Billie Holiday

Latest Articles

Jess Powers presents sultry sirens at Firehouse 13

Ladies first
The second installment of Chanteuse arrives next weekend at Firehouse 13.
By CHRIS CONTI | April 20, 2011

Play by play: April 23, 2010

Theater listings, week of April 23, 2010
Boston's weekly theater schedule
By JEFFREY GANTZ | April 21, 2010

Play by play: April 16, 2010

Theater listings for the week of April 16, 2010
Theater listings for the week of April 16, 2010
By JEFFREY GANTZ | April 15, 2010

Letters to the Boston editor, April 16, 2010
The 72 Hours project, which I and others have been developing in the effort to help those fighting eviction in Boston, uses video projection to bring public awareness to the struggles of those undergoing foreclosure.
By BOSTON PHOENIX LETTERS | April 15, 2010

Sweet inspiration

Mixed Magic’s When Mahalia Sings
For more than three decades, until her death in 1972, Mahalia Jackson’s powerful contralto voice raised the spirits of even nonbelievers through her inspiring gospel singing. In an original production, Mixed Magic Theatre is reminding us about her legacy in the premiere of When Mahalia Sings .
By BILL RODRIGUEZ | April 08, 2010

Play by play: April 9, 2010

Theater listings, April 9, 2010
Theater listings, April 9, 2010
By JEFFREY GANTZ | April 06, 2010

Play by play: April 2, 2010

Theater listings, week of April 2, 2010
Boston's weekly theater schedule
By JEFFREY GANTZ | April 01, 2010

Endgame

Lady Day at Lyric bar & grill
As Billie Holiday fell apart, so did her fragile if expressive voice.
By CAROLYN CLAY | March 30, 2010

Play by play: March 26, 2010

Theater listings, March 26, 2010
Boston's weekly theater schedule
By JEFFREY GANTZ | March 25, 2010

Joyride

The Worcester Art Museum shows us ‘Who Shot Rock & Roll’
It is May 1966, in the Prelude Club in Harlem, an Atlantic Records release party.
By GREG COOK | March 24, 2010

Making it sing

Dee Dee does Billie, plus John Stein & Ron Gill
If you come to Dee Dee Bridgewater’s new Billie Holiday tribute disc — or to her two Holiday shows at the Paramount Theatre this weekend — expecting a reverent impersonation, you could be in for a shock. Bridgewater has transformed the music and persona of the jazz icon.
By JON GARELICK | March 25, 2010

Play by Play: March 19, 2010

Boston's weekly theater schedule.
Boston's weekly theater schedule.
By JEFFREY GANTZ | March 17, 2010

Sonny, Pat, and all the cats

Names you know and names you should
The primo jazz event of the spring will be SONNY ROLLINS 's concert at Symphony Hall on April 18 (bso.org). The great master saxophonist and peerless improviser often hits town in April, and this time it's to kick off his 80th-birthday tour. Whew.
By JON GARELICK | March 09, 2010

Variety shows

Trailer parks, baseball curses, mad scientists, and Darwin
There's plenty more than we can fit in, but here's a sampling of the broad range covered on Boston stages this spring, from new works to Shakespeare and Mel Brooks.
By MADDY MYERS | March 12, 2010

Basia Bulat | Heart Of My Own

Rough Trade (2010)
Like a Laurel Canyon Billie Holiday or a pixilated Tracy Chapman, Bulat sports a voice rich with vibrato, hearty oomph, and dignified lonesomeness.
By ZETH LUNDY | January 27, 2010

Best in their field

An early 2010 harvest
The jazz scene continues to struggle — along with everyone else — through hard times.
By JON GARELICK | December 30, 2009

2009: The top 10 in pop music

Music you need to own
Hmm, lots of women, a few old dudes, and some African banjo (not to be confused with Steve Martin's Hollywood banjo).
By JIM MACNIE | December 22, 2009

Getting the story

Gary Giddins and Scott DeVeaux sing jazz's many strains
Full-length written histories of jazz can be a slog. Especially since "the story of jazz" (as critic Marshall Stearns titled his 1956 tome) only gets longer and more complicated. Personally, on these prose-narrative trips along the New Orleans–New York axis of musical development, I usually bog down somewhere outside Chicago.
By JON GARELICK | December 01, 2009

Old school, new school

Amanda Carr and Gretchen Parlato do it their way
If fans plan shrewdly next Thursday (October 15), they can hear jazz singing at its best in two completely different styles.
By JON GARELICK | October 08, 2009

The music man

George Wein, the father of American music festivals, reflects on bringing world-class folk and jazz (and more) to Newport
Forty years after a half-million hippies descended on a sprawling dairy farm in upstate New York, Woodstock has become shorthand for an entire epoch.
By DAVID SCHARFENBERG | August 05, 2009

More than a feeling

Music inspires art at the MFA, Panopticon, and the Gardner
The centerpiece of the Museum of Fine Arts' "Contemporary Outlook: Seeing Songs" is Candice Breitz's 2005 Queen (A Portrait of Madonna), a wall of 30 televisions, each showing a different Madonna fan singing a cappella to her 1990 greatest-hits compilation, The Immaculate Collection. They wear headphones, bob their heads, sing aloud to music we can't hear.
By GREG COOK | July 21, 2009

Modern vintage

Lake Street Dive and Miss Tess go their own ways
Boston bands Lake Street Dive and Miss Tess and the Bon Ton Parade are different, but with a lot in common.
By JON GARELICK | April 08, 2009

Marianne Faithfull | Easy Come Easy Go

Decca (2009)
The CD cover is deceptively retro Sinatra: here's Marianne encased in a lady's tux in front of a vintage microphone with "Easy" twice on the title and the subtitle "12 Songs for Music Lovers."
By GUSTAVO TURNER | March 23, 2009

Ran Blake | Driftwoods

Tompkins Square (2009)
You probably don't think about an acoustic jazz pianist's use of the sustain pedal except when you're listening to Ran Blake.
By JON GARELICK | March 10, 2009

Big pictures

From the Phoenix archives: All things are Watchmen
Watchmen is that too rare work of popular entertainment, one that succeeds on many levels and that rewards your attention to every level it employs.
By M. HOWELL | March 04, 2009

Madeleine Peyroux | Bare Bones

Rounder (2009)
You could say that Peyroux's third album for Rounder in five years is just more of the same.
By JON GARELICK | March 03, 2009

Griot act

Malian performer Rokia Traoré breaks through with Tchamantché
Some albums are extraordinary because they capture their time. Others are great because they transcend it.
By TED DROZDOWSKI | February 12, 2009

Review: Let Freedom Sing! Music of the Civil Rights Movement

Time/Life (2009)
In any given Black History Month, the three-disc Let Freedom Sing: The Music of the Civil Rights Movement would be a powerful anthology.
By JEFF TAMARKIN | January 06, 2009

Insides out

The projective folk of Mr. Sister
The everyday interaction with animals other than domestic pets has become a whimsical thing of the past. Which leaves those musicians who still write numbers with furry protagonists in a bit of a throwback situation, their songs almost instant period pieces.
By MATT PARISH | December 05, 2008

Back to the future

Duke Robillard unveils Sunny and Her Joy Boys
Since leaving Roomful of Blues, the vintage guitar hero Duke Robillard has moved forward by reaching back into the annals of American blues, swing, jazz, and R&B and by doing so, he’s told a pretty incredible story.
By BOB GULLA | October 22, 2008