Lady Zen Sings Nina Simone || Bellas Artes

TICKETS HERE

Had the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia not denied admission to an eminently qualified 17-year-old girl in 1950 because she happened to be black, the world might have had a great classical pianist named Eunice Kathleen Waymon. Instead, Waymon, needing to earn a living, found herself playing cocktail piano in a nightclub in Atlantic City. Told by the nightclub management that she had to sing as well as play, Waymon began vocalizing in her naturally expressive contralto register. Fearful that her devout Methodist parents would learn she was performing the “devil’s music,” Waymon adopted the stage name Nina Simone.

Simone went from obscurity to fame almost overnight, in 1958, when Bethlehem Records released her cover of George Gershwin’s “I Loves You, Porgy,” and it became a hit single. The album featuring that single, Little Girl Blue, included the Rodgers and Hart standard of the same name, “My Baby Just Cares for Me” (a hit single when re-released in 1987), and a version of “Love Me or Leave Me” with an extended keyboard solo in the manner of a Bach invention, a nod to Simone’s classical training.

Selections from that historic album, and other songs recorded or written by Nina Simone, will be presented in a concert entitled Lady Zen Sings Nina Simone, in the second floor Miguel Malo auditorium of the Bellas Artes, for two performances only, on Wednesday, April 3, and Thursday, April 4, at 7pm. Lady Zen, a/k/a Alzenira Quezada, is San Miguel’s top-ranked vocalist, an opera-trained mezzo soprano who early on turned her talents to jazz and blues, and who combines soulful singing with raw power and an irresistible stage presence. Her recent tribute concerts devoted to the songs of Bessie Smith, K.D. Lang, and Sade, all sold out rapidly.

Lady Zen will be accompanied on the theater’s nine-foot Steinway concert grand piano by Mark Hartman, a star in his own right. Hartman is a New York-based pianist, conductor, arranger and composer, with numerous Broadway and Off-Broadway credits and awards.

The concert is the latest installment of the acclaimed Steinway Series, a quasi-monthly piano-based concert series at the Bellas Artes to benefit Libros para Todos, a nonprofit organization dedicated to inspiring children in Mexico to read more, particularly those children and young adults residing in rural communities where access to books is limited. (For more information, visit makingreaders.org.)

The Bellas Artes auditorium has eighteen rows of 195 seats. Tickets for Lady Zen Sings Nina Simone are 400 pesos for rows A through F, 300 pesos for rows G through L, and 200 pesos for rows M through R.

Reserved seats (by row and seat number) are on sale at Boleto City, on the second floor of the Mercado Sano, Ancha de San Antonio 123, open Monday through Saturday.

Online reserved-seat e-tickets can be purchased by clicking one of the “Buy Tickets Online” buttons in this newsletter message, or via boletocity.com. The online tickets can be purchased with any major credit card or PayPal account, regardless of country of issue, for U.S. dollar equivalents and a small online purchasing fee.

For more information, please write to info@boletocity.com, or call during office hours: (415) 152 6432.