Talking With Dee Dee Bridgewater – January 3, 2019 - a podcast by Talk About Las Vegas with Ira

This week, Ira spoke with Dee Dee Bridgewater.



Grammy and Tony Award-winner Dee Dee Bridgewater is performing at Aliante Casino and Hotel January 12.In this 30-minute episode of Talk About Las Vegas, Bridgewater talks about her life in music; how she never made any career decisions because her life just happened; touring as a financial reality if you are a jazz artist; emotion in jazz; why music can unite; and the influence of her father, getting her involved in music as a child when she expressed interest; and why she doesn’t do anything if it doesn’t bring her joy.



Bridgewater’s career has always bridged musical genres. She earned her first professional experience as a member of the legendary Thad Jones/Mel Louis Big Band, and throughout the 70’s she performed with such jazz notables as Max Roach, Sonny Rollins, Dexter Gordon and Dizzy Gillespie. After a foray into the pop world during the 1980s, she relocated to Paris and began to turn her attention back to Jazz.Bridgewater also pursued a parallel career in musical theater, winning a Tony Award for her role as “Glinda” in The Wiz in 1975. Having completed a run as the lead role of Billie Holiday in the off-Broadway production of Lady Day, her other theatrical credits include Sophisticated Ladies, Black Ballad, Carmen, Cabaret and the Off-Broadway and West End Productions of Lady Day, for which Bridgewater received the British Laurence Olivier Nomination for Best Actress in a Musical.



She was the recipient of an NEA Jazz Masters Fellows Award with honors bestowed at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C.http://www.aliantegaming.com



http://www.deedeebridgewater.com

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