Spotlight: Creative Cauldron’s Passport to the World of Music
Creative Cauldron livestreams its 10th annual weekend concert series
For a decade, Virginia’s Creative Cauldron has started every calendar year with a series of weekend-night concerts featuring artists with roots from all over the world performing an array of music, ranging from folk to Latin, musical theater to bluegrass.
Featuring performances in the intimate ArtSpace Falls Church, this year’s 10th installment foregoes the usual audiences to become a pandemic-appropriate online series featuring livestreams from the flexible venue now operating as a “multi-cam HD studio.”
Expanding to run for two months rather than just one, this year’s festival was co-curated by Matt Conner and married couple Lynn Veronneau and Ken Avis. (The couple will close out the proceedings by performing with their Wammie-winning Latin/jazz/samba group Veronneau on Sunday, March 27.)
The series returns the first Friday in February with Project Locrea, an alliance of musicians and vocalists created by flutist Yana Nikol that combines traditional instruments with western classical and jazz instruments and aims to foster better understanding and deeper connection among cultures (Feb. 5).
Highlights to come include Karen Kelleher, a local stage actor offering a solo cabaret debut with “There and Back Again” (Feb. 6); Michael Bowie, who the Washington Post calls “the dean of the D.C. jazz bass tradition” leading an “Abbey Lincoln Tribute” to his former mentor along with vocalist Shacara Rogers and pianist Janelle Gill (Feb. 12); Raymi, the D.C.-based band, led by Juan Cayrampoma, focused on the distinctive, traditional music from the Andes in South America (Feb. 13); and Yasmin Williams, an acoustic fingerstyle guitarist with an unorthodox, modern style of playing (Feb. 26).
March highlights include Jake Blount, the 2020 Steve Martin Banjo Prize-winner whose focus is on Black and indigenous folk music traditions (March 5); local stage sensation Susan Derry, accompanied by pianist Howard Breitbart (March 6); the Seán Heely Trio, an ensemble of area Celtic musicians led by a singing fiddler who is also a Strathmore Artist in Residence alum (March 12); Wyn Delano, accompanied by his piano-playing spouse Leigh Delano, in “I Always Play the Villains,” featuring “some of the most deliciously evil and cathartic songs in the Broadway canon” (March 13); Irene Jalenti, the Italian-born, Baltimore-based singer-songwriter performing a mix of jazz originals and standards plus Beatles covers (March 19); and Cissa Paz, a singer-songwriter of smoldering music steeped in Afro-Brazilian traditions (March 26).
All streams start at 7:30 p.m. unless otherwise noted. Tickets are $15 each. Call 703-436-9948 or visit www.creativecauldron.org.
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