Never mind that she’s best known as a dramatic TV actress — dubbed “the First Lady of Knots Landing” for her portrayal as Karen on that long-running prime-time CBS soap from the ’80s — Michele Lee styles herself as a funny lady.
“I wish I could be half-comedian, but I’m probably 10-percent comedian,” Lee cracks during a phone interview from New York, one she wishes could have been face-to-face, over lunch — or better yet, cocktails. “Oh yeah, let’s go to cocktails,” she says. “Forget that lunch thing.”
Lee is a hoot, an all-around, honest-to-goodness entertainer, the likes of which you don’t often see these days. Born Michele Lee Dusick, Lee got her start on Broadway at the age of 19 with small roles in plays and musicals, including How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying. She recently returned to Broadway, as Madame Morrible in the long-running Wicked.
This Friday, Nov. 6, Lee performs a one-woman show as part of Barbara Cook’s Spotlight cabaret series at the Kennedy Center. The focus is on the music of Broadway composer Cy Coleman, whose 1973 musical See Saw earned Lee her first Tony nod. “Cy Coleman was an incredible artist,” she says. “The songs that I’ve chosen tell just a wonderful story about all his music…and my personal stories with him.”
Lee was going to perform a cabaret focused more on her varied career, but the brand-new Coleman show got such “fabulous reviews in New York,” she opted to go with it instead. Lee says she’d be delighted to come back to the Kennedy Center to perform her more personal cabaret, which includes a salute to Knots Landing. Asked if that cabaret also includes reference to another role in particular, from the hit 1968 Disney movie featuring a cognizant car, Lee just laughs. “There’s no song in The Love Bug that I would sing. But I do tell some funny stories about it.”
The D.C. area is on track to be graced by two visits from the Indigo Girls this year, including a stint with the Fairfax Symphony at Capital One Hall and a remarkable double-bill pairing with fellow lesbian vanguard Melissa Etheridge at Wolf Trap. Wolf Trap is also the place to go for a second edition of the venue's Out & About Festival, this year offering a new cohort of LGBTQ musical acts.
Queer artists are really, truly just about everywhere, coming to nearly every music venue in the region this season. A quick scan of the listings bears this out: There's Donna Missal at The Atlantis, BOOMscat at Blues Alley, CMAT at DC9, XOMG Pop! at the Fillmore, Billy Gilman at Jammin Java, Mary Gauthier at Rams Head on Stage, and Mx Mundy at Songbyrd. And that's just a quick and easy seven, with several times that number waiting in the wings for your discovery.
Cher is among a group of musicians named as inductees to he Rock & Roll Hall of Fame.
The Grammy Award-winning artist was one of four artists -- along with Foreigner, Peter Frampton, and Kool & the Gang -- who were on the ballot for the first time.
Cher -- the only artist to have a No. 1 song in each of the past six decades -- and fellow inductee Mary J. Blige, a nine-time Grammy Award winner with eight multi-platinum albums -- will boost the Hall of Fame's number of females, which previously stood at 65, constituting about 8% of the total number of inductees.
There's more Mozart on tap around town this spring than even the most devoted Mozartian could catch. The same, more or less, goes for fans of Mendelssohn and Verdi. Puccini, too.
Yet none of those classical music titans can hold a candle to a certain German giant who's still the most popular "Emperor" of them all, with many area music organizations -- from the most prominent orchestras to the scrappiest chamber ensembles -- performing Beethoven.
One other interesting development is the marked rise in popularity of a composer whose name and work was totally absent and virtually unknown just a few years ago. This season, Florence Price is the "Most Revived Composer." She's practically the belle of the ball, with the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, the Capital City Symphony, and National Chamber Ensemble each featuring a different work of the pioneering Black composer, who died at age 66, more than 70 years ago.
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