Today we’d like to introduce you to Sarah Folsom.
Hi Sarah, can you start by introducing yourself? We’d love to learn more about how you got to where you are today?
My Co-Artistic Director, Matthew Umphreys, and I met while attending graduate school at the University of Cincinnati, College-Conservatory of Music. Though we were both studying classical music at the time, we quickly discovered that we shared a love for vintage pop and jazz, and we would always end up sneaking some of it into our mostly opera-focused rehearsals. After we graduated and set up shop in Cincinnati, we started to learn about the incredible music history of the city and felt pulled to share and celebrate those stories.
In December of 2018, we performed our first Cincinnati-inspired concert celebrating the life and music of Rosemary Clooney, a mid-century star who got her start on Cincinnati’s WLW radio station. The show was a huge success, and that was the moment we decided to make it official and crown ourselves the artistic directors and principal artists of a new, nonprofit concert series, the Queen City Cabaret.
Since that first show, we have produced 3 full seasons of live and digital musical experiences featuring the songs and stories of artists who got their start or recorded in the Queen City, such as Doris Day, James Brown, Hank Williams and many more. In addition to celebrating artists from the past, we showcase the talent of Cincinnati’s current professional performers and highlight their contribution to the city’s continuing tradition of musical excellence. QCC’s productions have been featured in theaters across the region, including The Washington Opera house, The Carnegie, and The Fitton Center for Creative Arts, as well as on TV and radio via CET, TVHamilton, WVXU and WGUC. This December, we are thrilled to be releasing our first album, “Count Your Blessings: A Tribute to Rosemary Clooney.” Based on our live concerts of Rosie’s music, the album will honor Rosemary’s vocal style and musical influences, while invigorating the repertoire with freshly imagined arrangements (one of which was commissioned to Cincinnati Pops pianist, Julie Spangler!). Matthew and I are so excited about how far this organization has come since its founding just 3 years ago, and we are so incredibly grateful to our wonderful community of fans and patrons who continue to support our mission.
Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
Like anything worth doing, building a new concert series and nonprofit arts organization is an exciting, exhausting, and challenging experience with a steep learning curve. Something Matthew and I had to learn along the way was how to balance our administrative duties with preparing, producing, and performing the concerts. There is so much that goes on behind the scenes to get a season of shows up and running—grant-writing, marketing, website design, ticket sales, booking venues, contracting musicians, filing taxes, purchasing insurance, bookkeeping…the list never ends! And when you’re just getting started, you are wearing all of those hats in addition to being the artist.
Fortunately for us, our board has been a wonderful source of support, and we’ve developed some fantastic volunteers as well. The biggest struggle we’ve faced, though, is one that no arts organization was able to completely escape over the past couple of years. When the Covid-19 pandemic reached the US in spring of 2020, Matthew and I realized we were going to have to quickly think outside of the box to keep Queen City Cabaret afloat.
The sudden loss of organizational support through ticket sales and live performances, coupled with an inability to confidently plan anything, left us scratching our heads and going back to the drawing board again and again. Fortunately, we were able to continue connecting with our audience using a digital concert subscription program, through which we were able to offer a full season of filmed shows. The past year was immensely challenging, but we are grateful to still be standing as an organization today.
Can you tell our readers more about what you do and what you think sets you apart from others?
I think what sets Queen City Cabaret apart is our knack for creating concerts that immerse our audiences, rather than just making them feel like we’re performing in their direction. Our cabaret-style shows provide the kind of intimate musical experiences that make listeners feel connected to each other and the artists onstage in a personal, impactful way. They walk out onto the street after the show and feel that they are a part of something special, in a place where extraordinary things happen. I think that’s why our fans show up again and again, and love being a part of the QCC family.
Additionally, I think Matthew and I would agree that the thing we’re most proud of has been our creativity in achieving our mission, even when things got complicated. Before last year, neither of us had done a lot of recording, and we didn’t know much about producing shows for a digital format. However, when we found ourselves planning a third season in the midst of a pandemic, we knew we would need to learn and learn quickly. It wasn’t a seamless process, but thankfully, our audience was patient with us, and we were able to surround ourselves with professionals who were wonderful guides. Through a combination of outdoor events and online shows, we were able to present a full season of concerts to the community last year, despite the ongoing COVID pandemic. We began the season with a Women’s Equality Day Online Music Festival, which featured a diverse group of singers and instrumentalists based in Cincinnati, each performing music that was original, locally-inspired, and/or social justice oriented.
In October, we presented a Patsy Cline biographical concert, filmed at The Carnegie in Covington, and in December, a Christmas show at the historic Hilton Netherland Plaza Hotel in downtown Cincinnati. For Valentine’s day, we broadcasted a Doris Day-themed “Tea for Two” show from The Fitton Center in Hamilton OH, which premiered on TVHamilton as well as online through ArtsWave. In our final show of last season, we celebrated women in comedy by performing tunes from the soundtrack of Amazon Prime’s hit show, “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel.” That concert also included performances by the local improv duo, Two Sketchy Dames. We are so proud and grateful that we were able to have a fruitful season, despite being challenged in ways we could have only imagined before the pandemic.
Can you share something surprising about yourself?
Our current mission is to celebrate the Cincinnati region’s musical past, present, and future through exceptional artistic storytelling and community engagement. Though we are most known for celebrating music from Cincinnati’s past (with smoky jazz and fun pop tunes), our largest scale project to date was actually focused on Cincinnati’s present and future.
In early 2019, Matthew and I set out to create a community-wide, music video cover of the unofficial anthem of the 2017 Women’s March, “Quiet,” in response to the national outcry around women’s rights and sexual abuse. Performances of the song were being produced by groups of women and choirs all over the world, and QCC wanted to create an opportunity for women in our community to be a part of the musical moment. We secured a grant from Fuel Cincinnati and assembled a 75-person volunteer team of choral singers, musicians, speakers, instrumentalists, and dancers representing more than 25 local organizations.
After I completed an arrangement of the song for treble choir, we began choral, band, and dance rehearsals, and contracted with a local AV company, Brandenburgh Productions, who agreed to do the project at cost. We released the video on International Women’s Day, March 8, 2020, which marked the 100th anniversary of the first wave of women’s suffrage in the United States. From start to finish, this video was a labor of love and a powerful moment for QCC to use music to uplift our community. In producing this video, we were able to unite women from all over Cincinnati with a powerful message and inspire other groups to create community-empowering art. To us, music is not only a vehicle for honoring the past, but most importantly, a tool for shaping the future.
Contact Info:
- Email: queencitycabaretcincy@gmail.com
- Website: www.queencitycabaretcincy.com
- Instagram: @QCCCincy
- Facebook: @QCCCincy
- Youtube: Queen City Cabaret QCC-Cincy
- Other: queencitycabaret.bandcamp.com
Image Credits
George Komiotis
Jackie Stevens
Marc Hoffman
