For a rural area, the North Country has quite a few aspiring actors and supports any number of community theatre companies as well as two professional ones. Last night performers from many of the region's theatre companies--including Adirondack Regional Theatre, Essex Theatre Company, and Chazy Music Theatre--joined up with audience members throughout the area for an amazing evening of "Showtime: The Music of Broadway" at the West Side Ballroom in Plattsburgh where Broadway performer Karen Mason wowed us with her own special brand of song artistry.

I was recently at a state-wide student theatre convention where I sat in on a workshop called "Song Styling". It was quite good and the kids learned a lot but it didn't come close to watching someone as skilled as Ms. Mason perform. This woman does not just sing or style. She has raised the bar for selling a song to what I am now calling the art form of transcending a song. In addition to pouring her soul into the music, she makes her transitions smooth, seamless and fast-paced—so fast-paced that at times I felt like I was on a musical rollercoaster--BTW I love rollercoasters!

She began the evening with a combo arrangement of the songs, "Downtown" and "I Know a Place, "which were paired together beautifully. The arrangements fit Ms. Mason like a glove and helped feature her talents to perfection. The segues were funny and clever, with Ms. Mason taking us from "He's Got a Way About Him" directly into "You've Got Possibilities" (from the musical "It's a Bird, It's a Plane, It's Superman"). She treated us to "Finding Wonderland" and a song written just for her as the Queen of Hearts, "Off with Their Heads," both from the short-lived Broadway production "Wonderland." We learned that her major vocal influences were Doris Day, Barbara Streisand and Judy Garland, but there was not a lot of excess banter to punctuate the songs. The evening was jam-packed with heavy-duty performance song artistry. Karen Mason was connected to every song she sang and she brought us all right along with her. It's hard to pick out a few highlights because there wasn't a clinker in her repertoire—about 20 songs that were delivered directly from the heart.

Which brings me to how Karen Mason comes to be performing in the North Country in the first place. It is truly a labor of love. When Minister Bob Svenson lived in New York City, he married Karen and her husband, Paul. At some point Svenson moved to the North Country to become minister at the Peru Community Church. The couple stayed in touch, and Svenson told them about the youth program at his church in which young people travel to Washington D.C. to help the homeless. Karen said to him "If there is ever anything I can do for you..."

Now you have to be careful how you use that phrase because some people (warning: I am one of them) will take you up on it. Minister Svenson certainly did when he asked Karen to come up and do a benefit to help fund raise for the youth program. This is her fifth time up (and largest performance venue to date) but only the first time for her accompanist and arranger, Christopher Denny. The two have been working together for 20 years and it is his arrangements that take this performer's amazing abilities and lift them still higher to the art of transcending a song.

Doug Garrand, the adult leader of the Peru Community Church Youth Group, began the evening introducing Karen Mason with these words, "She gives to us and we give to others," and it was an amazing evening of giving all the way around.

Ms. Mason will be appearing on Broadway this spring in the musical, "Rebecca", based on the Daphne du Maurier novel. The book was a favorite of mine as a young teen and I'm eager to get down to New York City to see how she handles the role of the sinister housekeeper, Mrs. Danvers.

In the meantime, I bought Karen Mason's CD and the memory of how she transcends a song will inspire me to share that with the theatre students I work with here in the Adirondacks.

Be sure to take a comprehensive look at the robust music, performance and visual arts experiences inspired by, and in the Adirondacks.

                                                        --Kathleen Recchia has been enjoying the arts in the Adirondacks for about 20 years—both as observer and participant (acting, directing, and producing). She also enjoys cross-country skiing, juggling, and hosting visitors to the area at her bed & breakfast in Jay.