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John Kelly in Paved Paradise Redux
Saturday, January 24: 8 PM
Sunday, January 25: 3 PM
"...there's really only one word for the way Kelly plays with a famous, complicated persona and with our own ideas of the person behind the mask. It's genius." - Louise Kennedy, The Boston Globe
"...though there are countless [Joni Mitchell] imitators... few have managed to capture her essence. The one exception may be the performance artist John Kelly, who, incidentally, treats Mitchell's songs with the same reverence that a soprano would a Mozart aria. Hartford is extraordinarily lucky to get the rare chance of seeing Kelly perform as Joni Mitchell in Paved Paradise at Real Art Ways." - John Adamian, Hartford Advocate
John Kelly doesn't imitate Joni Mitchell, he channels her. Paved Paradise returns to Real Art Ways for three performances of a show that the New York Times calls "alternatively worshipful and uproarious."
John Kelly first inhabited Mitchell’s persona at Wigstock festival in 1985. Since then, his loving homage has captivated audiences, including Joni Mitchell herself:
I felt like I was Huck Finn attending his own funeral or Jimmy Stewart in that movie where the angel walks him back through his life. I was braced for a lampooning, and I didn't expect to be so touched. - Joni Mitchell
Artists Zeccha Esquibel (as Georgia O’Keefe on synthesizer and piano) and Blake Newman (as Vincent Van Gogh on bass) will join Kelly onstage.
Tickets:
$26/$22 members
Box Office:
1/23: opens at 6 PM (theater doors open at 7:30 PM)
1/24: opens at 6 PM (theater doors open at 7:30 PM)
1/25: opens at 1 PM (theater doors open at 2:30 PM)
Ticket holders will be placed on a "will call" list, and can check in the day of the concert as soon as the box office opens. All tickets are general admission (there are no seating assignments).