When Max Wellman opened Noce, the snazzy jazz club in downtown Des Moines, he envisioned chasing national artists to play the 100-seat venue. Nine years after opening on New Years Eve in the Western Gateway neighborhood in a former brick auto shop south of the Pappajohn Sculpture Park and the club is attracting the likes of jazz pianist Benny Green, singer Sara Gazarek, and Grammy-nominated vocalists Karrin Allyson and Stacey Kent to play in front of the Des Moines audiences, fulfilling a need for a venue dedicated to jazz.
The crowds fill the space, some sitting at four tops in front of the stage, some hanging at the bar sipping on classic cocktails as the lights dim and the music plays. Young, old, dates, couples, families. For some, the venue has become a big part of their entertainment dollar, courting them to watch shows from blues artist Tina Haase Findlay or vocalist Amber Duimstra during their limited engagements.
A cool blue vibe gives the space a hip vibe, whether it’s singer Gina Gedler or musician Nate Sparks singing during their residencies or Wellman himself snapping along to Frank Sinatra standards with his big band backing his vocals.
Now Wellman is ready to drive Noce in a new direction, adding a show with the flexibility to expand and contract, called “Voix de Ville.” If you say it fast enough, you hear the term vaudeville.
And that’s what Wellman plans to deliver — a cabaret of performers in a highly produced show that gives audiences something different every time they see the act on the stage.
“A lot of what I love so much about the genre is this cross section of not only jazz music, but also the theater world,” Wellman said on a recent Saturday night before West Des Moines singer Marisa Cravero took the stage at Noce. Her voice is reminiscent of Anita O’Day, the jazz singer and self-proclaimed “song stylist” who became prominent in the 1940s. It’s performers like Cravero, a student at the University of North Texas, who will help usher in this new era of jazz at the club.
What is ‘Voix de Ville’ at Noce?
“Voix de Ville” will be a cabaret show with a mix of singers, actors, drag queens, dancers and musicians. The odds of two shows being alike are low, with Wellman swapping in one act for another who swings through Des Moines or as others take their works on the road.
The show features music from the 1920s to 2024, including Big Band renditions of songs by Beyonce and Lizzo. “The show is very steeped in early jazz and blues history for some great stuff,” Wellman said.
Wellman calls it the “best of the best of the area,” wrapping in regional artists. “It is also an opportunity to blend together,” he said. “We want to live in that perfect medium between a typical music show and a staged musical, very much using jazz musicians and then all kinds of different performers. So the hope is that we run this all throughout the year, say once a week, and switch it up constantly to highlight different performers.”
The show stars Wellman and his 10-piece jazz orchestra, who routinely perform jazz standards from the Cole Porter songbook at the club.
Napoleon Douglas not only works as the artistic director for Pyramid Theatre Co., Iowa’s sole Black theater, but also regularly performs at Noce, singing for shows that highlight songs from Sammy Davis Jr., Nat King Cole, Stevie Wonder, Luther Vandross, and more. The longtime friends graduated from Des Moines Roosevelt.
Domita Sanchez, a drag performer, sings a song that was made famous by Bessie Smith called “You Can't Tell the Difference After Dark.”
Amelia and Logan Hillman, who joined Ballet Des Moines — Amelia in 2016 and Logan in 2019 — bring a production of their own to the show.
Sanchez and Tyona Diamond are creating the costumes while Douglas develops the choreography with Wellman and pianist Jason Danielson works on music with Wellman. “That’s a national team,” Wellman said, indicating that the crew could do the same in any room nationwide.
Nadine Lee created a series of art deco posters to hype the new show, which launches on Sept. 13.
How Noce has changed post-COVID-19
Like all theaters across the nation, Noce shut down when the pandemic hit in March 2020. Wellman started producing virtual shows that aired on Facebook sans an audience. He found that about 300 people attended that first virtual show where he played to an audience of no one inside Noce.
At one point, he estimated the venue lost 95% of its revenues. After two years of “livestreaming, limited capacity, masking, and proof of vaccination plus negative test results,” Wellman felt comfortable fully reopening the jazz club without requiring proof of vaccination or negative test results for admission.
“You know, we were really doing well going into year five and figured out a lot of stuff and I don't want to say we were on autopilot or something, but we were successful and competent. And then there was 2020, and that was insanity. And we are still building it back. There’s just a ton of stuff that changed.”
This new show has Wellman invigorated, even hoping to expand to a second location in Iowa City. He does acknowledge that the post-COVID-19 crowds don’t stay as late and have new expectations.
“We doubled down on really making the productions tight,” Wellman said. “I miss some things about that. But also some of the new things are great. This (“Voix de Ville”), for instance, would be very difficult to make work under the old way.”
The combination of earlier shows and a cabaret format are trends he’s seeing nationwide. Theaters in New York and Chicago are reformatting late-night shows for early evening. A show called “Sensation” ran in Denver and Kansas City with a cabaret vibe to it. “It’s a lot of what we already do,” Wellman said.
Opening a second club in Iowa City would give performers another venue on their way to or from Chicago. “I am building a roster of artists and shows for a circuit,” he said. “They will always be kind of touring back and forth.”
Where to buy tickets
Tickets for the 7 p.m. shows start at $36 online at noce.turntabletickets.com . Shows on sale run from Sept. 13 on Fridays through Oct. 18.
Where to find Noce
Location: 1326 Walnut St., Des Moines
Contact: 515-244-5399 or nocedsm.com .
Susan Stapleton is the entertainment editor and dining reporter at The Des Moines Register. Follow her on Facebook , Twitter , or Instagram , or drop her a line at sstapleton@gannett.com .
This article originally appeared on Des Moines Register: Noce's next act brings a cabaret show 'Voix de Ville' starring dancers, singers, more
Most Popular
Comments / 0