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For more than two years before the Great Live Entertainment Blackout of 2020, Lance Horne was at the center of a weekly showtune bacchanal at Club Cumming known as Mondays in the Club with Lance: the rowdiest open-mic night in town, where the musical-theater medleys would get more obscure and more ornate the drunker everyone got. As restrictions have lifted in recent months, Horne has played musical ringmaster at multiple spots throughout the city and beyond. And on Thursday, September 9, the Emmy-winning songwriter and pianist will bring the party to Dumbo for Spontaneous Cabaret, a late-night pop-up show upstairs at the Time Out Market.
Horne has dropped by Club Cumming for special occasions in recent weeks—including a star-studded Schmigadoon cast party—but his first official Mondays in the Club event was on July 26. It was a joyous homecoming for the event's regulars, who have coalesced over the years into a community of performers informally known as the Monday Collective. It was not, however, their first reunion: Over the summer, Horne has kept busy with shows at Tavern on the Green and the new midtown hot spot the Q NYC, as well as a group concert on the Little Island and a weekly variety show at Cherry's on Fire Island.
The September 9 show at Time Out Market will be a tasting menu of semi-curated highlights from some of the core singers in Horne's shows, including Samara Ariel, Drew Brody, Genesis Collado, Jack Dwyer, Adam Overett, Eleanor Philips, Miriam Pultro, Katherine Sulenski, Jacob Tourjeman and—full disclosure—me, Time Out's own Adam Feldman. Also on the lineup is a very special guest: the extraordinary Tamika Sonja Lawrence, who will play a major role in Caroline, or Change on Broadway this fall and who can sing the rafters off any room she enters. Audiences are invited and encouraged to sing along with the group numbers and, depending how the evening unfolds, maybe get up to the microphone themselves.
Spontaneous Cabaret begins at 10:15pm on the fifth floor of the Time Out Market, adjacent to a rooftop that offers gorgeous views of the river and the city. Admission is $20, and each ticket includes a hand-made candle (value: $20!) from Horne's artisanal candle factory, We Light, which employs performing artists affected by the shutdown. Click here for tickets.
[A previous version of this article stated that Spontaneous Cabaret would be taking place on August 5. The event was subsequently moved to September 9.]
Tamika Sonja Lawrence | Photograph: Courtesy of the artist