Tag: The Green Room

Welcome award-winning musicians Alisa Horn and Maeve Brophy back to Memphis with a “Bloch Party” featuring works for cello and piano.

The program will feature works by Ernest Bloch, Ethyl Smyth, and Nadia Boulanger at The Green Room at Crosstown Arts.

Doors 7 pm | Performance 7:30 pm
General Admission $10 | $5 with student ID

Alisa Horn is a freelance cellist and loves performing and teaching a wide variety of musical genres from classical to jazz to rock and beyond. A native of Memphis, Tennessee, Alisa has performed as soloist with orchestra playing pieces by Miaskovsky, Bloch, Dvorak, Bruch, and Elgar. She was a winner of the WAMSO-Young Artist Solo Competition and a member of the Civic Orchestra of Chicago, the training orchestra of the Chicago Symphony. Alisa has attended many music festivals, including Aspen Music Festival, Boston University Tanglewood Institute, Meadowmount, Sewanee Summer Music Center, Henry Mancini Institute, Newport Jazz Festival (Rhode Island) , and Newport Jazz Festival (Oregon). With pianist, Jue He, Alisa recorded the Rachmaninoff and Miaskovsky Sonatas and the duo was featured on McGraw-Hill Young Artist Showcase.

Along with jazz legends Marvin Stamm and Bill Mays, Alisa is a member of The Inventions Trio, which performs a fusion of jazz and classical repertoire. The Trio has toured extensively and has released three albums including the diverse works of Bill Evans, Bill Mays, Heitor Villa-Lobos, Claude Debussy, and Miles Davis.

On Broadway, Alisa has played in many shows including the 2017 revival of Sunday in the Park with George, An American in Paris, If/Then, Dogfight, Venice, Little Miss Sunshine, Carrie, and Next to Normal. Alisa performs with Broadway singer, Mary Testa, and Broadway orchestrator, Michael Starobin, who released their album “Have Faith” in 2015. She has played with many singer/songwriters and pop artists/bands such as John Legend, Devotchka, Rod Stewart, The Roots, and Phish.

Maeve Brophy gave her first solo piano recital at age 9 and made her orchestral debut at 15. She has given solo and collaborative performances in Wells, England; the Amalfi Coast; Kiev, Ukraine; New York; San Francisco; Seattle; Aspen; Nashville; and Memphis. She has performed for the Memphis Chamber Music Society and the Artist Ascending Series in Memphis and is a regular performer with the Luna Nova Ensemble. Maeve has performed as soloist with the Chernygev Symphony in Kiev as well as the Paducah Symphony and the Central Florida Philharmonic. She has a BA from the University of Alabama at Birmingham and a Master of Music in Piano Performance from Texas Christian University. She also studied at the Manhattan School of Music and at the New England Conservatory of Music with Russell Sherman. She has worked as a freelance accompanist in Memphis and played for numerous student recitals at the University of Memphis. She has taught students privately as well as at the Boston College of Adult Education. She is also a Licensed Massage Therapist and Registered Yoga Teacher.

Join Brooklyn-based band Huntertones at The Green Room at Crosstown Arts, feat. a collaboration w/students of the STAX Music Academy.

Huntertones brings people together around the globe with fun, imaginative and fearless music. Their high energy, horn-driven sound features genre-bending composition and unconventional covers. Every show is a social experience celebrating the joy of music.

Tickets: $15 (or $5 at the door with student ID)
Doors at 7pm | Performance at 7:30pm

“Honest, genuine, skillfully executed music without limitations that is uplifting and cannot be quantified.” -Jon Batiste

The band formed in Columbus, Ohio, and is now based in Brooklyn, NY. They’ve performed in over 20 countries worldwide and continue to tour the US and abroad. Their latest release, Passport, is a collection of songs inspired by their experiences sharing music with people from all over the world.

The STAX Music Academy inspires young people and enhances their academic, cognitive, performance, and leadership skills by utilizing music with an intense focus on the rich legacy and tradition of STAX Records.

Join us in the Green Room at Crosstown Arts for a performance by Katharine Hedlund.

Join jazz vocalist/pianist Katharine Hedlund for a special live album recording performance at The Green Room at Crosstown Arts with Paul Taylor, Jim Spake, and Carl Caspersen. Katherine Hedlund was becoming quite the fixture and turning heads in Memphis before she departed for San Francisco in 2018, and we are thrilled to be hosting her in a rare return appearance.

Tickets: $10
Doors at 7 pm | Performance 7:30 pm

Katharine Hedlund is a jazz/soul pianist and vocalist with a musicality far beyond her years. Katharine grew up in Darien, CT, and began her professional performing career at 13 years old, playing original renditions of jazz standards with her trio in local clubs around the New York metro area. Her performances frequently invite comparison to Diana Krall and Norah Jones – but with quite a bit more sass than either of the former!

Katharine attended Northwestern University in Chicago, IL ,to continue musical studies with the renowned saxophonist of Jazz at Lincoln Center, Victor Goines, and soulful Grammy-winning pianist for vocalist Diane Reeves, Peter Martin. She was awarded the highly competitive piano chair of the school’s premier touring graduate small ensemble as an undergraduate.

She has performed in some of Jazz’s most prestigious venues, including The Green Mill Chicago, The Jazz Showcase Chicago, Dizzy’s Club Coca Cola of Jazz at Lincoln Center NYC, The New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival, Germantown Performing Arts Center, The Sound Room (Oakland, CA), among others.

Katharine relocated to Memphis after graduation from Northwestern and began performing weekly at the historic Peabody Hotel and the Zebra Lounge in Overton Square, honing her skills in voice and piano in soul, blues, and pop styles. Katharine has since moved to San Francisco, but Memphis will always be her musical home.

Join us in The Green Room at Crosstown Arts for a performance by roots rockers Linda Gail Lewis and Robbie Fulks.

Anyone who has been married nine times, almost died from substance abuse and, oh yeah, was a member of her wild-man older brother Jerry Lee Lewis’ band (with whom she sang duets) has some stories to tell. Linda Gail Lewis will be sharing her stories through song with vocal assistance of roots folk-rocker Robbie Fulks.

Tickets: $20
Doors 8:30 pm | Show at 9 pm

Linda Gail Lewis was born a Louisiana girl and now resides in Austin, Texas. She’s the little sister to living legend and musical genius, Jerry Lee Lewis. Raised on rock and roll-pumping piano and country, Linda Gail grew up with a passion for music. A professional musician since fifteen, she continues to tour sharing her high octane live show with music fans around the world.

Robbie Fulks is a singer, recording artist, instrumentalist, composer, and songwriter. His most recent release, 2017’s Upland Stories, earned year’s-best recognition from NPR and Rolling Stone among many others, as well as two Grammy® nominations, for folk album and American roots song (“Alabama At Night”).

In 1983, he moved to Chicago and joined Greg Cahill’s Special Consensus Bluegrass Band. He taught music at Old Town School of Folk Music from 1984 to 1996, and worked as a staff songwriter on Music Row in Nashville from 1993 to 1998. His early solo work — Country Love Songs (1996) and South Mouth (1997) — helped define the “alternative country” movement of the 1990s.

Radio: multiple appearances on WSM’s “Grand Ole Opry”; PRI’s “Whadd’ya Know”; NPR’s “Fresh Air,” “Mountain Stage,” and “World Cafe”; and the syndicated “Acoustic Cafe” and “Laura Ingraham Show.” TV: PBS’s Austin City Limits; NBC’s Today, Late Night with Conan O’Brien, Later with Carson Daly, and 30 Rock. From 2004 to 2008 he hosted an hourlong performance/interview program for XM satellite radio, “Robbie’s Secret Country.” Artists who have covered his songs include Sam Bush, Kelly Hogan, Andrew Bird, Mollie O’Brien, Rosie Flores, John Cowan, and Old 97s.

Robbie’s writing on music and life have appeared in GQ, Blender, the Chicago Reader, DaCapo Press’s Best Music Writing anthologies for 2001 and 2004, Amplified: Fiction from Leading Alt-Country, Indie Rock, Blues and Folk Musicians, and A Guitar and A Pen: Stories by Country Music’s Greatest Songwriters. As an instrumentalist, he has accompanied the Irish fiddle master Liz Carroll, the distinguished jazz violinist Jenny Scheinman, and the New Orleans pianist Dr. John. As a producer his credits include Touch My Heart: A Tribute to Johnny Paycheck (Sugar Hill, 2004) and Big Thinkin’ by Dallas Wayne (Hightone, 2000). Theatrical credits include “Woody Guthrie’s American Song” and Harry Chapin’s “Cottonpatch Gospel.” He served twice as judge for the Winfield National Flatpicking Guitar competition. He tours yearlong with various configurations.

Join us in The Green Room at Crosstown Arts for big band blues by The Love Light Orchestra.

Tickets: $10
Doors 7pm | Show at 7:30pm

The Love Light Orchestra celebrates the Memphis big band blues-style found on the 1950s and ’60s singles of Bobby “Blue” Bland, B.B. King and Herman ”Junior” Parker. The band of seasoned Memphis musicians derives their name from Bland’s 1961 hit “Turn On Your Love Light.” Their sound is completed with the soulful voice of bluesman John Nemeth.

In addition to dipping into the catalogs of Buddy Ace, Freddie King, and Percy Mayfield, the band demonstrates their deftness with uptown blues via the solid originals “Singing For My Supper, “Lonesome and High,” and the Ray Charles-inspired opener “See Why I Love You.” Casual fans of Memphis music might only recognize their cover of Al Green’s iconic “Love and Happiness,” but it’s reset here as a shuffle, building upon riffs that horn player, Marc Franklin, says were inspired by Charles Mingus’ “Fables of Faubus.”

The Love Light Orchestra’s overall sound, says Franklin, was inspired by Joe Scott whose work Franklin discovered after he was hired to play with Bland in the early ‘90s. “The first time I heard his work, it sounded like Ellington, but more down-home with extended harmonics that you don’t necessarily hear on blues or soul records. It’s a jazz thing, throwing extra notes into the chords—at Stax they didn’t do 6th chords.”

Grammy-winning producer/engineer Matt Ross-Spang cut the record live at the tiny DKDC bar in Memphis, and recalls “it was more or less done after we cut it. This music is really supposed to be heard live, to be in the room to feel the horns, and it turned out magically — lightning in a bottle twelve times in just a couple hours.” — Scott Baretta, former editor of Living Blues

Join us at The Green Room at Crosstown Arts for performance art duo, Princess, which explores queerness and the concept of masculinity.

Tickets: $10
Doors 7 pm | Show at 7:30 pm

Princess is a performance art duo, a collaboration between Alexis Gideon and Michael O’Neill, that uses music as the backbone of a multi-disciplinary practice. Princess explores queerness and the concept of masculinity. Simultaneously gay, straight, queer, masculine, and feminine, Princess embodies the fluidity and coherence between the seemingly contradictory. Princess was formed in 2004 in the Chicago DIY Performance space Texas Ballroom. The duo released a self-titled LP and performed until 2006 when they went on to pursue other paths, reuniting for this project in 2017.