By Angelo Parra | Directed by Joe Brancato
Musical Arrangements by and Starring Miche Braden
About
Mosaic’s Season Three launches with this hit Off-Broadway musical celebration of the legendary Bessie Smith, whose life was as large and outrageous as her talent. Starring Miche Braden, reprising the role she originated Off-Broadway, The Devil’s Music re-imagines Bessie’s final electrifying evening after she and her band are turned away by a whites-only theater. This is a musical celebration not to be missed, packed with a trove of Bessie’s all-time hits—songs like “I Ain’t Got Nobody,” “St. Louis Blues,” and “Tain’t Nobody’s Bizness If I Do.”
Generously underwritten by Andrew R. Ammerman, with additional support from Evelyn Sandground & Bill Perkins
Community Sponsor:
City Winery
August 24 –October 1, 2017
Creative Team
Press
“The huge reservoir of outrage from which Smith draws her profane interpretive power — and on which she focuses her lung power — comes through in Braden’s subversively raunchy portrayal, too. In such numbers as “T’aint Nobody’s Bizness If I Do,” “St. Louis Blues,” “I Ain’t Got Nobody” and “I Need a Little Sugar in My Bowl,” the expressions of tragedy, pain, passion and seduction allow an audience to sense the presence of Bessie’s devils as well as her better angels.”
“It would be tough to name who is the bigger draw in Mosaic Theater Company’s regal production of The Devil’s Music: The Life and Blues of Bessie Smith (★★★★). Both Smith, the pioneering Empress of the Blues, and Miche Braden, the show’s star, musical director and arranger, put forth a strong case for dropping your own blues at the door and grabbing a seat for this musical confessional.”
“This bombastic musical lifts its company, Mosaic Theater of DC, into a whole new era, justifying its recent naming as Helen Hayes Award-winning Best Emerging Company in the area.”
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