The Shedd Institute is pleased to present Siri Vik in an all-new project that pays tribute to jazz legend Billie Holiday. Siri writes: "Our 20-song tribute to Billie Holiday, her collaborators and to the best of her recorded song repertoire is devoted to celebrating her musical genius and her originality - the strength and nerve with which she could always find her truth inside a song, and the way she could fully listen to and engage with the music around her while she sang. Simple yet sophisticated, Holiday’s singing is never quite dramatic or sentimental, rather her unsentimental delivery makes the heartbreak, solitude, indignation, or strength of a song lyric come to life with devastating clarity. It’s this authenticity that made her so beloved to her fans, then and today… We celebrate these musical gifts she gave us, not so much by attempting to replicate her sound and style, nor by recounting the oft-told story of her life, but by respecting the tradition of early jazz form in which she worked, by opening ourselves that musical play that she and her band mates reveled in. And, by simply singing what’s true ---what makes sense---to me."
| | All Of Me (1931) Gerald Marks, Seymour Simons (w/m) |
| | My Man (1921) Casino de Paris 1920 Paris qui Jazz Jacques Charles (fr), Channing Pollock (en), Albert Willemetz (fr) (w) Maurice Yvain (m) [translation of Mon Homme] |