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Dee Dee Bridgewater at Bayfront Jazz Festival Click here for tickets The great jazz vocalist Dee Dee Bridgewater is very much still with us and, if you doubt it, hear her perform live here with The Memphis Soulphony at the 2021 Bayfront Jazz Festival. Here, she brings all of her daring energy and expert vocal depth to the stage in this soulful concert. Daughter and wife of jazz trumpetors, Dee Dee Bridgewater joined the Thad Jones-Mel Lewis Jazz Orchestra in the early 1970s as lead vocalist. Her exceptional interpretive talent was recognised early and she went on to work with many of the great jazz musicians of all time, such as Sonny Rollins, Dizzy Gillespie, Dexter Gordon, Max Roach, Rahsaan Roland Kirk, Wayne Garfield, and others. She is a three-time Grammy Award-winning singer-songwriter, as well as a Tony Award-winning stage actress. She performed at the Monterey Jazz Festival in 1973. In 1974, her first solo album, entitled Afro Blue, appeared, and she found herself on Broadway in The Wiz. For her role as Glinda the Good Witch she won a Tony as "Best Featured Actress", and the musical also won the 1976 Grammy Award for Best Musical Show Album. Setlist for this concert includes: Soul Finger, Goin’ Down Slow, Giving Up, I Can’t Get Next To You, Yes I’m Ready B-A-B-Y, Don’t be Cruel I Can’t Stand The Rain, The Thrill is Gone, Rock Steady, Respect, I Will Survive European Contemporary Dance - Jacob’s Pillow Click here to watch I came across this set of video clips while browsing the website of Jacob’s Pillow, the dance centre in the Berkshires. It gives a glimpse of the styles of a wide variety of dance companies and a window into what is happening today in contemporary dance. Just click on any of these windows to see a sample of current choreographic thinking from companies as different as Danish Dance Theater, Compania Nacional de Danza, and 13 more. All individual visions from different choreographers in a dizzying variety of styles. They include Johan Inger’s approach to Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring for Nederlands Dans Theater 2 which envisions the story as a daydream inspired by a fleeting encounter between the sexes. In a fascinating cross-cultural exchange, Borrowed Light, Finnish choreographer Tero Saarinen found inspiration in the American Shakers to create this ground-breaking dance. Here too is The Ramirez-Wong Company, the French-Hispanic-Korean duo of Sebasian Ramirez and Honji Wang as well as as solo from Lutz Forster, a longtime company member of the now legendary Pina Bausch. If you ever entertained the daft theory that contemporary dance was “all the same” these snippets will disabuse you of it and entertain you at the same time. Summer Broadcasts – Wigmore Hall Click here to watch These are free-to-view archive concerts from Wigmore Hall throughout August. This August, Wigmore Hall will be rebroadcasting some of the most popular concerts from their archive of live streams, free of charge and on demand. A hand-picked selection of past live streams will be released each week throughout the month and there are some exceptional performances. The first four concerts will be released on Tuesday 1 August and include performances from O/Modernt Chamber Orchestra, Siglo de Oro, Danish String Quartet and Amjad Ali Khan. Caravaggio in Three Paintings – National Gallery Click here to watch Curator of Later Italian, Spanish, and French 17th-century Paintings, Letizia Treves, guides us through the tumultuous life of Caravaggio. She looks at how his innovative style developed from a focus on nature and expression in his early works to the sophistication of his mature works. I love Treves’ unselfconscious style of presentation. She talks about Caravaggio’s life and style without affectation, her presentation informed only by her demonstrable passion for her subject, without notes, although she has notes in her hand which she never looks at, without theatricality except that which is lent to her talk by her urgent urge to communicate what she knows to us. Frank Sinatra and Dinah Shore – Tea For Two Click here to watch This irresistible black and white clip is from a Dinah Shore television special from 1958. Undoubtedly rehearsed, but so relaxed and so enjoying themselves and each other here are Frank Sinatra and Dinah Shore that they might be sitting in her living room. Just some classic songs from the Great American Songbook, performed by two professionals who are so sure of themselves and their talent that you could almost believe they were making them up as they went along. Two friends, with enough confidence to insert spontaneous asides, sitting comfortably, no theatrics, no choreography, no fancy lighting or sets or costumes. They are clearly so happy being Side by Side, which just happens to be the last song in their set, that they make us happy too. Pocket Review Crazy For You – Gillian Lynne Theatre Broadway director/choreographer Susan Stroman has gifted London with her ebullient production of the Gershwin musical, Crazy For You. All fuss and pink feathers and spangles, this can’t be mistaken for anything else – it’s a feelgood show with tapping feet, some gentle jokes and, above all, a world-class score. Here are all the great songs from the Gershwin catalogue, all sung and danced very nicely by a large cast of British performers. The standout is Charlie Stemp, a young British dancer who is a truly remarkable ‘find’. He first caught my eye in a small part in Wicked in the West End and I remember writing at the time that there was a ‘boy’ in the cast who was ready for the big time and I hoped someone would give him the chance to shine as he surely would. The ‘someone’ was super producer Cameron Mackintosh and the show was the revival of the cockney musical Half a Sixpence in which young Charlie’s tapshoes shone, as I had predicted. He went on to make his Broadway debut in Hello Dolly! where he was inevitably overshadowed by that show’s star, Bette Middler, but it was clear that when he was allowed to shine, he could. It is appropriate that the musical he now carries, as the leading man in Crazy For You, is at the Gillian Lynne Theatre in the West End. Gillian Lynne would have loved Charlie Stemp. The ground-breaking choreographer of Cats and Phantom was often heard to bemoan in private the lack of talented British male dancers. Now, in Charlie Stemp, we’ve got a homegrown dancing star who can triumph in all forms of show dancing, especially tap. He can sing well enough, and he has immense charm, but his real talents are in his feet and he fulfils all the demands of Stroman’s choreography and guides Crazy For You’s featherlight plot to a satisfactory finale. It's worth mentioning that Crazy For You isn't actually a Gershwin musical, it's a musical constructed from many wonderful Gershwin songs, based loosely, very loosely, on Girl Crazy, which was a Gershwin musical with an equally silly but slightly different plot and was chiefly remarkable for having made stars of both Ginger Rodgers and Ethel Merman, who led that 1930 cast.
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AuthorRuth Leon is a writer and critic specialising in music and theatre. Archives
March 2024
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