Live Music Events Announced for January 2018 At The Sheen Center

The Sheen Center for Thought & Culture will launch their 2018 Winter/Spring season with two live music events featuring contemporary singer-songwriter and jazz vocalist Lauren Kinhan and folk and indie singer-songwriter mother-and-daughter duo Suzzy Roche and Lucy Wainwright Roche. Tickets are $35 and available online at SheenCenter.org, by phone at 212-925-2812, or in-person at The Sheen Center box office.

INSPIRATIONS: WOMEN AND THEIR MUSES SERIES Lauren Kinhan "A SLEEPIN' BEE" Thursday, January 11, 2018; 7PM discussion with the artists, 8PM concert at The Loreto Theater

This live music event celebrates the launch of Lauren Kinhan's latest album, "A Sleepin' Bee." With her first all-standards collection, Kinhan pays tribute to the legendary Nancy Wilson on the occasion of Wilson's 80th birthday. The concert will be preceded at 7PM by a talk with eight-time Grammy Award-winning recording engineer Elliot Scheiner and album arranger Andy Ezrin, plus footage from the documentary A Sleepin' Bee. The January 11 event launches The Sheen Center's new "Inspirations: Women & Their Muses Series." The series continues Friday, April 20 with actress-singer-writer Grace McLean (Natasha, Pierre and The Great Comet of 1812) & Them Apples.

BACK ON BLEECKER STREET: MUSIC FOR SOCIAL CHANGE SUZZY ROCHE & LUCY WAINWRIGHT ROCHE Friday, January 26, 2018: 7:30PM at The Loreto Theater

Folk and indie singer-songwriter mother-and-daughter duo Suzzy Roche and Lucy Wainwright Roche bring their latest collaboration, "Mud and Apples," to the stage. The album is a mix of original songs and covers of much-loved music by icons such as Joni Mitchell and Stevie Nicks. The concert includes a discussion with Suzzy and Lucy hosted by John Platt of WFUV Radio.

The January 26 event launches The Sheen Center's new live music series "Back On Bleecker Street: Music For Social Change." Subsequent live music events in the series include the legendary Greenwich Village folk musician Tom Paxton with Grammy-winning singer-songwriter duo The DonJuans on Friday, February 23, and Grammy Award- winning musician, singer-songwriter, and slam poet Dom Flemons and singer-songwriter Victory Boyd, who was just signed by Jay Z, on Saturday, April 21.

The Sheen Center for Thought & Culture is a forum to showcase works highlighting the true, the good, and the beautiful. Located downtown on historic Bleecker Street, the Sheen Center is a vibrant new arts organization that focuses on theater, music, film, and talk. A project of the Archdiocese of New York, the state-of-the-art complex encompasses the 270-seat Loreto Theatre, equipped with five-camera high-definition live-stream capability and a multi-track recording studio; the 80-seat Black Box Theatre; four rehearsal studios; and an art gallery. It was named after the late Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen, best known for his popular, inspirational radio and TV ministry in the 1950s and 60s.

ABOUT THE ARTISTS Lauren Kinhan possesses a rare and beautiful instrument, tough and tender, clear and fine-grained in every register. With her glorious sound, she could sing anything and make it a memorable listening experience, and so she does, whether on her own highly-acclaimed solo albums, her 25-year membership with the beloved vocal group New York Voices, or as co-founder of two diverse and inventive supergroups, Moss and JaLaLa. Singer/songwriter Lauren has always forged her own path as a performer, composer and improviser. With her latest release, A Sleepin' Bee, on her Dotted i Records, Kinhan once again steers herself in unexpected directions with her first all-standard collection of her career, a loving tribute to legendary vocalist Nancy Wilson, and unmistakably a Lauren Kinhan album. The choice of material focuses on Wilson's early jazz albums, particularly her collaborations with Cannonball Adderley and George Shearing.

Kinhan utterly transforms these classic and obscure numbers with the help of pianist/creative partner Andy Ezrin and veteran producer Elliot Scheiner. With three brilliant albums of her own songs and wide-ranging collaborations with singular artists from Ornette Coleman to Bobby McFerrin, Kinhan always delivers a 360-degree view of her creative mind. 2014's Circle in a Square, puts on high display her vivid identity as a songwriter with a gift for capturing the emotional currents of everyday life. She made a powerful first impression as a Phil Ramone find with 2000's Hardly Blinking and a decade later followed up with the highly personal Avalon.

After a lifetime of performing and recording, these days SUZZY ROCHE enjoys singing on the road with her daughter Lucy Wainwright Roche (lucywainwrightroche.com) Lucy & Suzzy recorded their first CD Fairytale and Myth which won the popular vote for best singer/songwriter album of the year for the Independent Music Awards 2014. Suzzy and Lucy have just released their second recording Mud & Apples in 2016. Both recordings are available at www.suzzyroche.com as well as itunes.Suzzy is also currently performing with The Wooster Group (thewoostergroup.org) in: Early Shaker Spirituals ~ a record album interpretation ~ Cry Trojans! ~ based on Shakespeare's Troilus and Cressida, and The Room by Harold Pinter.Suzzy is a founding member of the singing group The Roches. She has written two books; a novel Wayward Saints, and a children's book Want To Be in a Band?In addition to recording numerous albums with The Roches, Suzzy has recorded two solo albums, and an unusual collection of musical prayers, Zero Church (with Maggie Roche), which was developed at the Institute on the Arts and Civic Dialogue at Harvard University. Suzzy has taught performance at NYU graduate and undergraduate schools and at Princeton University in the Atelier Program.

Singer/songwriter LUCY WAINWRIGHT ROCHE., daughter of Loudon Wainwright III and Suzzy Roche (the Roches) and half-sister of Rufus and Martha Wainwright, was born and raised in New York City. Wainwright Roche spent her formative years traveling with and amongst her large musical family. After high school, she attended Oberlin College in Ohio, earned a Master's degree in education at Bank Street College of Education in Manhattan, and eventually began teaching second and third grade. In 2005 and 2006, she joined brother Rufus on tour to sing backup, and by 2007 had ditched the classroom for good and released an eight song, debut CD. Tours followed with the likes of Dar Williams, Neko Case, and Amos Lee , and critics began mentioning her in the same breath as Joni Mitchell and Wainwright Roche's first, full-length recording, Lucy, arrived in 2010. Since then, she has released There's a Last Time for Everything (2013), Fairy Tale and Myth (2013) with her mother Suzzy Roche, Songs in the Dark (2015) by The Wainwright Sisters, and Mud & Apples (2016) with Suzzy Roche.