The Mabel Mercer Foundation
Ensuring the Future of Cabaret.
About
The Mabel Mercer Foundation
Founded in 1985 as a nonprofit arts organization, The Mabel Mercer Foundation is dedicated to perpetuating the memory and spirit of its legendary namesake while promoting public appreciation for the art of cabaret and the songs at its heart.
The Foundation’s work is ongoing and far-reaching. It serves as a central resource for artists, presenters, producers, and audiences, responding to inquiries year-round and maintaining extensive archival materials documenting cabaret performers across generations. Through this daily work, the Foundation’s small and dedicated staff helps foster a vibrant and interconnected cabaret community—bringing together artists, collaborators, and audiences who share a commitment to this intimate art form.
In addition to its advocacy and resource-building efforts, The Mabel Mercer Foundation sponsors performances and broadcasts by both emerging and established artists. Most notably, it presents the annual New York Cabaret Convention at Jazz at Lincoln Center, an internationally recognized celebration of cabaret artistry. The Foundation’s programs and outreach are sustained entirely through ticket sales and charitable contributions.
The Foundation’s influence extends well beyond New York City. It has presented Cabaret Conventions in San Francisco, Long Island, and Chicago, supported related events in Philadelphia and Palm Springs, and served as a cabaret consultant to major venues in Chicago and Pennsylvania. Internationally, the Foundation debuted the London Cabaret Convention in 2004 as the culminating event of a two-week Musical Voices celebration, and cabaret festivals in cities such as Sydney and Adelaide, Australia, have since been patterned after the New York Cabaret Convention created by The Mabel Mercer Foundation.
Education and outreach are central to the Foundation’s mission to ensure the continued vitality of cabaret and the American Songbook. Through a range of educational initiatives, the Foundation introduces young artists to the history, artistry, and interpretive discipline that define this uniquely intimate performance tradition. Cornerstone programs include the Adela & Larry Elow American Songbook Competition for high school students and the Teen Cabaret Showcase, which grows out of an extended cabaret workshop providing sustained study, mentorship, and real-world performance experience. Together, these efforts encourage musical literacy, storytelling, and artistic confidence while welcoming new generations into the cabaret community.
The American Songbook is one of our nation’s great cultural treasures, and cabaret serves as one of its most intimate and enduring gateways. Through this art form, audiences engage deeply with the work of the composers and lyricists who shaped American popular music. Ensuring that this music—and the art of cabaret itself—continues to thrive is the enduring mission of The Mabel Mercer Foundation. Guided by the artistry and legacy of Mabel Mercer, widely regarded as one of the supreme cabaret performers of the twentieth century, the Foundation remains steadfast in its daily commitment to preserving, promoting, and advancing this singular musical tradition.
Mabel Mercer
Mabel Mercer — arguably the supreme cabaret artist of the twentieth century — was born in England and performed in the United States, Britain, and across Europe to a large fan base including such big names as Frank Sinatra and Ernest Hemingway. She was a featured performer at Chez Bricktop in Paris, performed Le Ruban Bleu, Tony’s, the RSVP, the Carlyle, and the St Regis Hotel in New York, and eventually hosted her own room, the Byline club.
Mabel Mercer was born in 1900 in Staffordshire, England. After leaving a Manchester convent school at the age of fourteen, Miss Mercer joined her aunt in a vaudeville and music hall tour of Britain and the Continent. Her career quickly blossomed, and by the 1930s she was the toast of Paris, introducing her inimitable style of singing to adoring audiences and beguiling such steadfast admirers as Ernest Hemingway, Gertrude Stein, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Cole Porter, and the Prince of Wales.
The outbreak of World War II brought her to America where she began a series of engagements at New York’s finest supper clubs. Among the rooms she made her own were Le Ruban Bleu (a six-month stay), Tony’s (seven years), the RSVP (two years), and five years in her own Byline Club. Miss Mercer solidified her career with engagements at the Carlyle and St. Regis Hotels, and she enjoyed brilliant concert triumphs and record-breaking appearances across the United States.
The brilliance of Miss Mercer’s recordings have made both original albums and numerous reissues highly prized collectors’ items. To honor her 75th birthday in 1975, Atlantic Records assembled four classic early LPs and reissued them in a boxed set. In recognition of her life’s achievement, Stereo Review Magazine presented Miss Mercer with its first Award of Merit for “outstanding contributions to the quality of American musical life.” In 1984, the Award of Merit was officially renamed the Mabel Mercer Award. After an absence of 41 years, Miss Mercer made her long-awaited return to England on July 4, 1977, accompanied by her long-time friend and publicist, Donald Smith. So great was the public acclaim on her return to London that the BBC filmed three evenings of extraordinary footage of Miss Mercer’s performances. The BBC later devoted an entire week to a series of late-night half-hour television broadcasts—an honor never before bestowed upon an entertainer. In 1978, Miss Mercer’s new album, Midnight at Mabel Mercer’s, was hailed by Stereo Review as one of the best recordings of the past twenty years.
To celebrate her 78th birthday later that year, Miss Mercer played a sold-out engagement at San Francisco’s Club Mocambo to enthusiastic audiences. Mabel Mercer was honored in January 1981 by the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York with An American Cabaret, the first musical celebration of its kind in the museum’s history. Created and produced by Donald Smith, the evening was dedicated to the artistry of Mabel Mercer. Miss Mercer next appeared as the first guest on Eileen Farrell’s new National Public Radio program featuring great popular singers, a program that was repeated in June 1992 at the Kool Jazz Festival.
In 1983, President Ronald Reagan presented Mabel Mercer with the Presidential Medal of Freedom at a White House ceremony. In bestowing America’s highest civilian honor upon Miss Mercer, the president described her as “a singer’s singer” and “a living testament to the artfulness of the American song.” Among Miss Mercer’s many other honors are two honorary Doctor of Music degrees from Boston’s Berklee College of Music and the New England Conservatory of Music. Mabel Mercer died on April 20, 1984. On Miss Mercer’s birthday the following year, February 3, 1985, The Mabel Mercer Foundation was formally established.