SATURDAY, AUGUST 20, 2011
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| Artbeat Live!
While using both hands and multiple brushes, Elliott begins an explosive performance – throwing paint, challenging the audience, sometimes carefully painting red lips on the canvas, or rapidly making a blue and purple background to finish a painting.
Elliott’s paintings of famous rock icons, public figures, celebrities and commissioned portraits are choreographed to a musical experience. The paintings are created on a 4 foot by 5 foot black canvas, taking the audience through an exciting musical journey, and finally creating a likeness of the subject in a matter of minutes.
Elliott has taken performace art and made it his own with a unique musical, visual and painting style, unveiling the energy and passion of his subjects. Elliott conveys one compelling message to his audiences.
"Everything is possible when you paint out of the box, especially with your hands!"
-- Elliot From
www.artbeatlive.com
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| 7th Heaven
24 YEARS PLAYING THE LOCAL SCENE? 250 BOOKINGS A YEAR? Life long friends committed to leaving it all out on the stage, NTD Records recording artists 7th Heaven boasts these and other incredible accomplishments. The lead singer, winner of the British TV version of American Idol known as Pop Stars, was brought in straight from Northern Ireland. He owns a gold disc on Jive records. The band has set attendance records at major night clubs across the tri-state region. Record sales nearing 30,000 units sold and digital offerings are available on iTUNES, Amazon, and such. This is the premier Chicago festival act according to prominent talent buyers in Illinois. The critically acclaimed website "Barstar" refers to 7th Heaven as one of the 3 best bands in Chicago. (They couldn't or wouldn't pick just one.) 30 songs in 30 minutes. Believe it can't be done? WATCH! Dead on renditions of Def Lepard, The Beatles, Bon Jovi, Journey and even U2 are delivered at a frenetic pace driving audiences to literally be dancing in the streets. Musicianship, theatrics, and that unmistakable Irish brogue fuel original songs that came straight from the radio play-list. Are you a Cubs fan? Listen for 7th Heaven all summer long during telecasts and you will hear their current smash hit "This Summer's Gonna Last Forever". How about you Bulls fans? 7th Heaven performed the National Anthem at the United Center before the Bulls/Lakers game which was televised worldwide. This is the band your neighbors will be buzzing about for the rest of the summer. While the festivals only last a short time, for 7th Heaven's fans, old and new a like, they will remember the experience of seeing and hearing them now because, as their song says - THIS SUMMER'S GONNA LAST FOREVER!
www.7thheavenband.com
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| The Downhome Sophisticates
Reanimating musical favorites with invigorating new arrangements is the specialty of The Downhome Sophisticates, a band with an uncommon ability of polishing and presenting familiar tunes as gleaming new masterpieces. How does one musical unit manage to capture the spirit and intensity of such diverse performers as Johnny Cash, Cole Porter, Bob Marley, Bruce Springsteen, Hoagy Carmichael and blues belter Big Joe Williams and still retain the authentic sound of each wholly different artist? In the case of The Sophisticates, a five-piece musical chameleon, the springboard for achieving such an authoritative musical mosaic can be traced directly to insightful taste, experience and musicianship of the band’s accomplished members.
David Dallison (vocals, rhythm guitar), Chris Sipos (vocals, lead guitar), Patrick Reninger (harmonica), Bill Taylor (bass) and Greg Diethrich (drums), are a tight unit of veteran virtuosos, fully capable of delivering in performance just what the group’s name implies. The group's refreshing reworkings of nearly-forgotten classics are a constant surprise, as the band walks a musically entertaining tightrope of old and new with the cool confidence of a Wallenda during each performance. You might hear a slow-burning Billie Holliday or Nat King Cole torch song followed by one of the band's specialties, a frenzied Chris Sipos guitar-driven gypsy number, borne of Tom Waits. Then with the next offering, the band completely reinvents itself again in a display of prestidigitation that takes place 20 or 30 times a night.
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| Howard Levy's Acoustic Express
Taking its shape from the famous acoustic swing bands featuring Django Reinhardt and Stephane Grappelli, this quartet is Howard’s latest musical venture. It features Howard on harmonica with two guitarists: Chris Siebold and Pat Fleming, and Larry Kohut on bass. It’s all Acoustic- no amps, sometimes no monitor speakers or PA. Because of the perfect balance between the instruments, the band has performed with no amplification at all in
smaller rooms.
Pat uses a Dell Arte guitar that resembles in look and sound the guitars played by Django. Chris uses National Steel or Dobro-type guitars with steel resonators embedded in the top. Together, the two guitarists achieve a unique sonic blend. Larry (one of the most in-demand bassists in Chicago who tours with artists like Kenny Werner, Lynne Arriale, and Vinnie Colaiuta) plays acoustic bass. Howard, of course, plays harmonica, sometimes using the coffee mug for his patented trombone plunger-mute sound. He also plays occasional hand percussion.
Stylistically, the music ranges from early Jazz and swing tunes like “Nuages”, “Lady be Good”, and Jelly Roll Morton’s “Sidewalk Blues”, through Delta Blues, Beatles and Dylan tunes, Eastern European and Middle Eastern music, Yiddish Songs, Bluegrass, Brasilian music- no stylistic limits, but always unity of sound. There are some original compositions as well, and all four musicians are featured as soloists.
www.levyland.com
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