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Aretha Franklin celebrates 72nd birthday with the help of Dizzy Gillespie All Stars

Last night the Dizzy Gillespie All Stars had a gig like no other- helping Aretha Franklin celebrate her 72nd birthday in style at the Ritz Carlton, NY:

Up All Night With Aretha Franklin

‘The Queen of Soul spent much of her 72nd birthday bash tucked in a corner, sipping Coke next to friends Clive Davis and Denzel Washington. But close to midnight, she cut a multi-tiered vanilla cake, handing pieces out personally to guests, including Congressman Charles Rangel and Judge Mathis. Then she was on a couch in the center of the room, tapping her fingers to the Dizzy Gillespie All Stars.’

Read more: http://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/up-all-night-with-aretha-franklin-20140324#ixzz2wyDVJ100

Denzel Washington surprises Aretha Franklin at her 72nd birthday party

“What a night, what a party! The best by far,” Franklin told The News. “Denzel (Washington), (Judge) Greg Mathis, (U.S. Rep.) Charlie Rangel, Clive Davis.”

Franklin added: “Detroit was there big time. (Former Council member) Jo Ann Watson, (writer) Greg Dunmore, old school friends Yvonne Price and Delores Coleman, Harry Hairston, former Channel 50 anchor…and the Dizzy Gillespie All-Stars had the room rocking!”

From Detroit News: http://www.detroitnews.com/article/20140324/ENT09/303240071#ixzz2wzVNLcH2

Avery*Sunshine’s ‘barn-burning performance’ at Lincoln Center

Target Free Thursdays, a weekly program presented by Lincoln Center at the David Rubenstein Atrium on Broadway, lured me to a barn-burning performance by the Atlanta-based singer and songwriter Avery Sunshine. With nothing more than a guitar accompanist, her two hands at the piano and a jazzy gospel voice that could loosen bricks from their mortar, she lit the place up in record time. By chance, the audience included a high school choir from Hamburg, N.Y., in town to perform at Carnegie Hall the next day. Ms. Sunshine put them right to work, assigning vocal lines and harmonies to create a wall of sound behind her solos on an extended gospel song.

Read More: New York Times, March 20th, 2014: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/21/arts/music/get-arts-fast.html?_r=0