Billie Holiday News

Upcoming Equity Auditions from Sunday, February 8, 2015.

Rutgers University is now seeking a new executive director to promote the university's jazz program.

Tickets are now on sale for Beautiful Soup's festival of plays by Steven Carl McCasland. Priced $18 each, audiences also have the option to see all 5 plays at a reduced price.

Omaha Performing Arts presents jazz vocalist Cassandra Wilson: Coming Forth By Day: A Celebration of Billie Holiday in the Kiewit Hall at the Holland Performing Arts Center on Sunday, March 7, at 8:00 p.m. Tickets start at $20, and are available at TicketOmaha.com, 402.345.0606 or at the Ticket Omaha Office inside the Holland Center, 1200 Douglas St. Wilson is part of the 2014/15 Jazz Series.

As their award-winning theatre home in Bed-Stuy's Restoration Plaza undergoes a multi-million dollar facelift, The Billie Holiday Theatre (BHT) has announced a move that will bring their acclaimed productions to Brooklyn's flourishing Downtown Cultural District. Thanks to a special partnership with the Brooklyn Music School Playhouse, BHT will kick off a two-year residency with a high profile run of the play Brothers from the Bottom, starring actor and TONY Award-winning producer Wendell Pierce (SELMA, Treme, The Wire). The play, written and directed by BHT artistic director Jackie Alexander, will run March 6th - 29th at the Brooklyn Music School Playhouse, 126 Saint Felix Street between Hanson and Lafayette, in the heart of the BAM Cultural District. (Full details below.)

This past Thursday night, a group of die-hard music enthusiasts, vocalists, and musicians packed a private home in Chelsea for the latest iteration of Will Friedwald's Clip Joint. The monthly series, which was launched in the summer of 2013 by the Wall Street Journal columnist, night crawler, and music historian who has authored of eight books on music and popular culture, screens highly curated musical performance on film and video with every third session promoted as an “extravaganza,” additionally featuring live performers.

Harlem Stage will present the world premiere of Stranger on Earth, from OBIE-winning playwright and interdisciplinary performing artist Carl Hancock Rux. The production, which anchors Harlem Stage's The Year of James Baldwincentenary celebration and exemplifies the institution's commitment to honoring artists of color-past, present and future-imagines a chance meeting between James Baldwin and Dinah Washington, two of the era's most iconic African Americans, at a Harlem jazz lounge in 1963. Commissioned and produced by Harlem Stage, Rux draws from Baldwin's landmark essays to create a work that addresses race, identity and the future of a world that both Baldwin and Washington struggled to understand and inhabit. Rux performs Stranger on Earth with vocalist Marcelle Davies Lashley, who interprets Washington's songs, against the backdrop of an arresting video montage by Onome Ekeh.

On October 9, 2015, The New York Pops - a symphonic orchestra known for presenting popular programs of exceptional quality - will launch its 33rd season, a series at Carnegie Hall celebrating the diversity of some of popular music's greatest icons.

Additional casting has been announced for Beautiful Soup Theater's festival of plays by Steven Carl McCasland. Following critically acclaimed workshop presentations, McCasland's plays will return to NYC in a month-long festival celebrating the young playwright. Together with The Clarion Theatre, they'll present six plays beginning on May 6th, 2015, with a company of actors performing in repertory. All of the plays focus on historical figures, including Laurette Taylor, Billie Holiday, Tennessee Williams, Gertrude Stein, Lillian Hellman and more.

Bucks County Playhouse (BCP) welcomes GFour Productions, winners of 54 Drama Desk and 44 Tony Awards who have officially announced their cast of leading ladies for the production of the international hit show Menopause The Musical. Best described as a groundbreaking celebration of women who are on the brink of, in the middle of or have survived 'The Change', Menopause The Musical is sure to leave audiences inspired and laughing long after the show.

Coming up this week, 54 BELOW, Broadway's Supper Club, presents some of the brightest stars from Broadway, cabaret, jazz and beyond. To purchase tickets or for more information, visit www.54Below.com or call (646) 476-3551.

Upcoming Equity Auditions from Sunday, January 18, 2015.

La ganadora de seis premios Tony nos cuenta todos los detalles sobre este concierto unico en España que tendra lugar el proximo 31 de enero en el Teatro Real de Madrid.

What do you get when you mix an internationally-acclaimed impersonator, outrageous comedy, great standards, and a bevy of icons? The hysterical parody of Judy Garland and her guests found in Michael Holmes' riotous The Judy Show!

Poetic Theater Productions has announced the world premiere production of PARADOX OF THE URBAN CLICHE, written by Craig 'muMs' Grant and directed by Reginald L. Douglas, part of POETIC LICENSE 2015: subconscious.

Joe's Pub at the Public has announced its nightly performances, January 14 - 25, 2015. Details below!

The Chan Centre for the Performing Arts at the University of British Columbia (UBC) is proud to present an evening of jazz and cross-genre musical exploration in a spectacular double bill featuring drummer, composer, producer, and entrepreneur, Terri Lyne Carrington's Mosaic Project and vocalist and Thelonious Monk International Jazz Competition winner Cécile McLorin Salvant on Sunday, February 15 at 7pm in the Chan Shun Concert Hall. The concert will be preceded by a pre-concert talk with Terri Lyne Carrington, moderated by CBC's Margaret Gallagher, at 6:15pm in the Royal Bank Cinema, during which Carrington will discuss her GRAMMY Award-winning The Mosaic Project.

Theater artist Taylor Mac makes his New York Live Arts debut with A 24-Decade History of Popular Music: 1900-1950s, presented by New York Live Arts as part of The Public Theater's Under the Radar Festival, today, January 13-25, 2015.

Oscar nominee Queen Latifah ('Chicago') stars as legendary blues singer Bessie Smith in the HBO Films drama BESSIE, directed by acclaimed filmmaker Dee Rees ('Pariah') from a screenplay by Rees and Christopher Cleveland & Bettina Gilois. With a story by Rees and Horton Foote, the film focuses on Smith's transformation from a struggling young singer into 'The Empress of the Blues,' one of the most successful recording artists of the 1920s and an enduring icon today.

Coming Forth By Day: A Celebration of Billie Holiday is?Grammy Award winner Cassandra Wilson's tribute to one of the greatest jazz singers that ever lived. Perhaps the greatest jazz singer living today, Cassandra Wilson will offer her special tribute concert to Billie Holiday, on the centennial of “Lady Day's” birth, at The Ridgefield Playhouse on Thursday, March 26, at 8 p.m.