Performers Revive Vaudeville at Actor’s Express

Pining for the theatrics of the Marx Brothers, W.C. Fields, and Buster Keaton? Vincenzo Tortorici is, so he’s bringing Vaudeville to Atlanta.

Although no one can compare to “the inimitable Groucho,” Tortorici is doing his best to bring back the feeling of the era with a one-night-only show that will include the highest caliber of variety acts in Georgia. He will present “HAVE VAUDE, VILLE TRAVEL” this Friday, June 12 at 11 p.m. at Actor’s Express.

“We have amazing performers who are at the tops at what they do,” Tortorici said. They include a juggler, musicians, comics, a mime, and a magician.

Juggler and comic Todd Key, who is known for his precarious feats of standing on two-legged ladders while juggling knives and hatchets, will do his famous hand-shadow routine and his “exploding poodle trick,” which involves balancing a wine glass on a mouth-stick while creating an explosion. He said he also will “juggle the eight most dangerous objects that can be juggled throughout history.” Key has performed at corporate shows for Coca-Cola, IBM, and 3M, and has toured four times overseas for the USO. In his 30 years of performing, Key said one of his greatest compliments came from a U.S. soldier, who said his show was “Better than the Hooter’s Girls.”

The Dukes of Uke, a quartet featuring singers and ukulele players, will sing classic Hawaiian tunes, as well as music by The Beatles and political satirist Tom Lehrer. Known for its comedy relief, the band features Tim Settimi who has played comedy clubs, festivals and colleges for more than 20 years. He was voted “Performing Artist of the Year” six times by the National Association for Campus Activities. He has appeared in feature films with Tim Conway and Goldie Hawn, and on TV for A&E’s “Comedy Tonight” and “Comedy on the Road,” and for Showtime's “Atlanta Laff-Off.” Additionally, he’s been the opening act for numerous entertainers, including Little Richard, Gloria Estefan & Miami Sound Machine and Steve Martin.

Renowned throughout the country as a teacher and a performer, Tom Pierce blends improvisation, slapstick, and pantomime to fascinate audiences with his physical comedy. In addition to working with The Big Apple Circus and Cirque Du Soleil, he has performed for nearly 30 years in schools, theaters, and festivals in 40 states, as well as in Japan, Korea, the Philippines, Hong Kong, England, Mexico and Cuba.

Internationally known magician Baffle-o Bill can make ripped up newspapers whole again and people disappear. When describing his Wild West act, Tortorici said imagine “David Copperfield meets Davey Crocket.”

Impersonator Dean Crownover will reincarnate Elvis Presley. Crownover has performed in numerous films, commercials and in corporate theater. He played Elvis at Dr. Laura Schlessinger’s 50th Birthday Bash.

Sarah Onsager, an actor in theaters around Atlanta, will sing classic tunes from Vaudeville’s heyday.

A 20-year theater veteran who will serve as master of ceremonies, Tortorici has performed commedia del 'arte around the world. He said, “We are the finest variety performers in the United States at this price.”

Tickets at Actor’s Express are $15 each.

Pictured in photo: Todd Key

Grammy Nominee Trumpeter Dave Douglas Releases New Album

Two-time Grammy Award nominee Dave Douglas will release “Spirit Moves” next week with his quintet Brass Ecstasy.

A prolific composer and trumpeter with 28 albums under his belt, Douglas has performed with the biggest names in jazz, including Don Byron, Don Cherry, Horace Silver and John Zorn. He has been named “Trumpet Player of the Year,” “Composer of the Year,” and “Jazz Artist of the Year” by such organizations as the New York Jazz Awards, Down Beat, Jazz Times, Jazziz, and the Italian Jazz Critics' Society. Appreciating a diversity of musical genres and artists, Douglas has made recordings with Tom Waits, Sean Lennon, Suzanne Vega, and Cibo Matto, and he has recorded versions of cover tunes by numerous pop artists, including Mary J. Blige and Bjork.

Brass Ecstasy’s first recording, “Spirit Moves,” includes eight original tunes and three cover tunes by dissimilar artists. On Ottis Redding’s soulful “Mr. Pitiful,” Douglas's addition of funk and brass flavors reminiscent of Lester Bowie and Herb Alpert practically rips you out of your seat onto the dance floor. The trumpeter turns Rufus Wainwright’s “This Love Affair” into a sultry seduction that could render Viagara obsolete, and he creates a beautiful slow, lugubrious, mellow wail out of Hank Williams’s “I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry.” “Bowie,” a tribute to the late Lester Bowie, mixes New Orleans jazz with sounds of Bowie’s fun antics with the Art Ensemble of Chicago and Brass Fantasy. Brass Ecstasy members Vincent Chancey, French horn; and Luis Bonilla, trombone; were part of the latter band. Other Brass Ecstasy members include Marcus Rojas, tuba; Nasheet Waits, drums; and Dave Douglas, trumpet.

While Douglas plays with various artists and leads a couple of bands, he’s been leading Brass Ecstasy since 2005, playing at jazz festivals and clubs around the U.S. and Europe. “Spirit Moves” is available on CD, MP3 and FLAC on Douglas’s own label, Greenleaf Music. The company is offering an in-studio video recording of Brass Ecstasy, shot by Jem Cohen (REM, Patti Smith) and Christoph Green (Wilco, Burn to Shine) on DVD. Those who order the Spirit Moves preorder package by June 16 will receive an additional recording of a live set from the band’s upcoming show at the Jazz Standard in New York.

In addition to running his own record label and touring, Douglas is the cofounder of the Festival of New Trumpet Music (FONT). Now in its seventh year, FONT will be holding trumpet workshops and performances in New York June 26-28.

To hear sample tunes from “Spirit Moves,” visit Greenleaf Music. You can also hear Douglas on Pandora Internet Radio.

'Jersey Boys' Shines

The national touring company of “Jersey Boys,” now playing at The Fox Theatre, is one of the best shows I’ve seen in years.

Now I know a lot of musicals are corny—"Mama Mia!" comes to mind—but this isn’t one of them. This is a story about a dream to bust out of a poor neighborhood and rise to the top in the music business.

“Jersey Boys,” winner of four Tony Awards, including Best Musical, lets you peer into the lives of a few hoodlums from a tough neighborhood in New Jersey in the 1960s. Along the way, we meet Joe Pesci—yes, that Joe Pesci—who helps the roughnecks put a band together and names it the Four Seasons. We watch as the group plays dives around New Jersey, until it finally meets its match when it partners with songwriter Bob Guadio, then a one-hit wonder for Who Wears Short Shorts? For Frankie Valli, the nearly four-octave singer who sometimes sounds like a woman, he writes Sherry, which catapults the band to Dick Clark’s “American Bandstand,” launching the song to the No. 1 spot on the charts. While many other Top-40 hits follow and many millions of records are sold, the band members struggle through personal and professional ups and downs, including stints in prison, divorces, the loss of their fortunes, the death of a child, and for some, a fall back to the blue-collar life.

The script, written by Woody Allen collaborator Marshall Brickman and Rick Elice, a former advertising man, is scintillating and witty. The music is so spectacular that I was sure part of it had been a recording of the original band. I checked and it’s not. Joseph Leo Bwarie, who plays Frankie and played him in the original Las Vegas cast, has a voice range that extends from tenor to soprano, and when he sings the sound stems straight from his heart. He sang the most beautiful rendition of the jazz standard “There I Go Again” I’ve ever heard. If Frankie Valli ever looked and sounded as good as Bwarie, I know why ladies swooned.

"Jersey Boys" plays through June 21 at The Fox.

'Zanna Don’t' at Actor’s Express is a Do

Imagine living life as a heterosexual in a homosexual world. “Zanna Don’t,” now playing at Actor’s Express in Atlanta, shows us what it could be like if our sexual preference were outside the norm.

Playwright Tim Acito skillfully shows us what it’s like to live in someone else’s shoes. In a land of upside down living, he takes us to a place where chess players are studs, football players are geeks, and heterosexuality is an anomaly.

It’s all done tongue-in-cheek, but it’s a fun show with light, catchy pop tunes reminiscent of those in “Little Shop of Horrors.”

The story revolves around a group of students at Heartsville High and their searches for love. With a wave of his magical wand, Zanna, a Cupid-like sprite, casts spells upon the boys and girls as they descry possible mates. But alas, even Zanna cannot stop true love when the unexpected happens: a boy and a girl, each already in a relationship with another of their same sex, fall for each other. To the couple’s dismay, no matter how hard they try to stay away from each other, they can’t stop the magnetic force between them.

Although the story takes place at a high school where kids rebel against the establishment in the heartland of America, that’s about as close as it gets to other high school musicals like “Grease” and “Hairspray.” All right, “Hairspray” takes on the topic of racial equality and “Zanna Don’t” covers homosexual equality, but thankfully, “Zanna Don’t” is a lot more subtle. It doesn’t preach about equality, nor does it throw in a gratuitous, over-the-top drag queen to catch our attention. It does, however, have a fairy of sorts, Zanna, played by Ricardo Aponte.

Unfortunately, upon the show’s opening, Aponte played the role like a true “fairy.” He could have been more interesting had he chosen to play his character as a stronger being. When he finally stopped his fey ways and his mugging for the audience, in one of his final solo tunes he belted out from his heart, Some Day You Might Love Me. That is the moment when his passion and inner light sparkled far brighter than the sequined top and red pumps he closed the show in.

The play is good and the music is a fun mixture of pop, blues, and doo-wop, with catchy tunes such as I Ain’t Got Time and Whatcha Got. The show features a live band and notable performances from Erin Lorette as Roberta, Caitlin Smith as Kate, and Jimi Kocina as Mike.

“Zanna Don’t,” book, music and lyrics by Tim Acito with help from Alexander Dinelaris, has played Off Broadway, around the country, and currently is playing in London and at Actor’s Express in Atlanta, where it is running through June 20.

Photo: Eric Hermann

Rolling Stone Chuck Leavell to Play Benefit for UGA Music Business Program

Chuck Leavell, keyboard player for the Rolling Stones, will perform with Randall Bramlett in Athens, Ga., to benefit the Music Business Certificate Program at the University of Georgia (UGA). The program, a joint venture of the university's schools of music and business, was created to prepare students to work in any field of the music industry.

The concert will be held Friday, May 1 at the Melting Point at 8 p.m. Music Business Program co-founder Bruce Burch hopes to raise $50,000. Prior to the concert, he will auction off a trip to Nashville and signed memorabilia, including a guitar signed by Chuck Leavell and Randall Bramblett.

A member of The Rolling Stones for the past 25 years, Leavell has played with some of the biggest names in the music business, including The Allman Brothers Band, Eric Clapton, and George Harrison. He is an inductee into the Georgia Music Hall of Fame and the Alabama Music Hall of Fame. Bramblett has recorded or performed with Steve Winwood, the Grateful Dead and Bonnie Raitt. Leavell and Bramlett previously played together as members of Sea Level, a band form the ‘70s that mixed jazz with blues and rock. Leavell said, “I have not played Athens as a solo artist probably since we had our band Sea Level. . . what a great thing, say hello to the Athens fans and raise some money for the program.”

Burch, a songwriter, started the Music Business Program in 2006. The program, tailored to the music industry, also provides business training for people who want to work in the entertainment field. The university provides classroom space and administrative services. The only funding comes from donations, mainly from alumni and music corporations.

Burch said, “That’s why we’re doing fundraisers, as an outreach to people in the industry to support us.” The 21-hour Music Business Certificate is available to anyone attending the university who passes seven of its classes, which include topics in industry trends, copyright laws, networking, management, production, marketing and public relations.

While many people say the record business is dying, mainly due to file-share sites that allow users to download music on the Internet, Burch believes there are and will continue to be plenty of opportunities to work in the industry. “The physical CD where you hold music in your hand may never come back, but I think we’ve reinvented ourselves,” he said. He predicts money will come from concerts and from sales of music used in films, TV shows, advertising, and video games.

Burch, who graduated from the University of Georgia in 1975, says that it’s pertinent for people wanting to work in music to understand the business side of the industry. He learned that the hard way. He moved to Nashville in 1977 and worked odd jobs for five years before he sold his first song. He waited another five years to have one of his songs, “Rumor Has It” (sung by Reba McEntire), crack the No. 1 spot on the country music charts. (Two years later, she would take another of his songs, “It’s Your Call” to the No. 1 spot again.) George Jones, The Oak Ridge Boys, Faith Hill and Dan Seals are a few of the stars who have recorded his songs and made them hits. He said had he known more about the business side of music, he might have made it five or ten years earlier.

Burch said the entertainment industry knows artists need training in how to conduct business in their field. That’s why many universities near music hubs, like Atlanta, Nashville and Los Angeles, now offer music business programs. Nashville’s Belmont University pioneered the concept of a music business program in the early ‘70s. Burch taught a music publishing class there as an adjunct professor in the ‘90s. Burch said a donation of millions of dollars from Mike Curb, who owns one of the largest independent record labels in the country, helped that program grow into a full-blown entertainment business school that awards bachelor and master degrees. “If we could get something like that [a huge donation], overnight we could become a lot bigger.” With funding, he believes UGA’s Music Business Program will grow to a full-degree program.

Presently, graduates of UGA who hold the music business certificate are working as musicians, marketers, promoters, music editors, tour managers, production assistants, and studio engineers. Some former students work for themselves and others work for some of the top companies in the business, including Live Nation, the William Morris Agency, and the Harlem School of Music. Burch said entertainment companies around the country contact his office to recommend qualified candidates to fill open positions.

As a songwriter, Burch spent his mornings penning songs and his afternoons pitching them to record companies, managers and artists. He became so good at pitching songs, he began pitching for other songwriters as well, and created his own publishing company. He later worked for EMI Publishing—the song publishing arm of the record label EMI—which makes money from selling recordings for CDs, MP3s, video games, movies, Web sites, and more. Ready for a change after nearly 30 years, he returned to Athens, a college town well known for birthing bands such as the B-52’s, R.E.M., Widespread Panic, and the Drive-By Truckers.

Burch said in the past 10 years Georgia’s music business “has exploded,” and it’s expected to grow even more with the passing of the state’s recent tax incentive, which boosts the state tax credit for qualified production and post-production expenditures by as much as 30 percent. Burch said, “There are more films and TV productions in the pipeline here than ever before.”

But without having the proper knowledge, even musicians who find jobs in the boom could get hurt. Leavell said people who want to work in the music industry need to understand the business to protect themselves. “In my career, early on I did take the time to read books on the business side of music and to talk to attorneys and to understand what I was getting myself into,” he said. “But I saw so many other young musicians that did not do that and that consequently wound up with record deals that were substandard, or they signed things that they wished they had not signed. To have a program that would teach people the fine points of the business of music is extremely important.”

The benefit for the Music Business Program will be held at The Melting Point in Athens, Ga. General admission tickets are $100. Patron pre-party tickets, at $150, include reserved seats, a silent auction and an hors d’oeuvres reception. For reservations and information, call 706-254-6909 or visit www.meltingpointathens.com.