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Show Starts at 8pm. Tickets will be available at the door. Bring your friends and family!
Maplewood Middle School - 7 Burnet St. (across the street from our usually library venue)
About GrooveLily:
Rock Band? Musical Theater? The Best Of Both.
New York City trio GrooveLily inhabits that contemporary space where creative musicians ignore the boundaries laid down by words like rock, folk, jazz, and pop. Intelligent original songs with no shortage of wit connect lush musical textures and soaring vocals with the blazing sixstring electric violin of Valerie Vigoda, the lightning-fingered piano of Brendan Milburn, and the joyful drums of Gene Lewin. With backgrounds in classical music, musical theater, jazz, and rock, the three members of GrooveLily are making a new music that’s all their own. Buoyed by the success of their critically-acclaimed holiday concert-musical “Striking 12,” GrooveLily looks forward to making your acquaintance.
Valerie Vigoda, electric violinist and singer, is the founding member of GrooveLily. Originally from McLean, VA, Valerie is a classically-trained musician, honors graduate of Princeton University, and former Army lieutenant. She has toured the world with Cyndi Lauper (opening for Tina Turner and Cher), Joe Jackson and the Trans-Siberian Orchestra. She founded GrooveLily (originally “The Valerie Vigoda Band”) in 1994, with a critically-acclaimed CD called “Inhabit My Heart.” Dirty Linen Magazine wrote:“to call Valerie Vigoda talented barely seems to do her justice. She has a great voice, is an intelligent lyricist ... and an ace violinist. Methinks we’ll hear more of her.” Winner of a 2006 Jonathan Larson Performing Arts Foundation Award for excellence in writing for the theater, along with her longtime collaborator and husband Brendan Milburn, Valerie is delighted to be spending less time in the GrooveLily van, and more time creating new projects with her ban
dmates.
Brendan Milburn (keyboards/vocals) graduated from Pomona College and NYU's MFA program in Musical Theatre Writing. He does a lot of arranging for GrooveLily, and he’s an accomplished record producer as well. He often yearns for his native San Francisco. Seth Rogovoy wrote: “Milburn was a deft pianist, his nimble fingerwork doing double-duty as the band’s bassist and provider of its harmonic foundation, delivered with the jazzy sophistication of Steely Dan’s Donald Fagen and the rock and roll theatrics of Billy Joel.” Brendan's music and/or lyrics have been/will be featured in a growing number of off/on-Broadway shows, and he's always on the lookout for new projects/productions which will add more slashes (“/”) to his bio/credits.
Gene Lewin plays the drums and sings, and hails from Princeton, NJ. Like many of his heroes (Jack DeJohnette, Russ Kunkel, Vinnie Colaiuta), Gene joyfully blurs the lines between jazz and rock, supporting and complementing the music but unafraid to instigate when the time is right. After graduating from Princeton University, Gene earned a Master’s degree from the Manhattan School of Music. He has toured with Audra McDonald and has appeared on CDs with George Coleman, John Patitucci, and many others. “His gift lies in his frenzied dynamo attack of cymbals and skins. Think Tony Williams sits in with Weather Report.” (Mark Corroto, All About Jazz)
Blurb from the Daily Record:
The Brooklyn-based musical trio GrooveLily earned a lot of New Jersey fans in 2006 when it scored and performed in a unique production of Shakespeare's "A Midsummer Night's Dream," which ran at both Princeton University's McCarter Theatre and Paper Mill Playhouse in Millburn.
Saturday at 8 p.m., the band makes a rare Garden State concert appearance at Maplewood Middle School. Tickets are $22 for this general admission show, which will feature an all-request set selected by the band's Petal Pushers fan club.
"The show is something of a thank-you to our fans, and we're looking forward to getting back to New Jersey," said violinist Valerie Vigoda, who will share the stage with her husband, keyboardist Brendan Milburn, and drummer Gene Lewin. All three members sing as well.
GrooveLily gigs are rare these days, mostly because "Midsummer" led to several exciting musical theater projects. The most high-profile job was writing original songs for Disney's stage adaptation of the animated feature "Toy Story," which premiered April 10 on the Disney cruise ship Disney Wonder.
"We flew down for the premiere and it was very exciting," Vigoda said. "Disney and Pixar have been great to work with, although we had never written for committee before."
Other theatrical projects include Vigoda and Millburn's "Sleeping Beauty Awakes"; another project Vigoda describes as "my PowerPoint musical"; and GrooveLily's holiday musical, "Striking 12," which has successfully toured and been staged off-Broadway.
"We were starting to burn out touring by ourselves in a van," said Vigoda, who has a 21/2-year-old son, Mose. "GrooveLily is still very important, but it's been wonderful (working in theater). We enjoy the collaborative nature of theater and the support and infrastructure you don't get when you're on the road in a rock band."
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