Whenever I listened to Billie Holiday's "God Bless the Child", "I'll Be Seeing You" or the dozens of jazz songs she has recorded, I could not help but wonder what stories and feelings prompted her to sing. Audra McDonald brings these stories and feelings to life in a one woman cabaret show of Billie Holiday's last performance at "Lady Day at Emerson's Bar & Grill." As Lady Day, she says, "Singing is a feeling and you can't sing without a feeling, can't feel without singing." As a guest at Emerson's, I neither could help but want to sing along to "What a Little Moonlight Can Do" as Lady Day and her band played on, nor could I ignore feelings of pain, anguish and regret that is the subtext for tunes like "Strange Fruit."
As the announcement promises, your evening at is one filled with personal tales of difficult choices, bad breaks, worse men and some of the most glorious songs ever written, including "God Bless the Child," "What a Little Moonlight Can Do," "Strange Fruit," and "Taint Nobody's Biz-ness." It's an intimate evening, up close with a legend. So pull up a chair and order up a drink because she's got a life to sing."