Two of the routines I have skipped the most about the previous 18-odd months have been paying the evening socializing at a friend’s residence and experiencing an intimate musical efficiency in an indoor venue. Final Tuesday, June 15, I killed two pandemic-era birds with a person stone by attending a cabaret live performance by regional crooner Kevin Kelly and his brand name-new jazz trio, the Temper Swings, at the Timucua Arts Basis.
For a lot more than two a long time, former Cirque du Soleil music director Benoit Glazer and his wife, Elaine Corriveau, have been inviting Orlando arts patrons into their residence for are living performances and literary activities. Over the many years, they’ve poured a lot more than $2.5 million dollars of their very own funds (or, as Glazer says, “all of it”) into the globe-class 100-seat live performance venue that sorts the coronary heart of their massive white SoDo dwelling. The space was not too long ago upgraded with a condition-of-the artwork Acoustic Manage Methods seem method, a marvel of engineering that can replicate the acoustics of a concert hall, a cathedral or a castle.
All that manufactured Timucua the great area for Kelly to debut his new combo in a no cost concert for pals and supporters — such as metropolis commissioner Patty Sheehan — which doubled as a marketing shoot for this clean act, which he hopes to consider on the street. Clad in a sparkling turquoise retro tuxedo jacket established by producer-designer Skip Stewart, Kelly commanded the phase with a mindful equilibrium of charismatic appeal and self-deprecating humor.
After an ebullient opening rendition of “The Best Is Nevertheless to Come,” Kelly welcomed his viewers with an anecdote about his unlucky early profession playing piano in a buying mall meals court docket, then launched into a loving tribute to Lena Horne and Harold Arlen.
The to start with fifty percent-hour of Kelly’s Timucua comeback concentrated on Frank Sinatra standards and other Rat Pack favorites, with a swinging sing-together rendition of “Poor, Lousy Leroy Brown” that nearly brought down the roof. In the second section, Kelly and crew shifted seasons to existing a sample of his new Swinging Xmas Social gathering clearly show, featuring Louis Armstrong’s “Have a Xmas That’s Neat” and other mod mistletoe melodies. Concerning tunes, Kelly bantered comfortably with the band and viewers, unveiling embarrassing spouse and children stories and unleashing an avalanche of groan-deserving father jokes.
Putting collectively the Temper Swings, which Kelly calls a “dream little one,” has been the end result of a two-yr approach that Stewart pushed him into pursuing. The shows were being composed throughout the pandemic with a concentrate on “retaining them up and swinging and pleasurable, seeking to do a new spin on all the aged chestnuts that we’ve carried out.”
Aside from a handful of are living performances previous vacation year, Kelly has spent substantially of the earlier calendar year going his personal overall performance coaching organization on the net at kevinkellyteachesyou.com, as effectively as setting up up theconnectedperformer.com, a nationwide audition-coaching company he operates with fellow regional singer Natalie Cordone.
“We support young actors who have a short while ago graduated and just dropped into the workforce and don’t know how to be an actor professionally,” Kelly points out. “We really established up the design on Zoom just before the pandemic [when] no one understood how to use it, and now all of a sudden every person does, which is really excellent for us.”
Kevin Kelly Sings at the White House was a one particular-night time-only affair, but if you skipped it you can capture him in July at the Villages’ Savannah Middle as Nathan Detroit in Fellas & Dolls, a part he claims he’s “needed to do for a extended time, so I’m actually psyched about.” Immediately just after that, Kelly will star in the concert revival of [title of show] at the Abbey, reuniting beneath director Kenny Howard with most of the solid that appeared in Orlando’s acclaimed 2020 output. (The remounting had originally been scheduled for February, but was postponed due to COVID.)
“It truly is great to be back again on the phase,” Kelly told me immediately after the performance, admitting that he “got a very little choked up” currently being equipped to execute for a maskless entire-ability group yet again.
Seeing my seatmates wipe absent a tear or two as Kelly wrapped up his joyful Christmas in June with a little “Winter season Wonderland,” I can say for specific that he was not the only psychological one particular in the property.