We’re a long way from Suede, scenesters.
As the lineup for the opening performance of the Smith Center for Performing Arts becomes public, one of the city’s richest regular showcases is moving into the Center’s Cabaret Jazz club.
The Composers Showcase, one of the most popular, intimate performance nights in Vegas over the past six years, is holding its first performance at Cabaret Jazz on March 28. This very cool experience is a night of original tunes performed by some of the city’s top artists, most of them cast members in Strip productions.
The Showcase started in 2006 at the since-closed Suede restaurant, a cozy little bar and eatery that was located just a few cartwheels from Double Down Saloon on Paradise Road. The show leaped from there to the cabaret room at the Liberace Museum, where it was held monthly until the museum closed in 2010. Creative Studios and Garfield’s in Summerlin have been the more recent Composers Showcase venues, but co-founder Keith Thompson (the music director of “Jersey Boys”) has long been mulling an arrangement that would move the show to the Smith Center.
It’s happening, but not without a price. The Showcase ticket prices, which have been set at $10 ever since the series launched, are set at $20 at the Smith Center. Seating will be assigned, a contrast to the former format for the Showcase, which was typically organized in a find-the-nearest-chair-available spirit. For advance tickets, call 749-7000 or go to the Smith Center website. Tickets also are being set aside for walk-up purchase.
It’s a far more formal arrangement than the old days at Suede, to be sure, but as Thompson said in an e-mail, “We are guests in their home. Let’s hope it’s a good match.”
Also, Smith Center President Myron Martin (who is the guest on this week's "Kats With the Dish" broadcast at 6 p.m. Friday on KUNV 91.5-FM) has been releasing information about the opening in a measured, trickle-out manner, announcing three names of stars who will take part in the March 10 debut show at the 2,050-seat Reynolds Hall: Willie Nelson, Jennifer Hudson and Neil Patrick Harris. Nearly two years ago, Martin noted Nelson’s involvement in the center’s premiere plans, as Donald W. Reynolds Foundation Chairman Fred W. Smith is a big Willie Nelson fan. The effort to lure Nelson to the opening was a nod to the efforts of Smith and the Reynolds Foundation to help fund the project.
Nelson is expected to bring friends of his -- as in, artist friends -- to the opening. Harris will be the night’s emcee, and hopefully Nelson and Harris can exchange in some form of onstage interplay, which would be hilarious.
One new name has surfaced as one of the performers booked for the opening show: violin virtuoso Joshua Bell. He’ll join an orchestra of the top musicians in the country for a show to be produced for a national TV show (likely PBS, if Smith Center officials get their wish) by George Stevens Jr. Stevens is a major figure in the TV industry as the founder of the American Film Institute. Since the mid-1980s, Stevens has produced the telecasts “Kennedy Center Honors” and “Christmas in Washington” for CBS.
Otherwise, officials are seeking to fill the 258-seat Cabaret Jazz club with some popular local acts and artists, among them Santa Fe & the Fat City Horns, currently performing Mondays at the Lounge at the Palms. Clint Holmes has already said that he hopes Santa Fe bandleader and guitar great Jerry Lopez will join him for one of his first monthly appearances at the club, which begin April 6.
Expect it to be quite a scene if Santa Fe moves to the Smith Center, but do expect tickets to be more expensive than the $7 fee Santa Fe commands at the Palms. It’s the price of these gigs’ swankier digs.
Follow John Katsilometes on Twitter at Twitter.com/JohnnyKats. Also, follow “Kats With the Dish” at Twitter.com/KatsWithTheDish.
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