STEW, Eszter Balint and Church of Betty Head to The Living Room, 12/11

The Tony Award, Drama Desk and Obie-Award Winner STEW (Passing Strange) takes on the guise of "The Singing MC" on Friday Dec. 11th at The Living Room where he'll be hosting, for your Friday evening's pleasure, a delectable night of Song and Atmosphere featuring the utterly singular ESZTER BALINT as well as local legends and dear friends CHURCH OF BETTY.

Special guest CAROL LIPNIK will also perform. Stew says, "I'll be singing my airs, errors and ballads both before and in between everybody's set and will end the evening with a rolling thunder-esque, everybody-on-stage-at-the-same-time impromptu jam-along of past & recent Stew & The Negro Problem faves, if not some tunes from "Passing Strange", that is, if I can remember them."

IF YOU GO:

Raelian Cabaret Presents

Your Singing MC STEW

8:00, 9:45, 11:00

ESZTER BALINT 8:45 accompanied by Chris Cochrane (guitar)

CHURCH OF BETTY 10:00: Chris Rael (vocals, sitar), Chris Cochrane (guitar), Claire de Brunner (bassoon), Marlon Cherry (bass), and Avirodh Sharma (tabla).

AND Special Guest Carol Lipnik

Friday, December 11, 8:00 -11:30 pm at The Living Room, 134 Metropolitan Avenue, Brooklyn, NY 11249

Phone: 718.782.6600

Ages: 21 +

Ticket price: $15.00 in advance; $18.00 at door: www.ticketweb.com/t3/sale/SaleEventDetail?dispatch=loadSelectionData&eventId=6316365

Directions: www.livingroomny.com/content/directions

Facebook event: www.facebook.com/events/519949811513131/

About ESZTER BALINT - You may know Eszter Balint from her recent guest-starring recurring role on Louie as Louie C.K.'s Hungarian-speaking violin-playing love interest, or her memorable peformances in such classic films as Jim Jarmusch's Stranger than Paradise, Steve Buscemi's Trees Lounge & Woody Allen's Shadows and Fog. Balint is also an accomplished multi-instrumentalist and deeply original singer-songwriter, whose new album Airless Midnight, produced by JD Foster, "effortlessly combines the raw elements of punk and rock with a gentle sophistication." (WNYC's Soundcheck). Stereo Embers Magazine put it this way: "Airless Midnight roams the streets of the psyche after dark taking oblique but epiphanic snapshots and scratching out observations with a sculpted efficiency. These are songs Raymond Carver couldn't help but dance to."

About CHURCH OF BETTY - There are few bands that have been as exploratory, eclectic and inclusive as Church of Betty. On Swirled World, their 2015 release, frontman Chris Rael's ever-evolving musical palette beautifully crosses genres (world, rock, pop, folk, classical) and is as fertile and explosive as ever. Rael will appear as a hipster sitarist in an upcoming episode of the new STARZ series Flesh and Bone, and recently performed in Stew and Heidi Rodewald's Kennedy Center production of Wagner, Max! Wagner! Music critic Richard Gehr, Village Voice recently raved: "Both bands [Stew & The Negro Problem and Church of Betty] combine big smarts with large-hearted emotion, canny wit, and distinctive sounds."

Photo Credit: Sabine Scheckel