Described by Broadway World as the "David Bowie of cabaret," "slyly subversive" by the Wall Street Journal, and labeled the "male Marlene Dietrich" by the New York Times, Kim David Smith, hailing from Australia, is a Helpmann Award nominated actor and cabaret artist, based in New York City. Smith’s debut live album “Kim David Smith Live at Joe’s Pub” received a 2022 Bistro Award, and is available to stream or download via iTunes, Amazon, and Spotify.
Debuting at NYC’s Club Cumming (March, 2020), Kim’s most recent cabaret programme, “Mostly Marlene,” has toured to the 2021 Adelaide Cabaret Festival, and the Post Office Café in Provincetown (2023), while frequently returning to Club Cumming in the East Village (2021—2023), Pangea (2022), and Café Sabarsky at the Neue Galerie (2022, 2023), and has been recorded live at Joe’s Pub (2024), to be released as Kim’s next recording project. Mostly Marlene sees Queer mega-muses (Minnelli, Minogue, Madonna, and more) collide with Marlene’s reimagined repertoire in Smith’s luxurious musical rearrangements, stravaging from Weimar Berlin, to Hollywood, through to the battlefields of Europe and into the stratosphere with Dietrich’s immortal "Ich bin von Kopf bis Fuss.”
“A Wery Weimar Christmas,” also premiering at NYC’s Club Cumming (December 2019), manifested in 2020 as a virtual holiday apparition, streaming via Club Cumming Productions, and featuring special guests Alexis Michelle, Boy Radio, and Natalie Joy Johnson. A Wery Weimar Christmas returned to Club Cumming for in-person Yuletide performances in 2022 and 2023 (with guest appearances by Bright Light Bright Light, Boy Radio, Sidney Myer, K.T. Sullivan, and David LaMarr).
“Kim Sings Kylie” premiered at Joe’s Pub in June 2018, saluting perennial pop goddess Kylie Minogue in an intimate cabaret fantasia, celebrating Kylie’s gargantuan hits and glittering deep-cuts, alike. Kim sings Kylie has since performed at the inaugural Sydney Cabaret Festival (July 2019), and returned to Joe’s Pub in November 2018, and May 2019, and enjoyed a special Pride edition performance at Club Cumming in June 2022.
Smith starred as Salomé in Oscar Wilde's “Salomé” as part of the Provincetown Theater’s 2017 season, while 2016 saw Kim portray the Emcee in Hunter Foster's production of "Cabaret" at the Cape Playhouse.
Conjuring the glitter, doom, and decadence of 1920's Berlin with “Morphium Kabarett,” Smith provides an intimate evening of German, French and English repertoire, subtly intertwining Piaf, Hollaender, Dietrich, and Weill with The Supremes, Kylie Minogue, Madonna and many unexpected others.
Morphium Kabarett toured Australia, earning a 2015 Helpmann Award nomination for Best Cabaret Performer, while also enjoying Stateside performances at Joe's Pub, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and Café Sabarsky at the Neue Galerie. Musically directed by Tracy Stark, Morphium Kabarett garnered enthusiastic praise from The New York Times in its six-month 2016 residency at Pangea, which celebrated the whimsy and wickedness of New York City's alt-cabaret scene, with a curated parade of guest-artists, including Joey Arias, Ali McGregor, Anthony Roth Costanzo, Gay Marshall, and many fabulous others.
In 2009 Smith was presented with a Bistro Award (honored alongside Liza Minnelli and Charles Aznavour), and in 2023 received the Singnasium Trailblazer award in recognition of his continued devotion to and promotion of the artform of Cabaret (presented by longtime mentor and friend, Sidney Myer). His electro-pop albums Nova and Supernova are available on iTunes.
MANAGEMENT
Jeremy Katz & Clay Mills at The Katz Company
212-767-0189 // jk@thekatzcompany
Kim David Smith Emcees Death of Classical’s Sumptuous “Tiergarten,” April 17-19!
In partnership with Carnegie Hall as part of their Weimar Festival, this immersive, subversive, underground cabaret event takes its name from the Tiergarten—“The Garden of Beasts”—a sprawling central park around which the Third Reich rose to power. The program traces a path backwards in time, exploring historic moments of societal madness through music ranging from Cher to Verdi, Dean Martin to Max Richter, William Byrd to Brecht & Weill, with a panoply of performers that includes singers, dancers, actors, shadow puppets, and more.
The magnificent Great Hall beneath a church on the Lower East Side will be transformed into an immersive 1920s Berlin Speakeasy, with period-themed food and drinks, vintage dress, and actors lurking amidst the audience.
Tiergarten is directed by Death of Classical founder and Artistic Director Andrew Ousley, MC’d by the great Kim David Smith, whom The New York Times called "a male Marlene Dietrich," and features music by DoC favorites and “pillars of New York’s Hot Jazz scene” (also according to The New York Times) The Grand Street Stompers.
Kim David Smith by Travis Chantar.
Kim David Smith reimagines Kylie Minogue’s “Padam Padam” in a Piaf-inspired arrangement, featuring a fabulous French translation by Gay Marshall, performed live at Joe’s Pub, February 2024.
Kim David Smith performs “Falling in Love Again” at the 33rd annual New York Cabaret Convention (at the Rose Theater at Jazz at Lincoln Center), October 2022, with introduction by the legendary K.T. Sullivan.