Jersey Shore Jazz and Blues Festival: Shimmy your Jazz and Blues Hands!

Soul Project: Smokin' Jazz, Equally Smokin' Shirt.

Welcome to the singer/songwriter beat provided by yours truly, Cat Cosentino. Please call me Cat.

I was looking through your calendar, and I know what you are thinking, “How did Cat get my calendar?”  It seems that you are free June 5th and 6th, so I wrote in that you will be attending the Jersey Shore Jazz and Blues Festival at Monmouth Park Race Track, noon to 8pm, in Oceanport. Maybe it was a little aggressive of me to write “GO TO THE JERSEY SHORE JAZZ AND BLUES FESTIVAL” on all your belongings, but those who have attended in the past agree that I was justified in writing the message on the inside of your toilet cover. I also wrote it on the inside of your eyelids while you were sleeping.

American Masterpieces: Porgy and Bess at State Theatre.

Happy birthday, Porgy and Bess!

2010 marks the 75^th anniversary of this landmark work and there are plenty of opportunities to catch it this year. And so you should! My opportunity was the great 75^th anniversary tour, presented by Michael Capasso, at the State Theater in New Brunswick Thursday night.

Porgy and Bess (music by George Gershwin, lyrics by Ira Gershwin and DuBose Heyward, based upon Heyward’s novel Porgy) opened in 1935 in New York…on Broadway. Yes, originally Porgy and Bess ran on Broadway (for 124 performances) and it was several decades before opera companies performed the work. Today, though, OPERA America reports that Porgy and Bess was the most frequently performed North American opera of the 2008-2009 season. This spring alone, five opera companies are mounting productions (Opera Carolina, Virginia Opera, Washington National Opera, El Paso Opera and San Antonio Opera). According to OPERA America’s Schedule of Performances, since 1991, 45 opera companies have mounted productions of Porgy and Bess. Porgy and Bess occupies an important place in American cultural history, whether you consider it an opera or a musical. Or even jazz, as in the case of the 1957 recording by Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong. The first American opera company to mount a production was Houston Grand Opera in 1976, whose recording won a Grammy Award.