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Capathia Jenkins and Louis Rosen
in concert
One Ounce of Truth
hot, cool, irresistible and smart!
Louis Rosen is a handsome skinny white guy originally from Chicago’s Southside; Capathia Jenkins is a voluptuous, ravishing African American woman from Brooklyn who “grew up in Church”. She is also an in-demand jazz/pop vocalist, an award winning actress and a Broadway musical veteran. He is also a multi-award winning songwriter, guitarist, and performer, a Guggenheim fellow and noted theatre composer. Together they are an alchemical mix of two extraordinary artists who have come from very
different places to make great music.
Live in concert with Louis on guitar and their state-of-the-art New York back up, they are pushing the musical envelope to the sheer delight of audiences. Rosen’s original songs mix and merge traditional and contemporary jazz and blues, American roots and classic pop, with text-rich lyrics. Jenkins, a singer with a radiant voice, can soar, belt or melt to an intimacy of nuance and mood that goes right to the emotional core of any song.
Jenkins and Rosen have named their concert One Ounce of Truth, the title of their second collaborative album, One Ounce of Truth: The Nikki Giovanni Songs. The concert itself is anchored in songs based on the poetry of iconic African American writers Nikki Giovanni, Langston Hughes and Maya Angelou. “There’s a terrific use of imagery in the work of these poets, but their poems masterfully utilize the natural rhythms of our American speech,” says Rosen. “They all grew up listening to jazz, gospel and blues, and the sounds and rhythms of that music is in their poetry.” Woven throughout the concert are also songs from their critically acclaimed album South Side Stories which premiered live in concert at Chicago’s Steppenwolf Theatre as well as songs from their upcoming album, The Ache of Possibility.
With selections from their second album, One Ounce of Truth: The Nikki Giovanni Songs, Jenkins and Rosen offer up songs about life’s journey, insisting on the value of love and friendship, of art and memory, of raising children, and ultimately the acceptance of letting go of it all. “The Moon Shines Down” and “I Wrote a Good Omelet” come at love from different points of view, “You Were Gone,” in dark blues-soaked soul bemoans love lost even as Capathia’s performance suggests that she’ll live through it. “All I Gotta Do” is fierce stuff of sleepless nights shot through with sexual tension. “The Black Loom” is dazzling, a whirling conjure song about artistry and creating art on the loom inspired by the black experience. It’s a show stopper.
take a note and spin it around spin it around don’t prick your finger
take a note and spin it around
on the Black loom on the Black loom
careful baby
don’t prick your finger
from "The Black Loom" (Genie in the Jar: for Nina Simone) by Nikki Giovanni © 1996
Jenkins and Rosen evoke a cooler heat in their jazzy, blues-rich renditions of Langston Hughes’ poems. Whether it’s the exuberant “Harlem Night Song,” the tender “Lullaby For a Black Mother,” the ironically joyous “Life is Fine” or the heartbreaking “Song For Billie Holiday,” Jenkins and Rosen both honor Hughes and break new ground in songs that reveal what Hughes found in Harlem’s soul.
Do not speak of sorrow
With dust in her hair,
Or bits of dust in eyes
A chance wind blows there.
The sorrow that I speak of
Is dusted with despair.
from “Song for Billie Holiday” by Langston Hughes © 1949
Capathia’s interpretation of Angelou’s poems, a sassy collection of women who have life experience and edge, is lustrous and worldly wise. The bluesy acknowledgment of a woman being two-timed and the funny, sly menace of a woman putting the rival for her boyfriend’s attention on notice are balanced by “Phenomenal Woman”, a song with the sound and strut of total self confidence. Capathia and Angelou then slam on the breaks in “Alone,” a jazz-blues powerhouse of a song that makes no bones that life is hard.
Lying, thinking
Last night
How to find my soul a home
Where water is not thirsty
And bread loaf is not stone
I came up with one thing
And I don’t believe I’m wrong
That nobody,
But nobody
Can make it out here alone.
from “Alone” by Maya Angelou © 1975
Capathia Jenkins and Louis Rosen create and perform a concert hot, cool, irresistible and smart. It doesn’t get much better.
Capathia Jenkins Google News Alert:
'LOVE, LOSS, AND WHAT I WORE to Premiere Tonight, 9/21
Capathia Jenkins
biography
In addition to her work with Louis Rosen, Capathia Jenkins’ concert work includes recent appearances with the Cleveland Orchestra, Utah Symphony Orchestra, Minneapolis Orchestra, Wolf Trap, Michael Feinstein at Carnegie Hall, Alaska Symphony and the 92nd Street Y’s Lyrics and Lyricists series. On Broadway she has thrilled audiences and press alike with her show-stopping performances in Martin Short: Fame Becomes Me, the Tony-nominated musical Caroline, or Change; Frank Wildhorn’s The Civil War; and Bacharach and David’s The Look of Love. Her off-Broadway credits include a Drama Desk nomination for the one-woman show, (Mis)understanding Mammy: The Hattie McDaniel Story, and the revival of Godspell. National and European tours include Caroline, or Change, Dreamgirls and Bubblin’ Brown Sugar. She has also appeared in regional productions of Ain’t Misbehavin’ and Children of Eden, and on television in guest starring roles on “The Practice,” “Law & Order,” “Law & Order: SVU,” “Third Watch” and “The Sopranos.”
Louis Rosen
biography
Louis Rosen was awarded a 2005-2006 Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship in Music Composition. His song suites for the team of Jenkins and Rosen include One Ounce of Truth: The Nikki Giovanni Songs (PS Classics, released May 2008); South Side Stories (music and lyrics; RoseCap Records, released 2006); Twelve Songs on Poems by Maya Angelou; and Dream Suite: Songs in Jazz and Blues, on words by Langston Hughes. He has also composed It Is Still Dark: Songs of Exile for the singer Darius De Haas, on words by Celso Gonzalez-Falla. Louis’ theater compositions include two musical theater pieces: Book of the Night, (music & co-lyrics, Goodman Theatre, Chicago), and A Child’s Garden, (music and co-libretto, Melting Pot Theatre, off-Broadway). He is also the author The South Side: The Racial Transformation of an American Neighborhood, part memoir, part oral narrative, published by Ivan R. Dee. Inc., Chicago, in hardcover and cloth. Other awards include the Gilman & Gonzalez-Falla Musical Theater Award; an NEA New American Works grant; the Sloan Foundation’s Grand Galileo Prize; a 2006 Puffin Foundation Award;
a generous grant from the Anna Sosenko Trust; and numerous ASCAP awards.
performance history
The team of outstanding jazz/pop and Broadway vocalist Capathia Jenkins and award-winning songwriter/guitarist and arranger Louie Rosen released their second album, One Ounce of Truth: The Nikki Giovanni Songs (PS Classics) in May 2008 to wide and unanimous acclaim, including the all-important New York Times. Capathia, Louis and their septet launched the release with four concerts at The Public Theater’s Joe’s Pub, the success of which led to a three-concert engagement at the famed Iridium Jazz Club in New York City.
One Ounce of Truth is Rosen’s thirteen-song mix of jazz, blues, soul, classic pop and American roots music, with words by the world-renowned American poet, Nikki Giovanni (who was most recently chosen as one of Oprah Winfrey’s “25 Living Legends.”) Rosen and Jenkins co-produced the recording with their long-standing collaborator Scott Lehrer of Second Story Sound.
Jenkins and Rosen launched their unique, ongoing collaboration in New York City in March 2005 at The Public Theatre’s Joe’s Pub with two sold-out evenings of new songs by Rosen written specifically for Ms. Jenkins, the highlights being the highly praised world-premieres of Angelou Songs and Dream Suite: Songs in Jazz and Blues, on words by Langston Hughes, the first two of five album-length song sets that Jenkins and Rosen have premiered over the past four years, all penned by Rosen specifically for their collaboration.
The team soon followed with the November 2006 release of their debut recording, South Side Stories (RoseCap), a twelve-song suite, with Louis writing both music and lyrics. South Side Stories had its world premiere at the Steppenwolf Theater’s “Traffic” Festival of Music and Art, and its New York premiere at the Public Theater’s Joe’s Pub, and on both occasions received high and unanimous praise:
Capathia and Louis have made numerous nightclub and concert appearances over the course of their three years together, with highlights including three engagements at the legendary Manhattan nightclub, Birdland; Manhattan’s Metropolitan Room; concert appearances at the Great Hall of Cooper Union and the 92nd Street Y; performances at the Brooklyn Library’s Dweck Concert Hall (Grand Army Plaza), as well as Brooklyn’s new music venue The Old Stone House; their Chicago concert debut at the renowned Steppenwolf Theater; their Washington, D.C. dual concert debut at the Sixth Street and I Historic Synagogue and Theater J; and most memorably, their two-concert African debut at the Harare International Festival of the Arts in Zimbabwe in May 2008.
Their third album, The Ache of Possibility, is scheduled for release in November 2009 (Di-Tone Records). The release will be launched with a four-show engagement at what has become the team’s New York performing home, Joe’s Pub, on Sunday, November 8, Saturday, November 14, and Saturday and Sunday, November 21 and 22. The twelve tracks include eight new songs with music and lyrics by Louis, and four songs with music by Louis and words by Nikki Giovanni. These are songs of love and politics and choices; songs that capture something of the mood and spirit of the moment—The Ache of Possibility.
For more information, including audio and video clips, please visit www.myspace.com/jenkinsrosen, and the Jenkins/Rosen page at www.capathiajenkins.com.