Two very different holiday programs are coming to LTV Studios in Wainscott this weekend, starting Friday evening at 7:30 when the East End Underground Live Concert Series, in association with the Art of Song, presents “Harmony for the Holidays With Duchess.”
Duchess is a New York-based vocal trio consisting of Amy Cervini, Hilary Gardner, and Melissa Stylianou, whose tight harmonies and jazz stylings earned them the 2021 Vocal Group of the Year award from the Jazz Journalists Association.
In a review of the group’s self-titled debut album, Bobby Reed of Downbeat wrote, “Each member of Duchess — Amy Cervini, Hilary Gardner, and Melissa Stylianou — has built an acclaimed solo career in New York City. Uniting their powers as Duchess, they become a vocal dynamo. The group’s effervescent style nods to the work of the Boswell Sisters, who added intricate, unexpected turns to their close-harmony singing in the 1930s.”
Duchess has released three albums and a holiday EP on Anzic Records and performed at jazz festivals and clubs throughout the U.S., Canada, Europe, and Israel, including with the Paul Taylor Dance Company at Lincoln Center.
The trio will be accompanied by Jane Hastay on piano and Peter Martin Weiss on bass. The director of music at East Hampton’s First Presbyterian Church, Ms. Hastay has played at the Blue Note, the Lenox Lounge, the Five Spot, the Kitano Hotel, and the New Haven Jazz Festival.
Mr. Weiss’s performance credits include playing with Nat Adderly, Ray Bryant, Randy Brecker, Frank Wess, Winard Harper, Michael Carvin, Lew Soloff, and Gloria Lynn. He and Ms. Hastay met while on tour in San Francisco and were married soon after.
Tickets are $25 in advance, $30 at the door, $55 for cafe table seating.
In a shift from music to humor, the Playwrights’ Theatre of East Hampton will bring “Scrooge . . . The Relapse,” a comic drama by John McCaffrey and Jack Gwaltney, to LTV on Saturday evening at 7:30.
In a profile in last week’s Star, Mr. McCaffrey said of Scrooge, “The ghosts showed him his folly and he comes out of it, but I think it’s a manic fit. It’s classic bipolarity, and in my little world, he comes out of it and he’s miserable again. He goes back to being miserable, and Marley comes back. He sends three new visions — he sends Sigmund Freud, Karl Marx, and Charles Darwin.”
Mr. Gwaltney directs the production, which stars Paul Hecht as Scrooge and Man; Raye Spielberg as Sigmund Freud and Woman; Brian Keane as Jacob Marley and Karl Marx, and Josh Gladstone as Bob Cratchit and Charles Darwin.
Tickets are $20 in advance, $25 at the door.
