Back in the 1980s, Mel Torme instigated a lovely tradition. Every September he would work at Michael’s Pub, and each time he would sing a different song about the season: “Autumn Leaves,” “Autumn Serenade,” “Early Autumn,” “‘Tis Autumn,” “Autumn Nocturne,” and especially “Autumn in New York” (which he lovingly intoned, beginning with the verse). I don’t believe he ever repeated one.

If jazz is the music we most like to listen to on the beach in June and July (give me Stan Getz by the surf any day), cabaret and the Great American Songbook are the perfect music for Autumn in New York. So often, these songs perfectly describe what we’re collectively feeling in the season and in the city.

This cabaret season seems promising for several reasons. One is the return of a few old friends. Uber-diva Kitty Carlisle Hart will celebrate her 94th birthday September 21 at Feinstein’s at the Regency. Later in the fall, Mr. Feinstein himself and the estimable Tony Bennett will be playing short engagements at Zankel Hall and Jazz at Lincoln Center’s new Rose Hall, respectively.

And even as Cafe Carlyle is celebrating its 50th anniversary (with Dixie Carter, the designing woman herself, playing her first New York gig in a few years, starting on September 17), a number of new venues are opening up.

Le Jazz Au Bar opened in February, making this its first full season. One of three stages in Jazz at Lincoln Center’s new complex will be Dizzy’s Club Coca-Cola, a club-sized venue. At the same time, several evenings a week cabaret majordomo Arthur Pompesello is putting on an hour of cabaret before the regular 9 p.m. show at Iridium.

The season kicks off tonight with Stacey Kent, whose annual September gig has come to mark the commencement of the season. Her current run kicks off tonight and runs through October 2 at the Oak Room, now newly renovated.

Ms. Kent had her Carnegie Hall debut in May and is generally riding a wave. The name of her show is “Lucky to Be Me,” and it couldn’t be more appropriate. More generally classed as a jazz singer, Ms. Kent has good time and a fairly narrow emotional, tonal, and dynamic range, singing in a tightly pinched sound that some have compared to a muted trumpet, a la Sweets Edison.

I confess I don’t quite get it, but she absolutely packs the Oak Room and is one of the most reliable draws on the scene. As the season progresses, the Oak Room will also bring back regulars Paula West, Andrea Marcovicci, and Sylvia McNair.

Ute Lemper, who looks like Greta Garbo and moves like Bob Fosse, will be in New York twice in the near future. Next week (September 14) she’s at Le Jazz Au Bar. Then she’s spending most of January and February at the Carlyle.

Ms. Lemper has come to embody a classic character in the cabaret canon: euro-Class (it’s the opposite of eurotrash). Equal parts sex and sophistication, she is a leggy blonde supermodel of a chantootsie who concentrates on continental composers like Weill and Brel and makes us all feel oh-so cultured. Her show traverses musical generations as easily as it does continents.

Bill Charlap is perhaps the greatest of all young (that is, under 40) exponents of the Great American Songbook. The jazz pianist lives in New Jersey but makes more starring appearances in New York than even I can keep up with. Just this year he played in April at the Vanguard, in June at JVC, in July at the 92nd Street Y (where he takes over next summer as artistic director), in August at Birdland, and for the last two weeks at the Jazz Standard.

His two major fall gigs are of special interest, mostly because of the singer he’ll be performing with. From October 5 to 16, he splits a bill at the Oak Room with his mother, Sandy Stewart, a fine interpreter of classic songs much venerated by connoisseurs. And Monday, October 18, he’s officially opening Dizzy’s Club Coca-Cola at Jazz at Lincoln Center. Tony Bennett is likely to be a surprise guest.

Unfortunately, Michael Feinstein is not as much of a New York institution as he could be if he worked here more often. (Hint, hint.) Simply put, nobody knows more about the great songs and the people who wrote them, and nobody is better at sharing his love for this music than Mr. Feinstein. He continues his long-standing tradition of surprisingly intimate concert presentations at Carnegie Hall on November 3, and then will do his holiday show at the club that bears his name in December.

Finally, it seems that Autumn in New York is so irresistible that Bobby Short, the greatest of all autumnal New Yorkers, has reversed the decision he made six months ago to let this be his final year at the Cafe Carlyle. Mr. Short, who turns 80 next week (September 15, to be exact) will do one more season, playing the Carlyle again in the Spring of 2005 and then the following Fall.

Although that means, in a sense, that he has added two seasons’ worth of shows, don’t expect the cover charge to be less dear. Mr. Short is still, consistently the hottest ticket that the Cabaret world has ever had and will continue to be a New York institution long after the venerable Carlyle itself has crumbled to dust. If you see only one cabaret show in your whole life, let it be Bobby Short.

But then again, why would you just see one?