Interview: Broadway Songstress N'Kenge Joins Houston Symphony's R&B MIXTAPE

You may think that after originating the role of Mary Wells in MOTOWN THE MUSICAL, and performing up to eight times a week for roughly two years, five-octave songstress N'Kenge may not have been interested in an R&B project with the Houston Symphony -- but you'd be wrong.

"In my household, it was all about Motown music and R&B and Whitney," says N'Kenge, "and so when [Principal POPS Conductor Designate Steven Reineke] asked if I wanted to be a part of this project, there was no question that I was going to say yes."

This weekend N'Kenge will join Grammy-nominated singer (and fellow MOTOWN alum) Ryan Shaw, Reineke and the Houston Symphony for R&B MIXTAPE, a concert spanning decades of R&B hits from the U.S. to the U.K., including numbers from Stevie, Michael and Whitney, all the way to Amy, Adele and Beyoncé.

Though coy when it comes to the set list, N'Kenge does say she is excited for audiences to hear a medley she helped arrange, a mash-up of "Proud Mary" and "Respect."

"You have these great songs that stand on their own, of course. You've got Aretha and Tina Turner -- you can't get any better than that," says N'Kenge. "But then to be able to do an arrangement where you're blending those two together in a medley and going back and forth with those two songs -- I think things like that is what makes this concert special, because we really are tailor-making this program to the audience and to these amazing musicians that we have with the symphony."

It's that tailor-made quality, N'Kenge says, that will make this concert unlike any Houstonians have heard before. "[It] gives the audience a fresh take on a song that they've listened to probably hundreds of times, but then they, of course, probably haven't heard that song performed at the symphony before."

So, how does the symphony enhance the music? "I've never taken steroids," laughs N'Kenge, "but I feel like you're going to see this show on steroids. You hear these songs on the radio [but] these songs are not symphonically arranged. You have a rhythm section, maybe have a little horn here and there, but to be able to hear these songs expanded on a symphonic level -- it's pretty much an opportunity of its own."

Though she promises the symphony will bring the music to a completely different level, N'Kenge says her goal is to "keep it fresh, but still stay rooted in the tradition of that song so it doesn't sound like a completely different song, just a different take on it."

It's a take, N'Kenge stresses, that Houstonians can't get anywhere else. "They can't go to another R&B concert in another town with a different symphony and hear the same thing," she says. "They won't be able to find this anywhere else, just the Houston Symphony."

Houston Symphony's R&B MIXTAPE, with guest vocalists N'Kenge and Ryan Shaw, is at 8 p.m. February 17 and 18, and 7:30 p.m. February 19. Jones Hall, 615 Louisiana. For more information, call 713-224-7575 or visit houstonsymphony.org. $25 to $143.

For more information about N'Kenge, visit nkengemusic.com.

Photo courtesy of Houston Symphony.