... at the Carolina Theatre.
Tomorrow, April 7th, would have been Billie Holiday's 100th birthday. For that, Cassandra Wilson is releasing an album of her versions of some of Holiday's standards. And in support of that record, she's touring. So, we caught her in Durham. The show was delayed by 30 minutes because of the Duke game.
Wilson rarely does straight covers, and she likes unusual arrangements and eclectic players; so of the songs I knew, I could only recognize them by their lyrics. So it wasn't a Billie Holiday tribute so much as Cassandra Wilson re-interpreting songs that Billie Holiday interpreted 60 or 70 years ago. Which was fine - I didn't even know it was going to be a Billie Holiday thing until last week.
Her band was fun. The woodwind player played a lot of bass clarinet - something I don't see very often; the guitarist (Kevin Breit) alternated between a miniature 6-string electric and an electric mandolin and put it all through a big mess of loops and modulators; the violinist often played with a wah pedal. The drummer, bassist and pianist kept things pretty straight, by comparison. And of course Wilson's low rich voice was the star.
Somehow I managed to get front row, dead center, seats. So it was like sitting in the middle of the band. We could hear all their little mumblings and cues and chatter. Fun. The 'no pictures' policy meant I could only get a quick shot at the end:
