The word “ethereal” is perhaps the adjective that comes to mind quickest when describing the voice of Maude Maggart, the 32-year-old who is a fast-rising singer of the Great American Songbook. But however you choose to characterize it, it’s the kind of voice that has critics from the New York Times to Time Out New York struggling to convey its particular beauty in words. From April 1 through May, she performs her latest cabaret show, “Speaking of Dreams,” in the Oak Room at the Algonquin.

Maggart’s renditions of 1920s-era songs like “Love for Sale” or “Love Me or Leave Me” uncannily evoke an earlier time, with their melancholy, yearning high notes, laced with a wispy, fast vibrato that makes her voice recognizable in an instant. She takes many standards at slower tempos—even “Happy Days Are Here Again,” recorded on her 2005 CD Look for the Silver Lining, often taken at march-like clip, is taken leisurely, as if from the wistful perspective of someone already looking back on happy days. Posted after the jump, you can hear her singing “Love Me or Leave Me” with John Boswell on piano from Look For The Silver Lining.

Maggart is the granddaughter of Millicent Greene, who performed in George White’s “Scandals” in the 1920s, and she is the daughter of musical theater performers Brandon Maggart and Diane McAfee. Her little sister is the singer/songwriter Fiona Apple. Just before one of her shows at the Oak Room, I spoke with Maggart about why she loves cabaret, her career, and her family.

On how she got started as a cabaret singer: I first heard Andrea Marcovicci when I was 16. My dad took me to the Gardenia [in California]. My life changed. read more