Grammy winning Turtle Island Quartet comes to Batavia Saturday
Fermilab Arts & Lecture Series presents "A Flower is a Lovesome Thing," with the Turtle Island Quartet and Nellie McKay, at 8 p.m. Saturday, March 21, in the Ramsey Auditorium at Fermilab, off Pine Street in Batavia. Tickets are $30, $15 for ages 18 and younger. Online ticketing is now available at www.fnal.gov/culture until noon Friday, or call the box office at (630) 840-ARTS (2787). The box office will open one hour before the performance.
Singer, songwriter, and multi instrumentalist, Nellie McKay joins forces with the two-time Grammy Award winning Turtle Island Quartet to present a delightfully kaleidoscopic view of the music of Billie Holiday, Billy Strayhorn, and the Weimar cabaret of the 1920s. While the combination of voice and strings has long been a staple of the classical genre as well as of contemporary music, Nellie McKay's talents on piano, mallets, and ukulele and Turtle Island's famed innovative rhythmic techniques unleash an unprecedented range of possibilities.
The multi-award winning Turtle Island Quartet has released numerous recordings and toured internationally for more than a quarter of a century. Recent projects include programs dedicated to two pioneers of the American musical landscape - John Coltrane and Jimi Hendrix. The ensemble has collaborated with some of the most sought-after artists of our day including Paquito D'Rivera, The Assad Duo, Cyrus Chestnut, and Leo Kottke. Nellie McKay, who performed on Broadway in "The Three Penny Opera," performs music of 1920s Berlin as well as jazz standards made famous by Billie Holiday. Some of these pieces transcend time and genre - well-known standards such as "Street of Dreams," "The Very Thought Of You," "I Cover the Waterfront" and "These Foolish Things" - to the more offbeat, such as Marlene Dietrich's sultry version of "Black Market," and "Alabama Song," the German Cabaret tune revisited in modern times by the Doors. Also included is a touch of Doris Day, whose music was so evocatively revisited by Nellie McKay on her recent recording "Normal as Blueberry Pie." Songs by the great Billy Strayhorn complete a night of intoxicating revelry.