Phoebe Legere Off To LA for Hilary Knight Birthday Fest!

 

FROM PHOEBE LEGERE'S FACEBOOK PAGE: 

Happy Halloween, my dear Facebook friends!

While the ghosts, princesses and goblins are out, I’m taking flight to Los Angeles for a different kind of magic: the 99th birthday party of one of my best friends, the great American illustrator, Hilary Knight.

MILESTONE & GERSHWIN

To mark this milestone, I’ll be singing a very obscure Gershwin song Hilary requested: “Ask Me Again.” It’s a song written at the very end of George’s life, with words by Ira—"Ask Me Again" was discovered by the great Michael Feinstein, who will be there, along with a constellation of stars: William Ivey Long, Alan Eichler, Howard Mandelbaum, Douglas Colby and others.

Our friendship has withstood every assault—even when a now-canceled Lena Dunham tried to usurp my place as Hilary's protégé, cartooning us in her absurd HBO movie. Our relationship shuddered gloriously when Marlene Dietrich herself called -- during the Marlene tribute show Hilary masterminded for me at The Ballroom - demanding: "Who is this kid?" (Alas, the video of that show and all our other ephemeral masterpieces burned to ash in the Altadena fire. A tragedy!) A few excerpts, filmed by Hilary, can be seen on my Youtube channel.

HIGH AMERICAN ART

You have to understand, Hilary’s art is not "illustration." This is High American Art. His father, Clayton Knight, was friends with George Bellows, and Hilary studied with Reginald Marsh. His line is a living thing—a vibrating, vibrant, virtuosic electric wire, elegantly delineating his ever-so-playful and ingeniously delightful wit.

I am so blessed. So honored to have moistened my soul in the font of American Art greatness.

It all began, as the best things do, with a book. My childhood friend Jenny Wylie and I would spend hours studying our "Eloise."

BOBBY VAN's

Years later, I met Hilary at Bobby Van’s. He presented me with a signed first edition containing a beautiful drawing of Eloise looking at a poster of me, captioned: "It is me - Eloise." My retinas and my heart melted. And we became friends. Very good friends.

You may ask, how does one live to be 100? My friends, the answer is simple: Do what you love. And Make Art.

Here are just a very few of the hundreds of drawings, posters, and designs Hilary has made of me over the decades. Now I am flying to LA to sing for my friend.

Here’s to 99 years of genius, and to the art of friendship.

HilaryKnight #Eloise #AmericanArt #Gershwin #Broadway #Cabaret #Illustration #Friendship #HappyBirthday #Halloween #phoebelegere #phoebe #cabaret

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Phoebe Legere Reflects on Los Angeles Fires & Friendship With Hilary Knight

From Phoebe Legere’s Facebook Page:

(follow Phoebe: https://www.facebook.com/PhoebeLegereInternational)

 

"Hilary Knight, America's Greatest Artist (98 years young) was evacuated to a hotel with his cat. His niece Lily Knight, the great actress, is in a hotel. I spoke to Lily last night. She fears the Altadena houses are gone. I stayed with Lily in Altadena in November. I was in Paradise! The house is surrounded by hundreds of heritage fruit trees & gorgeous flowers. Oh California! Land of Illusion! I walked in wonder around Altadena.

"I vowed to Hilary that I would move nearby, to a certain place I love in the Pacific Palisades.* Oh consuming flames! Spare my loved ones and their treasures. The Knight house in Altadena holds many, many priceless art works by Hilary, by his father Clayton Knight and his mother Kathryn Sturgis - a trio of magnificent American artists. The world around us is on fire, burning with anger and desire! --- 

"Here, Hilary Knight's cover of my #jazz album Ooh La La Coq Tail.

"IF YOU WANT TO HELP please volunteer and give generously:

World Central Kitchen https://wck.org/

World Central Kitchen, the nonprofit global food relief organization , is already on the ground in Southern California to aid first responders and evacuees. 'Our teams have mobilized across the region to provide immediate relief in the form of sandwiches and water.'

California Fire Foundation Wildfire & Disaster Relief 

Link to donation page: 

https://cpf.salsalabs.org/disasterrelief/index.html

Phoebe Legere & Her Magical ART LAB STUDIO

 

"My new studio overlooks the legendary Amster Yard of Pushpin Studio fame. Hilary Knight brought me into this beautiful garden landmark to show it to me. Ir is a shrine to the lost art of drawing."  ~~ Phoebe Legere

PHOEBE LEGERE ! HILARY KNIGHT! 6/21 ! Society of American Illustrators

And follow PHOEBE LEGERE on twitter @Legere
and on FACEBOOK https://www.facebook.com/phoebelegeremusic/

PHOEBE LEGERE Ooh La La Coq Tail CD

Download Phoebe Legere's Ooh La La Coq Tail CD Now! at http://phoebelegere.downloadsnow.net/ooh-la-la-coq-tail#.VfxsPFFrYzM.twitter

Unique and unclassifiable--Phoebe Legere is a true original. And she contains multitudes.

I caught her again, recently, at the jazz club Iridium, which is a base for her in New York. Appearing with some of the same first-rate musicians you'll hear on this album, she went over equally well with the crowd whether offering a jazz standard, an original, a French chanson or a sophisticated Cole Porter show tune. Some nights, she might offer club-goers a blues, Or simply improvise at the piano. When the spirit moves her, she can give forth with an age-old traditional Native American song, too. And whatever Phoebe Legere offers, it feels like it’s her--like it’s an integral, organic part of who she is.

In the years since Legere first emerged in the late 1980's, I got used to the fact that she was likely to turn up anywhere–from “CBS Sunday Morning” and the “Charlie Rose Show” to Penn & Teller’s “Sin City Spectacular”; from “Mondo New York” and “Toxic Avenger” films to “The Naked Brothers Band: The Movie” (which I've watched many times on DVD with some of my younger family members). She wrote and produced a musical, “Hello Mrs.President,” about the first female African-American President; R&B legend LaVern Baker starred in the premiere New York production. She’s composed an opera about the Native American holocaust called “The Queen of New England.” She’s written epic poems. She paints. And she’s made eleven CD’s.

Born into a musical family (on the Fourth of July), she started playing piano when she was just three, composed her first song at age six, began performing professionally at age nine, and sang with the Boston Symphony Orchestra at age 16. She has studied with John Lewis (of “Modern Jazz Quartet” fame), Ira Newborn, Morton Subotnick, Rich Shemaria, among others. And when it came time to make this album, she just went in and did it. Some albums nowadays are so thoroughly worked over by engineers and producers-- with so many edits, inserts, pitch corrections, adjustments to note placements, and so on–that they're almost as much the creation of those engineers and producers as of the recording artist; but this the real, unvarnished, unaltered, unedited, unprocessed sound of Phoebe Legere and friends. This really represents what you might hear if you go to see her “live.” Accompanying her on this CD are such leading players of their instruments as jazz stalwarts Warren Vache (cornet), Aaron Weinstein (violin), Warren Odze (drums), and Jon Burr (bass) , along with an indefatigable guitarist who loves working with Legere, whose stage name whimsically seems to change slightly every time I look; when he works with her he is sometimes billed as Elvis Sinatra, other times as Sultan Sinatra or some variant; the most recent time I saw Legere perform “live,” he was billed as Sinbad Sinatra. I don't ask. And finally, rounding out the list of artists contributing to this recording, we have on backup vocals Dae Bennett, one of Tony Bennett’s sons.

--Chip Deffaa, Jazz critic & author

LENA DUNHAM ~ GIRLS on HBO ~ SUNDANCE ~ PHOEBE LEGERE ~ HILARY KNIGHT

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