Welcome back to Theater around Town, my new column here on OnMilwaukee.com. Each month I interview theater artists working in the Milwaukee area and bring you their stories. This month I talk with one of the world's top cabaret stars, Ann Hampton Callaway.

Ms. Callaway will perform with cabaret superstar Amanda McBroom February 22-23 in the gorgeous Cabot Theatre at the Broadway Theatre Center. Michele Brourman is the Music Director for these performances. Ms. Callaway and Ms. McBroom will also teach a cabaret performance master class while in town.

Ms. Callaway, a multiple winner of the Manhattan Association of Cabarets and Clubs (MAC) Award, as well as a Tony Award nominee, is one of the most widely-acclaimed singer/songwriters working in pop/jazz today.

Her sold out Milwaukee performances last August were unanimously praised by the critics, including Elaine Schmidt, who wrote in the daily paper, "She gets audience members laughing between numbers, but she absolutely mesmerizes them when she begins to sing."

In addition to her Broadway debut run in the musical "Swing," for which she received the 2000 Theatre World's Outstanding Broadway Debut award, the Chicago-area native's many credits include the theme song to the television series "The Nanny" and the lyrics to the song Barbra Streisand sang to James Brolin at their wedding. She is also the only composer recognized by Cole Porter's estate as having collaborated with the esteemed composer by having set her music to his posthumously-discovered lyric, "I Gaze in Your Eyes." Callaway is also the winner of ASCAP's "Johnny Mercer Songwriting Award."

The following is a conversation I recently held with Ann.

OMC: You are a Chicago-area native. What was your family like? How did that influence your career?

AC: I grew up in a very musical family. My mother Shirley is now a prominent vocal coach to Broadway and cabaret performers in New York but has always been a wonderful singer and pianist. I always heard her performing great standards, show tunes and classical songs in our home. She did club work, private engagements and sang with the Chicago Symphony Chorus in numerous concerts in their heyday years and those are nights that inspired me deeply.

At one point, I wanted to be an opera singer and studied many years to develop my craft. My father passed down his love of jazz to me. As a child I learned to scat sing from him and developed a keen appreciation of the great jazz singers and instrumentalists from his record collection, inspired by the hip jukebox of his hangout, Figaro's. My dad, John, a well known journalist who started in radio news and went on to become one of television's finest interviewers, gave me his rhyming dictionary when I was 10 and I still use it to this day when writing songs. He gave me my passion for writing and helped shape the way I think about things, keeping a fire under my quest for knowledge and my curiosity about life.