs as a kid. “I always wanted to be an artist and writer,” she says.
When auditioning for LaGuardia, Mary C. —who, until then had largely focused on piano and dance — auditioned for dance, theater, vocal and instrumental concentrations and surprised everyone when she picked a vocal concentration.
Evolving and Changing
Flash forward — Mary C. is all grown-up now, and she is the total package – intelligence, beauty and astounding talent as a singer and composer. She writes all her own music, including all the songs on her first CD, Off the Line, and her upcoming CD, Right on Time (slated for a late fall release). She writes when she “[is] happy, upset, [has] been hurt,” and when she simply “want[s] to ponder life’s journey.”
Calling her a “force to be reckoned with” is a massive understatement. Although Mary C. is gifted in her own right, she has stayed true to her roots and is thankful for the amazing vocal training she received at home and at school in genres as diverse as gospel, jazz, choral and classically-trained Italian, French and German.
As a writer and vocalist, she can be favorably compared to some of today’s biggest stars, including Adele, Duffy, Joss Stone and the late Amy Winehouse, each of whom has impacted her style, a style which is, in her words, “a reflection of the soul music I grew up listening to, with a 60’s Motown feel as well as Southern rock influences.” She prefers to call her style “eclectic” with music and lyrics that are “honest and raw,” rather than forcing it into one specific genre.
She is, she says, “musically in a place that is very representative of who I am right now.” Comparing her evolution between Off the Line and Right on Time, she explains that, “A few years ago, she was trying to please a label, fit into a box and be relevant, to find where she fit in musically,” whereas, now, she has “matured to the point where I don’t have to feel like I fit in a box. I don’t need to be a ‘people-pleaser.’ If you’re an artist trying to please other people, you’re never fully satisfied yourself.” Right on Time, she says, “reflects Mary, my sound throughout the years and the feeling that I have come into my own and arrived at a place where both feet are planted on the ground.”
Mary C. & The Stellars
According to Mary C., The Stellars, her backing band, has also evolved and changed over the past two years. “It was a challenge,” she says, “to find musicians on the same page and all invested who all want to put on the best show possible. Our collaboration has been like pieces of a puzzle coming together to form something greater than the sum of its individual parts.”
These days, The Stellars, have expanded to include two female back-up singers, Shani Clayton and Cherette Lewis, as well as a female saxophone player, Jackie Chasen, in addition to Greg Mayo on guitar, Gaku Takanashi on bass, Jason Wexler on keyboard, Aaron Belinfanti on drums and Marco Coco on trumpet.
Having enjoyed listening to Mary C. solo on her CD’s, I was psyched to have the chance to see her perform live with The Stellars at Rockwood Music Hall. I had never been to that venue before, and it is intimate, and it was filled to the gills with Mary C.’s diehard fans, including her biggest fans of all — her parents.
If I thought listening to Mary C. sing solo was impressive; listening to her perform with a KILLER 8-piece back-up band was another matter altogether. The show was, in a word, ELECTRIC.
From beginning to end, the crowd went crazy in way I have rarely seen before outside of Grateful Dead and Phish concerts. Mary’s rapport with the crowd, filled with many friends and long-time fans, hanging on her every word and note, was incredible. She is, clearly, a natural-born performer, totally comfortable in front of a screaming and cheering crowd, who truly comes alive when she is on-stage. In fact, I must admit that it was hard to take notes, as I had my hands in the air, dancing and swaying along with everyone else.
Solo, Mary C. is amazing. The Stellars, however, added so many more layers to the sound I had heard on her CD’s, and Mary C. — unlike many other performers — has a big enough voice and stage presence to support this huge sound. She has a remarkable vocal range and can belt it out with the best of ‘em (my notes read: “When she belts it, reminds me of Tina Turner). She’s got the voice, the moves and the look of a rockstar in the making. She is the complete package.
As for The Stellars, the guitarist and bassist were top notch (“SICK,” I wrote), as was the whole band. Their playing was tight as can be and, while each bandmember is clearly a virtuoso in his or her own right, Mary C. is clearly the leader. The vocal harmonies were beautiful, and the back-up singers were so good that they had me reminiscing about the Rolling Stones’ live back-up singers on Stones classics like “Gimme Shelter” and “Sympathy for the Devil.” Simply put, Shani and Cherette are no joke as complements to Mary C.’s vocals. The Stellars’ sound, like Mary C.’s writing, went from soulful and smooth, to bluesy to pure rock n’roll and everything in between.
In addition to performing songs from Off the Line and Right on Time, Mary C. & The Stellars surprised the crowd with a welcome, 2-song tribute to the recently deceased Amy Winehouse as well as an encore of Alanis Morrissette’s “You Oughta Know,” which I daresay was better than the original.
I told a friend, who was supposed to come to the show with me, but ended up having a scheduling conflict, that he’d be sorry one day that he had missed this show. When Mary C. & The Stellars are winning Grammy Awards and VMA’s and playing to sold-out crowds at Madison Square Garden, which I have no doubt they will be, we will be looking back and saying, “Remember when they played that small show at Rockwood Music Hall?” Add this girl to the list of die-hard Mary C. & The Stellars groupies!
For more information on Mary C., go to www.marycmusic.com, check her out on Facebook or follow her on Twitter @Marycmusic.
