Chris Stamey's Original Radio Play OCCASIONAL SHIVERS to Air this Holiday Season

By: Dec. 14, 2016
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Occasional Shivers is a brand-new old-fashioned radio play airing this holiday season on public broadcasting, created by Southern-pop icon Chris Stamey for WUNC-FM (Chapel Hill) and distributed nationwide by American Public Media. Set in New York in 1963, the one-hour musical drama tells the story of two young lovers who meet at a pair of Christmas parties.

The music is newly composed but sounds straight-up torch song, in the tradition of the Great American Songbook. Featured performers include Nnenna Freelon (singing the title song), Marshall Crenshaw, Don Dixon, Skylar Gudasz, Django Haskins (The Old Ceremony) alongside exciting newcomers Millie McGuire, Kirsten Lambert, Eric Hodge, Walker Harrison, and Presyce Baez, all backed by a jazz orchestra that includes contributions from Scott Sawyer, Will Campbell, John Brown, and Bill Frisell.

With characters such as society hostess Birdie McDavenish ("I Didn't Mean to Fall in Love with You"), famed composer Paul Carter ("Intoxichoclification"), and aspiring songwriter Will Cassidy ("Manhattan Melody [That's My New York]"), the play harkens back to an era, after West Side Story but before the Beatles on Ed Sullivan, when jazz had gone from hot to cool and it looked like rock and roll was on its last legs.

A Director's Cut Expanded Edition of the broadcast will be available on iTunes and Amazon on Christmas Day.

About the Host: Branford Marsalis is one of the most widely respected names in American music. From his early acclaim as a saxophonist who brings new energy and new audiences to the art of jazz, he has refined and expanded his talents and his horizons to include those of composer, bandleader and educator. He is a 21st-century mainstay of artistic excellence.

About the Composer and Producer: Chris Stamey is the musical director and orchestrator for a series of all-star international concert performances of Big Star's classic album Third, with a rotating musical cast that includes the Kronos Quartet, Ray Davies, members of Wilco, R.E.M., Teenage Fanclub, and Yo La Tengo; Thank You, Friends, a full-production feature film of these arrangements in concert in Los Angeles, is being released in March 2017 on Concord. Stamey first started playing music at the tail end of the '60s psychedelic-rock era, abandoned it to study classical composition, then was drawn back in, eventually making a pair of now-classic albums, 1981's Stands for deciBels and 1982's Repercussion, with the dB's.



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