This weekend will mark the beginning of 92Y’s celebration and exploration of Billie Holiday’s peerless artistry and influence, a multi-disciplinary festival featuring music, film and conversation that will continue next year.
“Billie Holiday: Reaching for the Moon—An Exploration and Celebration” will begin Sunday, November 22, at 1 p.m. EST with a free, exclusive screening of Emmy-nominated director James Erskine’s new documentary BILLIE, days ahead of its theatrical and virtual release. The screening will be followed by a live online Q&A with Erskine and executive producer Michele Smith, vice president of estate and legacy brand management at Concord, and manager of the Billie Holiday estate.
WBGO’s Rhonda Hamilton will host a free listening party on Saturday, December 5, at 2 p.m. EST, while the celebration will continues at 3 p.m. on Sunday, December 6 with a concert from 92Y’s Kaufmann Concert Hall featuring acclaimed vocalists Catherine Russell and Veronica Swift, the Emmet Cohen Trio and Tivon Pennicott on tenor sax..
Registration is required for the free events on November 22 and December 5, while tickets for the concert on December 6 are $15.
BILLIE draws upon hundreds of newly unearthed interviews conducted in the 1970s by the late journalist and future Holiday biographer Linda Lipnack Kuehl with jazz luminaries including Count Basie, Tony Bennett, Charles Mingus and Sylvia Syms; Holiday’s friends and lovers; and even the FBI agents who kept her under surveillance. The film is rich with archival film and photos, with key footage colorized and brought to life as never before. Raw and unflinching, BILLIE captures an untold story of exploitation, racism, addiction and politics, and offers a rare look at Holiday’s tumultuous and tragically brief life.
The documentary can be streamed in the U.S. only, and for 48 hours after the start time. The Q&A can be accessed anywhere in the world.
“The Billie Holiday Online Listening Party” will share and explore Holiday’s most essential recordings. Hamilton will lead listeners through seminal Holiday tracks, from her early 1930s Brunswick recordings through the album many consider her masterpiece, 1959’s Lady in Satin. Reflections on Billie’s key collaborators—Lester Young, Teddy Wilson, Benny Goodman, Count Basie and others— will accompany Hamilton’s insights into one of the most extraordinary discographies in music.
“The Billie Holiday: Reaching for the Moon” concert celebration will spotlight the Billie Holiday/Lester Young partnership, which resulted in some of the most unforgettable recordings of her career.
