Category Archives: Off The Air

Coral FM, Events, Off The Air

Michela Marino Lerman live from Small’s Jazz Club in New York on Coral FM

That’s Michela doin her Jazz Tappin thing at Small’s. Pic courtesy of The New York Times. Below Michela at Smalls. Pic by Coral

Michela Marino Lerman 001

 

 Michela first appeared on Sesame Street at the age of 5.  In February 2002 she was showcased on the cover of Dance Teacher magazine with Gregory Hines. In 2005, she was named by Dance Spirit magazine as one of the 20 hottest tap dancers under 20 and in 2008, Dance magazine named her as the only female tap dancer in its “25 to Watch in 2008.” Michela performs annual as part of Tap City (NYC Tap Dance Festival) and the Tap Extravaganza, and is the artistic director for Cobi Narita’s Tap Extravaganza Quens. She was born, raised, and continues to live in New York City.

She won first prize in the Harlem Jazz Dance Festival’s, “Hoofer’s Challenge” in both 2002 and 2003. In 2002, Michela performed with Jennifer Holliday on Broadway in Nothing Like A Dame and also in 21 Below at Town Hall. In 2003, she was inducted into the famed tap dance fraternity “The Copasetics” as their first and only female lifetime honorary member.  In 2004-2006, Michela toured Spain and Japan with Rafael Amargo’s Enramblao.  In the fall of 2005, her choreography was featured in the tap section of the opening number for the Bermuda Music Festival with UDP, starring Al Green, Angie Stone, and Patti LaBelle.

Michela began her touring career at the age of 14, when she travelled with the Cab Calloway Orchestra throughout the Northeast and Florida.  At the age of 19, she was commissioned by Dixon Place to create and direct her own show, entitled AM+bu$h+ED.2007 saw Michela tour Europe for 3 months as a lead dancer in the show Magic of the Dance.  In 2008-2009, she was featured in the show “Wonderland,” an all tap show set to Stevie Wonder’s music choreographed by Ayodele Casel and Sarah Savelli.

In 2008 she appeared on CBS’s Secret Talents of the Stars with Grammy award winning singer Mya, performing the choreography of Emmy award winner Jason Samuels Smith. From 2007-2008, Michela was a featured lead performer at NYC’s hottest nightclub, The Box. She also has performed with the Roy Hargrove Big Band and Quintet at the Jazz Gallery and the Village Vanguard.  Over the past several years, Michela has performed throughout the West Coast and in Germany, the Netherlands, Sweden, Greece, and Turkey in addition to tap festivals in Canada, New York, and Flint, Michigan.

The American Tap Dance Foundation commissioned Michela to produce and direct her second show, entitled Tapsploitation, which was presented a second time by HarlemStage. Recently she has been co-creator in forming the tap dance company The Tap Messengers who performed at the CareFusion Jazz Festival with Talib Kweli and Nicholas Payton with the Revive Da Live Big Band, Joe’s Pub, and HarlemStage opening for Marcus Strickland.  Her newest group is Sole Society, which has just debuted at Matthew Garrison’s ShapeShifter Lab in Brooklyn, collaborating with the Marcus Strickland Quartet, and appeared at the Harlem Jazz Shrines Festival with Revive Da Live. For the past 4 years, Michela has hosted the only weekly tap jam in NYC at Smalls Jazz Club, collaborating some of today’s most gifted young jazz musicians including Joe Sanders, Ben Williams, Justin Brown, Harold O’Neal, Sullivan Fortner, and Burniss Earl Travis, to name just a few.  Michela also hosts monthly tap jams at Fat Cat.

 Michela is grateful for the mentoring and guidance given to her by Buster Brown, Gregory Hines, and Leroy Myers. She has taught in numerous schools, studios, programs, and festivals throughout the globe. As a performer, teacher, director, and choreographer Michela is dedicated to spreading the art of tap around the world.

Michela was the first interview I did when I went down to New York. I met her at the legendary jazz club Smalls! in Greenwich Village.  Tap Jazz is cooolomundo! – Coral FM.

 

 

Coral FM, Off The Air

Coral FM at The Lee Strasberg Theatre & Film Institute on location in New York with MultiStages Artistic Director Lorca Peress

Lee Strasberg Institute New York. Pic by Coral
Lee Strasberg Institute New York. Pic by Coral

 

Strasberg New York 2 001

 

LORCA PERESS (President) is the Founder and Artistic Director of MultiStages, and an across-the-boards theatre artist specializing in new works. Ms. Peress’ diverse artistic background (primarily theatre, visual arts, dance, music and writing) led her to create MultiStages, a theatre company where artists from different disciplines would work together to produce extraordinary theatre. In her role as MultiStages Artistic Director, she has developed and produced all productions, readings and festivals, and supervised four New Works Contests. Ms. Peress has also conceived and directed the majority of MultiStages’ productions, and has acted in and designed puppets and masks for several. She is a native New Yorker, a Bennington College graduate, and did her professional study at the Lee Strasberg and Eugene O’Neill National Theatre Institutes (NTI). Her formative training was through several internships with Missouri Repertory and Stage West in Massachusetts, where she assisted directors Rae Allen (former Artistic Director of Stage West), Vincent Dowling (former Artistic Director of Alley Theatre, Dublin), and Harold Scott (Broadway and Regional director). At NTI, she also assisted writer Dale Wasserman in the O’Neill Playwriting Conference and worked with Theatre for the Deaf. In addition to her work with MultiStages, Ms. Peress has appeared or directed at Missouri Repertory, Stage West, The Walnut Street Theatre, Orlando Opera Co., The Century Theatre, Puerto Rican Traveling Theatre, Repertorio Español, Lambs Theatre, Dixon Place, Theatre for the New City, HERE, The Colleagues Theatre, La MaMa E.T.C., The Sackett Group’s Women’s Work Festivals, NYU Tisch, Teatro La Tea, Lee Strasberg Theatre & Film Institute, Hudson Guild Theatre, Access Theatre, the Players Club, and Latino Playwrights (Raul Julia founder). Ms. Peress has been a playwriting contest judge for Repertorio Español’s Nueces Voces I and II, the Ohio State Council on the Arts, La Mia Ink, Lee Strasberg One Act Contests, and the MultiStages New Works Contests. Ms. Peress has received an Inky Award from La MaMa Experimental Theatre Co. through the Harold and Mimi Steinberg Charitable Trust, numerous MultiStages producing grants, and several La Mia Ink! playwriting awards. She has served on the NYU Tisch School of the Arts Production Committee, Curator for NYU hotINK Festivals for Strasberg (2002–2010). She teaches in the NYU Strasberg Studio and at the Lee Strasberg Institute, and is a member of numerous theatrical Unions, and is the Co-President of the League of Professional Theatre Women. 

MultiStages website – http://www.eljallartsannex.com/multistages.htm


Lorca Peress from MultiStages at The Lee Strasberg Institute in New York City

 

Coral FM, New Music, Off The Air

An Interview with Dan Geddes from Vancouver’s Peace on Coral FM

Peace is Dan Geddes band located in Vancouver.
Peace is Dan Geddes band located in Vancouver.

Dan Geddes is a force, plain and simple. And despite the heaps of hella-high-praise references Peace receives — to Neu!, or Orange Juice, or Edwyn Collins, or whatever — there’s no substitute for experiencing their work via headphones. Peace shines not in virtuosity or violence (despite their ties to Vancouver’s explosive Emergency Room scene), but in their command of tone: The World Is Too Much With Us swaps the verbosity of Peace’s earlier work in favour of emotional dexterity, ranging from bombastic romancers (“Your Hand in Mine”), to menacing creepers (“Free Time”), to gleefully detached absurdist romps (“Kissed Dust”). It’s subtle, eloquent and direct — all of which is why I’m so obsessed. – Mark Teo. 

Dan has recently opened his own record store called Horse Records in Vancouver.  And Dan’s dad CBC Producer Ash Geddes is a good pal of mine and I saw Peace when they played in TO at The Magpie  a couple of years back.  That was fun!

Peace plays at The Magpie in Toronto. Pic by Coral
Peace plays at The Magpie in Toronto. Pic by Coral

 

Coral FM, Events, Off The Air

Paddy Gillard Bentley and Katharine Mills from Unhinged Festival of Disturbing Theatre on Coral FM

WRITE OR FLIGHT/WRITE OR FLIGHT RESPONSE

At midnight on Friday, November 16, these brave playwrights were taken to disturbing locations to write a disturbing 10-minute play in 24 hours. Isolated. Haunted. Creepy. Uneasy. Frightening. Paddy wants me to do this …. Gulp. Maybe someday….

Write of Flight Response
Write of Flight Response

 

Katharine Mills from Unhinged
Katharine Mills from Unhinged

KATHARINE MILLS is an actor, designer, writer and visual artist. She has appeared in multiple roles in KW’s annual site-specific urban theatre production, Asphalt Jungle Shorts. She is a partner in local experimental theatre company What!sInThere?! Productions; she performed in their productions of Copy Protection and Children’s Crusade, and acted as facilitator and stage manager for their recent Fringe production of Psy Co.’s Cross. Other recent appearances include JM Drama’s Tales of the Grimm, and Galt Little Theatre’s Queen Milli of Galt and, A Clean Breast, in UnHinged 12.

 

Paddy Gillard Bentley Artistic Director of Flush Ink Productions
Paddy Gillard Bentley Artistic Director of Flush Ink Productions

PADDY GILLARD-BENTLEY- playwright,director, producer & poet has had over 60 of her plays produced in USA, Canada, England & Ireland. Two of her plays are published. PGB is the founder and Artistic Director of Flush Ink Productions, past President of The International Centre for Women Playwrights and the Chair of The Coalition of Performing Artists (COPA).Paddy has also worked with MT Space, KW Youth Theatre & The Studio Players. PGB has been involved in theatre one way or another since her mother performed in Time Out for Ginger when four months pregnant with Paddy.

 For more (if you dare) – http://www.flushink.net/index.html

 

 

 

Coral FM, Events, Off The Air

Cast Members of KWMP’s Hairspray Visit Coral FM

 

The cast from KWMP's Hairspray
The cast from KWMP’s Hairspray

Kitchener • Centre in the Square • November 2012

Director: David Atkins
Music Director: Michael Brown
Choreographer: Janet Kubik

itchener Waterloo Musical Productionswas founded in 1948 as the Twin City Operatic Society. The early productions were performed in the auditorium at The Church of the Good Shepherd. As the performances grew and a larger space was needed, the stages at KCI and WCI fit the bill. In 1968, the group found a permanent home for rehearsing, set building and storage at its current location on Shaftsbury Drive and became Kitchener Waterloo Musical Productions.

Since then the group has been performing on stages around the Region.The highlight of each year is hitting the stage at Kitchener’s 2,200-seat, state-of-the-art theatre – the Centre in the Square. While many people in the region enjoy the shows presented at the theatre, KWMP is the only non-professional theatre company that provides performers the opportunity to “strut their stuff” on this glorious stage year after year. Behind the scenes, our Board of Directors – made up of dedicated multi-talented volunteers – is committed to our organization and the excellent productions that we give our community.

 

I had lots of fun chatting with Hairspray cast members Amber, Michela, and Reuben from the show. Brava you three.

 

Kive our community.

 

Coral FM, Events, Off The Air

Jesse Webber and Jack Pender of The Crazy Diamonds on Coral FM

Jeese Webber and Jack Drysdale Pender have become regulars on Coral FM – and we like to have Wild and Crazy Excellent Musical Adventures from Ja ck and Jesse Unplugged to playing all of our fave songs.

Jesse Webber and Jack Drysdale Pender dropped by the Sound FM studio to play some Pink Floyd Unplugged.

The Crazy Diamonds are a sparkling nine piece ensemble who (in addition to their eclectic choice of funkadelic, sweet soul song renditions and original works) also do The Pink Floyd Songbook proud every single time they have ventured to The Dark Side.

 

The Crazy Diamonds
The Crazy Diamonds

Special Thanx to J and J for Super Big Fun on the show this week. 
Shine on Boyos! – Coral FM.        

And the Crazy Diamonds are playing Elements Friday Aug 22. Jack and Jesse will be here once again Aug 20 for another Excellent Adventure.  Here is the complete series of interviews with my pals Jack and Jeese.