This Saturday night the Palladium’s Side Door Cabaret and our buddies in the band La Lucha, are hopping into the DeLorean for a musical ride back to the 1980s. You’ll hear the big hits of that wacky decade reworked with a jazz sensibility.
We did a version of this show – Twisted Jazz Arrangements of Hits From the ’80s – last summer and it was so great, we really wanted to bring it back. And since then, La Lucha has won another “Best of the Bay Jazz Ensemble” award from Creative Loafing.
So plan to slip into your best Duran Duran rags and join us Saturday night. Joining this piano, bass and drums trio will be singer Whitney James and instrumentalist Rebecca Zapen and Jeremy Douglass.
For a taste of what you can expect, I chatted with Mark Feinman and Alejandro Arenas, of La Lucha about the show:
PALLADIUM PAUL: La Lucha loves to take pop tunes and rework them with a jazz sensibility. What’s the attraction for you guys?
MARK: We really enjoy playing music we love! We are part of a generation that didn’t grow up with jazz, but fell in love with it regardless of its popularity. We make a conscious effort to expand beyond the traditional jazz audience without alienating them.
ALEJANDRO: A lot of the songs are just a lot of fun to play. There is a freedom in playing jazz that allows us to make these songs our own. We are connected to them generationally as well as musically and we feel that music is music regardless of genre. If it moves you, just accept it and enjoy it.
PALLADIUM PAUL:I think you really do a great job mixing standards and pop tunes on your latest album, Standards, Not Standards. Was that intentional?
ALEJANADRO: Yes. Our goal was to blur the line between the decades, the styles and the generational gap of the songs. We wanted to take the songs through the La Lucha filter and make them cohesive. It is our way to pay tribute to all the songs we enjoy playing regardless of the source.
MARK: Yes, on Standards, Not-Standards we definitely choose music with a wide variety of musical styles and unique mix of genres. We picked repertoire that younger generations would recognize, but arrange it in such a way that we hope bridges that generational gap.
PALLADIUM PAUL: So what songs will we be hearings on Saturday night?
ALEJANADRO: We will be covering the 80s chronologically starting in 1981 and ending with 1989. A few of the highlights include Billy Joel’s The Longest Time, Madonna’s Like a Prayer and we can neither confirm nor deny that there might be a Dirty Dancing tribute.
PALLADIUM PAUL: You’ve got Whitney James and Rebecca Zapen with you this Saturday. Tell us about working with those two talented performers.
ALEJANADRO: They are wonderful musicians and people. They are extremely intuitive and just a pleasure to work with. We have worked with them in different capacities and every time we do we just want to keep on doing more and more projects.
MARK: We are thrilled to be sharing the stage with this group of insanely talented musicians and friends for this concert! Whitney James will be singing with La Lucha, which is certainly pushes the music and energy to the next level. We have performed with her on many occasions playing her repertoire and zig-zagging around Florida and between states, but this is our inaugural project featuring Whitney in our wacky world.
We are also really excited to have multi-instrumentalist Rebecca Zapen & pianist Jeremy Douglass playing an opening set. This power duo/couple is guaranteed to make the audience laugh, cry and knit a sweater…it might be a cold night! We look forward to featuring them in our set as well.
We always enjoy surrounded ourselves with artists that inspire, motivate and challenge us. And what better venue than the intimate and beautiful Side Door at The Palladium!
For tickets and information follow this link.
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