Divas Reviewed

“If ever there was a time to drink in the healing power of music, a new album from Austin divas provides the elixir to soothe

whatever ails you. The lustrous voices of local jazz artists Dianne Donovan, Mady Kaye, and Beth Ullman, known collectively as the Beat Divas, soar in a stunning, carefully orchestrated live recording from Austin’s newest (only?) jazz supper club, Reed’s. From standards like “Straighten Up and Fly Right” to bebop and a vocally thrilling tribute to John Coltrane (“There Once Was a Man Named John”), the Beat Diva’s sharp harmonies, clear voices and mature, nuanced delivery is a marvel. Although recorded live, there’s no sense of spontaneity in Live at Reed’s, but that’s not a bad thing. Together with Eddy Hobizal on piano, Paul Spikes on acoustic bass, and Kenny Felton on drums, Live at Reed’s demonstrates the master musicians’ attention to detail with highly deceptive effortlessness.”
–Belinda Acosta, The Austin Chronicle, CD Review

“The Boswell Sisters meet Crosby, Stills and Nash – and haven’t
forgotten Stephen Foster.

I love it.”
–John Aielli, Host of Eklektikos, KUT-FM Public Radio

Dishin’ with the Divas Review

“I know few pleasures greater (none I’ll confess to in these pages anyway) than preparing a meal with friends, wine glass in hand and good music carrying it all along. The Beat Divas are hip to this notion and the musical trio is back to make sure you are too. The Divas return to present an evening of wine, women, song and food in a Central Market Cooking School class called Dishin’ with the Divas: Eye-Popping Summer Suppers.

“During the funny, entertaining and informative class, each Diva teaches two of the six dishes on the menu and, while the food is being served, they sing songs about food. The Divas, with an accompanist, will debut two new original songs at this class. One is called “Sweet Treat,” which is every woman’s fantasy about her lover also being her pastry chef (oh yeah!), and the nostalgic “In My Mother’s House.”

“Here’s what the Divas plan to cook up:

• Texas bruschetta
• Chillin’ cantaloupe and honeydew soup
• Tri-colored “veggie” pate with herbed mayonnaise
• Grilled and peppered pork tenderloin with smoky sour cream sauce
• Peach and white chocolate cake
• Chocolate strawberry shortcake

“Dish with the Divas Saturday, June 10, 6:30 to 9 p.m. at the Central Market Cooking School, 4001 N. Lamar. The cost for the class is $50. For reservations call 512.458.3068.”
— Rita DeBellis, Out & About, The Good Life, June 2006

Musicians on the Menu Review

“In concert or in the kitchen, these locals have the chops.

“Austin has the well-deserved reputation as a city that fosters creative expression of all kinds: musical, literary, theatrical, culinary and artistic. It only makes sense that in a city with such a wealth of creative energy, genres would tend to overlap. The local connection between live music and dining out is particularly strong, perhaps due to the immediacy of the gratification involved in both endeavors. Live music and good cooking are created to be consumed immediately, to satisfy the senses and nourish the soul. So it’s no wonder that a connection between food and music would flourish here and be recognized by fans and musicians alike. The connections is supported by historical precedent, local-business participation, and a huge talent pool…

“When the Beat Divas perform the Mady Kaye original “Cookin’ in the Kitchen,” it’s not just a catchy tune about lovers cooking Louisiana food set to a swamp-romp rhythm; it also illuminates an important new aspect of their professional collaboration.

“The Beat Divas – Mady Kaye, Beth Ullman, and Dianne Donovan – are all accomplished musicians and singers, as well as passionate home cooks. Now, in addition to performing a delicious mélange of jazz standards, jazzed-up American pop tunes and clever original material, they are cooking together and presenting quarterly classes at the Central Market Cooking School. Each class includes the demonstration of a seasonal dinner menu developed by the trio, served up with side dishes of their music. The lucky guests at the upcoming June 10 class will feast on such items as Cantaloupe and Honeydew Soup, Grilled Peppered Pork Tenderloin with Smoky Sour Cream Sauce, and Peach and White Chocolate Cake, in addition to tunes like “A Little Bit of Chocolate,” “Sweet Potato Jive,” or their newest salute to a hunky pastry chef, “Sweet Treat.”

“The Divas’ culinary collaboration works much the same way as their musical endeavor, with each woman bringing unique talents to the table and to the stage. Donovan, whose rich contralto defines the Divas’ distinctive harmonies, likens her own cooking style to playing jazz, saying, “I’ll add a little lemon or vinegar if something needs a brighter top note, or maybe a little cumin if the dish needs a note farther down the scale.” Ullman confesses she’s still not completely comfortable cooking in front of an audience, “so I use humor to relax the situation.” All three women describe how the breaks in their music rehearsals invariably dissolve into discussions about food and relate how some of their personal cooking experiences inspire the original material for a CD of all food songs. “Beth and I operate on so much the same musical wavelength that it’s easier for us to write material for the group,” explains Kaye, but she’s quick to point out that all three of them choose the material the group performs as well as the recipes for their classes and planned cookbook.

“The Divas hired a videographer to shoot their most recent Central Market class, and clips of the trio cooking and singing for a very receptive crowd can be viewed on the Web at XXXXXXX www.madykaye.com/divas. Having a DVD of their culinary and musical collaborations to shop around is just part of a serious master plan and professional wish list: They would love to teach the Central Market tour of Texas, they envision a musical cooking show with a companion cookbook called Dishin’ with the Divas, and they’d welcome a guest shot on the Food Network. “I think we’d be a natural to guest on Emeril Live,” Kaye says. We concur.”
— Virginia B. Wood, Food Editor, The Austin Chronicle, May 12, 2006

I’m a cook with a dilemma, and it ain’t about my food

My baby’s got me cranky, in a terrible mood
He’s swearin’ that he loves me, but I think it’s my cuisine
He wouldn’t be so ornery if I fed him rice and beans.
—Sweet Potato Jive

The Beat Divas write songs about food—and life—and sing them as they cook, often for a paying audience. It’s a chilly March evening, but the sold-out Central Market Cooking School classroom is warm and fragrant with the recipes-in-progress, and the mostly middle-aged crowd is entranced.

As the class moves seamlessly from appetizer (spanakopita) to dessert (lemon-strawberry mousse), singer/cooks Mady Kaye, Beth Ullman and Dianne Donovan serve up equal tidbits of cooking advice and confessional along with their music. We learn not just how to cool quinoa, but why some marriages cool off into nothing at all. And somehow it’s all fun and informative and delicious. Not only that, the songs, stories and recipes are all 100 percent original.

“The Beat Divas phenomenon grew out of something called Austin Music on the Menu, a series I started in 2003,” says Central Market’s cooking school director Kelly Ann Hargrove. “A couple of weeks prior to South by Southwest, I decided to invite musicians to hang out in our kitchen, prepare a favorite meal and play an acoustic set. And now we do it throughout the year because they’re just fun.”

Tonight the trio takes turns demonstrating their seasonal menu from behind the counter separating the kitchen from a room packed with long rows of narrow tables where students sit elbow-to-elbow, sipping wine and savoring the food. After each turn in the kitchen, the apron-clad divas unite in front of the counter singing and swinging—their voices blending in tight, jazzy harmonies.

“We’ve been Divas since 2000, really, and Dianne joined us in 2002,” explains Mady. “We were a somewhat going concern, but we had not yet gotten into the cooking/food song aspect of our group until Dianne joined us.  She’s the perfect alto complement for Beth and myself—the voice we really needed.” The Divas also have successful solo performing careers and lives steeped in music. Beth and Mady are voice teachers; Dianne has a background in jazz radio and is queen of the classical airwaves at KMFA Radio. They are practiced improvisers, both in and out of their kitchens. But it was their shared passion for cooking that inspired their current foray into the new milieu of singing culinary classes.

Back to class, where the Divas dish their cooking know-how. “Cow’s milk feta is drier than sheep,” says Dianne, as she puts together her spanakopita. She crumbles the cheese into a gooey green mix of spinach, eggs, green onions, parsley, dill, mint and spices.

“Sesame oil has a lower heating point than olive oil—be careful when you heat it up,” cautions Mady, as she prepares her delectable gingered haricots verts.

And so on. But the narrative always circles back toward the personal.

“The first time I made this,” Beth says, while adding rice noodles to her caramelized-chicken salad with chile-garlic vinaigrette, “my husband said, ‘what’s in this, worms?’”

Of course, he’s now an ex-husband, and the shining inspiration for the song “Sweet Potato Jive,” co-written by Beth and Mady, who also arranged it.

“I thought about that song for a long, long time,” recounts Beth. “I was in the Arboretum Mall parking lot when I came up with the chorus. Then I called up Mady and said, ‘I’ve got the chorus to that song. You wanna help me write the verses”

“Then we just hammered it out,” Mady remembers. “That’s a great song. It was a true collaboration.”

Chorus:
Get out my kitchen (go on get on outta here)
Get out my kitchen (thought I’d made it really clear)
Get out my kitchen while you’re still alive
You’re wearin’ out your welcome with your sweet potato jive.
[Vamp]

The divas are unabashed vamps, but often they come across as wholesome and nostalgic as some of the dishes they cook, a style they credit to the women who raised them.
“My mother always cooked dinner for the whole family,” Mady recalls. “She taught us that food is the most loving way of sharing.” Tonight, she mesmerizes the audience with her song “In My Mother’s House”:

In my mother’s house, the air was cool and sweet
And the kitchen caught the morning sun,
even when it rained
In my mother’s house, life never came undone
And our blessing was the food and love in my mother’s house.

“There’s nothing better than that stained cookbook of your mother’s,” says Beth. And there’s little better than a trio of cooking instructors with the right priorities—Dianne starts each morning with a bite of chocolate and ends each night in bed with a pile of recipe books. Beth balances her scathing critiques of exes with the “deep and soulful” act of baking bread, “one of the most spiritual things I think you can do.”

Consider “Cooking in the Kitchen,” one of Mady’s original tunes, with its joyful Cajun beat. On the surface, it extols romance in the kitchen, but it also captures the cooking chemistry of the Divas:

Cookin’ in the kitchen on a Saturday night
Cookin’ with my baby, everything is just right
Turnin’ up the burner, a-cookin’ it hot
Throw in a little spice better show me what you got
Spoonin’ up love into every bite ‘cause tonight…
We’re cookin’ in the kitchen…

So what is the relationship between music and cooking? “Creativity and preparation,” says Mady. The Beat Divas use approximately the same methods, whether they’re making food or music.

“You’ve got to have the right ingredients, the right voices to make a blend,” says Beth.

“And then, of course, since we keep practicing,” says Dianne, “it gets better each time we do it.”

GINGERED HARICOT VERTS

by Mady Kaye
1 lb. haricots verts
1 T. toasted sesame oil
2 T. finely minced crystallized ginger

Pinch off stem end of green beans and rinse thoroughly. Steam for 5 minutes, until beans are cooked al dente. Rinse in cold water to stop cooking.

Heat sesame oil in wok or large skillet, over medium heat. Watch that the oil doesn’t overheat! Stir drained beans into oil and toss to heat and coat thoroughly.

Add chopped crystallized ginger and cook about 1 minute more. Serve. Serves 4.

–Marla Camp, Publisher, Edible Austin

“…one of the best, and surely the most polished performance by a singing group to be seen in
Austin — or anywhere. Kaye, Ullman and Donovan each have separate careers, performing alone or
in other combos, teaching, hosting radio shows, etc. But when they’re together, they are SO together.
Close harmonies, jazzy body language and snappy repartee, slinky black cocktail dresses and sexy high heels. These Divas rock!”

–Dot Fowler, Lake Travis View

“Sexy, sassy and swingin’.”

–Dick Gimble, Bassist for Johnny Gimble’s “Texas
Swing”

“Conventional wisdom tells us that three women, let alone three Divas, will not play well together and that too many cooks will spoil a dish. Throw conventional wisdom out the window this time, because the three multi-talented women who make up The Beat Divas have hit on the perfect recipe, their voices blending seamlessly in delicious harmonies. Any performance cooked up by these Divas is bound to be a very tasty treat!”

–Virginia B. Wood, Food Editor, The Austin Chronicle

“When jazz vocalists Beth Ullman, Mady Kaye and Dianne Donovan get together as a trio, you’ve got the ultimate entertainment experience known as The Beat Divas. Put these ladies into an intimate venue… and you’ve got the makings for an unforgettable evening.”

–Ken Martin, Editor, The Good Life

“Working with The Beat Divas was a delight! These modern day Sirens packed the house for our St. Cecelia Jazz Festival, only releasing the audience after a spell-binding concert.”

–Scott McNulty, Founder/Director St. Cecelia Jazz Festival,
Austin

“The Beat Divas performance at the Texas Daily Newspaper Association’s 2004 Annual Meeting this past week was outstanding. Everyone present thoroughly enjoyed the group’s exceptional talent, and your colorful and entertaining production provided the ideal way to close out a long day and a delightful evening.”

-Donnis Baggett, TDNA President and Publisher/Editor of The Eagle, Bryan, TX

“… three chanteuses in black cocktail dresses… known collectively as The Beat Divas, Mady Kaye, Beth Ullman and Dianne Donovan combined casual banter and tight three-part harmony to enthrall a capacity crowd of 500.”

–Paul Klemperer, in a review of St. Cecelia Jazz Festival, XLENT, Austin American Statesman

“When music is concerned, sometimes one plus one plus one adds up to more than three. That’s the case with the Austin-based Beat Divas, a female trio whose collective harmonies bring something distinctive to jazz vocals.”

–Carl Hoover, Entertainment Editor, Waco Tribune-Herald

“Three magical voices come together, weaving an evening of musical energy loaded with humor and surprises that no audience can forget.”

–Zea Calvin, Waterloo Ice House

“How about a hot night of jazz with three great singers? Then The Beat Divas performance at Wimberley Winter Jazz is the right date to make.”

–Wimberley View, Life & Arts

“What a wonderful, eclectic mix of arrangements you performed with perfection! I never expected to hear a very different interpretation of a Beatles classic… only from The Beat Divas.”

–Chris Hilsabeck, Freelance Film & Video Producer