Lori Rivera Comes To The Rrazz Room 10/6

SMOKE Cabaret Starring LORI RIVERA

Music and Lyrics: Joe Ortiz, Artistic Direction: Greg Fritsch
Libretto Consultation: Kathryn Chetkovich
Tuesday, October 6, 2009

Have you ever met a woman in a bar who insists on telling you her life story? Well, this woman is so captivating you won't be able to escape her spell.

Santa Cruz area vocal sensation Lori Rivera has performed Leonard Bernstein's Mass in Carnegie Hall and the Vatican, and formerly with the San Francisco vocal group the Bobs. In a show written especially to showcase her talents, Ms. Rivera delivers twelve original jazz numbers, cabaret songs and comic ballads with titles such as "Oysters Anytime Of The Day" and "We Took It Off The Menu", weaving her way through the story of an innocent young woman named Celeste and her mentor, the ravishing Gypsy soothsayer, Francesca. Watch and listen (and be part of the act) as Ms. Rivera deftly juggles both roles in this tale of lust, infidelity, and smoldering passion.

Piano player Marshall Otwell, who worked with Carmen McRae for eight years, leads a jazz-cabaret quartet.

"Smoke is not a big pink bouquet to love-it is a musical exploration of the highs and lows of the experience that is, in fact, a glorious mess . . . full of pain, embarrassment and dizzying joy."

--Wallace Baine

From a recent review by Ann Bennett in the Santa Cruz Sentinel:
"When Lori Rivera sings to you, her exhilaration whisks you into a magic space of song and story, for an evening of delightful and unusual musical entertainment. . . . Her style ranges from plaintive to exuberant and from romantic to torchy -- and sometimes all of this in just one number."

"Lori Rivera . . . embraces SMOKE with obvious pleasure. As she narrates her quirky little story, a dreamy tale both wistful and lascivious, she projects different characters with nuanced amusement."

"Ms. Rivera's musical repertoire is wide and diverse. Some of her numbers are delivered with the pathos of a Lisbon fados singer; others explode with the ribald passion of Carmen."

Cost: $27.50

http://www.ticketweb.com/snl/Search.action?query=rrazz+smoke&x=0&y=0