Dee Dee Bridgewater returns to Israel for a single performance at the Raanana Park Amphitheatre on April 8, with To Billie with Love from Dee Dee – a tribute to Billie Holiday.
Singing onstage since the age of 16, and travelling the world since her 1969 tour to the Soviet Union with the University of Illinois jazz band during her college years, singer-songwriter Bridgewater won two Grammy awards in 1998 for Dear Ella, her tribute to Ella Fitzgerald and Love and Peace: A Tribute to Horace Silver, was nominated for Best Jazz Vocal Performance in 1996. Bridgewater is also an accomplished actress, winning a Tony Award in 1975 for her role as Glinda the Good Witch in the musical The Wiz. In her upcoming performance she may draw upon her acting experiences from the musical Lady Day, (1986) when she was nominated for the Laurence Olivier Award for her performance as Billie Holiday.
Billie Holiday is the blues. Her life has been documented onstage, in film and in Stuart Nicholson’s book Billie Holiday (1995). Born Eleanora Fagan in 1915 to a teenage mother, her childhood was one of poverty and neglect. Dropping out of school by the age of 11, prostitution and prison were the sources of her education – she learned her first songs in a brothel. Drinking, drugs and men were her downfall, leading to her death in 1959, but her memory lives forever in song. Lover Man, Lady Sings the Blues, and God Bless the Child, are among the many songs that Dee Dee Bridgewater will bring to life on the stage.
Bridgewater is the UN Ambassador for the Food and Agriculture Organization, doing her part to fight world hunger, and hosts National Public Radio’s syndicated show Jazzset with Dee Dee Bridgewater.
To Billie with Love from Dee Dee
Thursday, April 8 at 20:30 Raanana Park Amphitheatre
Tickets: 09-7713275, 150 – 240 NIS
Piano and music director: Edzwl Gomez
Saxophone: James Carter
Drums: Bruce Cox
Bass: Ira Colman
