The Seven Deadly Sins

Saturday, March 22, 2025 | 7:30pm

Sunday, March 23, 2025 | 3:00pm

Concert Duration: Approximately 100 minutes

The Granada Theatre

Learn More About this Program

Digital Program: Coming Soon

Program Notes: Coming Soon

The Artists

Nir Kabaretti, conductor

Storm Large, vocalist

The Hudson Shad Quartet

Repertoire

Ibert | Divertissement

Still | Seven Little Pieces from The Black Belt

Jessie Montgomery | Strum

Weill / Brecht | The Seven Deadly Sins

*Program content and concert dates may be subject to change: check our website for regular updates.

Although the six-man ensemble Hudson Shad (five singers and a pianist) debuted officially in 1992, their nucleus formed in 1977 when three of them made their Carnegie Hall debuts as soloists in Penderecki’s Magnificat. In 1989, Susan Feldman of St.Ann’s Warehouse in Brooklyn asked bass Wilbur Pauley to contract a quartet to perform as The Family in Kurt Weill’s “Seven Deadly Sins” with Marianne Faithfull. The result was favorable.

Over the last three decades, the Hudson Shad quartet has likely racked up more performances as The Family than any other group in history. They have played in almost 70 different locations, from Arezzo to Zagreb, numbering well over 100 performances worldwide. They have staged the work in a double bill with Weill’s “Der Lindbergflug” at the Macerata Festival. They have thrice recorded the work; with Kurt Masur and the NYPhil; with Ms.Faithfull, Dennis Russell Davies and the RSO-Wien; and with Storm Large and the Oregon Symphony under Carlos Kalmar. In 2008, Hudson Shad participated in the Carnegie Hall premiere of the work, with Ute Lemper and the Toronto Symphony.

In 1995, Hudson Shad debuted in Germany at the Bar Jeder Vernunft in Berlin with their show Singing Comedian Harmonies. This well-received revue played hundreds of shows all over Germany in venues such as Prinzregententheater, Deutsche Oper, Semper Oper and Friedrichstadtpalast. Hudson Shad developed five other shows, including a Weill Abend and a Christmas show featuring the Sylvester evergreen Dinner For One. In 1999, Hudson Shad was featured on Broadway in a musical tribute to the Comedian Harmonists entitled “Band In Berlin”.

Other orchestra appearances by Hudson Shad have featured more Weill: “Kleine Mahagonny” with St.Paul Chamber Orchestra; and “Aufstieg und Fall der Stadt Mahagonny” at the Salzburg Festival. They have performed Schubert orchestral works with men’s voices at the NYPhil, and they sang Schubert songs in the Reger orchestrations with the Bruckner Orchestra in Linz. Hudson Shad debuted as Wild Things with the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra in Oliver Knussen’s “Where The Wild Things Are”, conducted by the composer. They have developed their own English translation of Stravinsky’s “Renard” and have performed it with Charles Dutoit at the Miyazaki Festival and at the Saratoga Performing Arts Center. They performed Philip Glass’ “Fall of the House of Usher” with the Calgary Philharmonic Orchestra, and they sang as the Barbershop Quartet in “The Music Man” with the Cincinnati Pops Orchestra.

Recent 2019 engagements included Sins with the Buffalo Symphony Orchestra in January; the Oregon Symphony in May; and the Shanghai Symphony, with Ms.Lemper and Mo.Dutoit, in July. Also this past July, they made their Tanglewood Festival debut with pianist Jeremy Denk and violinist Stefan Jackiw on a program of the violin sonatas of Charles Ives.
These performances with Kammerakademie Potsdam are Hudson Shad’s first performances of the Sins in Germany, as well as their fifteenth collaboration with Ms.Lemper. The members of Hudson Shad singing this tour are: Mark Bleeke, tenor; Timothy Leigh Evans, tenor; Eric Edlund, baritone; and Peter Becker, bass/baritone.

Storm Large: musician, actor, playwright, author, awesome. She shot to national prominence in 2006 as a finalist on the CBS show Rock Star: Supernova, where despite having been eliminated in the week before the finale, Storm built a fan base that follows her around the world to this day. She was seen on the 2021 season of America’s Got Talent.

Storm spent the 90s singing in clubs throughout San Francisco. Tired of the club scene, she moved to Portland to pursue a new career as a chef, but a last-minute cancellation in 2002 at the Portland club “Dante’s” turned into a standing Wednesday night engagement for Storm and her new band, The Balls. It wasn’t long before Storm had a cult-like following in Portland, and a renewed singing career that was soon to be launched onto the international stage.

In the 18-19 season, Storm performed her one-woman autobiographical musical memoir Crazy Enough at La Jolla Music Society and Portland Center Stage, celebrating the show’s tenth anniversary. Recent engagements include debuts with the Philly Pops, members of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, and the Seattle Symphony, as well as return engagements with the Houston, Detroit, Toronto, and BBC Symphonies; the New York Pops; and the Louisville Orchestra, with whom she recorded the 2017 album All In. Storm continues to tour concert halls across the country with her band Le Bonheur and as a special guest on Michael Feinstein’s Shaken & Stirred tour. Alongside Liza Minnelli and Joel Grey, Storm joined Michael Feinstein as a special guest with the Pasadena Pops.

Storm made her debut as a guest vocalist with the band Pink Martini in April 2011, singing four sold-out concerts with the National Symphony Orchestra at the Kennedy Center in Washington, DC. She continues to perform with the band, touring nationally and internationally, and she is featured on their album Get Happy. Storm has also sung with Grammy winner k.d. lang, pianist Kirill Gerstein, punk rocker John Doe, singer/songwriter Rufus Wainwright, and Rock and Roll Hall of Famer George Clinton.

She debuted with the Oregon Symphony in 2010 and has returned for sold-out performances each year thereafter. Storm made her Carnegie Hall debut in 2013, singing Weill’s Seven Deadly Sins with the Detroit Symphony as part of the Spring for Music Festival. The NY Times called her “sensational,” and the classical music world instantly had a new star.

In 2007, Storm starred in Portland Center Stage’s production of Cabaret with Wade McCollum. The show was a smash hit, earning Large glowing reviews. Her next endeavor, the musical memoir Crazy Enough, played to packed houses in 2009 during its unprecedented 21-week sold-out run in Portland. Storm went on to perform a cabaret version of the show to critical acclaim at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, Adelaide Festival in Australia, and Joe’s Pub in New York. Her memoir, Crazy Enough, was released by Simon and Schuster in 2012, named Oprah’s Book of the Week, and awarded the 2013 Oregon Book Award for Creative Nonfiction.

Storm is featured in Rid of Me, a film by Portlander James Westby, starring Katie O’Grady and Theresa Russell. In 2010, she starred at the Mark Taper Forum with Katey Sagal and Michael McKean in Jerry Zak’s production of Harps and Angels, a musical featuring the work of Randy Newman.

In the fall of 2014, Storm & Le Bonheur released a record designed to capture their sublime and subversive interpretations of the American Songbook. Entitled simply Le Bonheur and released on Pink Martini’s Heinz Records, the recording is a collection of tortured and titillating love songs: beautiful, familiar, yet twisted … much like the lady herself.

The Seven Deadly Sins