Stewart D’Arrietta
Saturday, 7 September at 7:00 pm
$45
Stewart D’Arrietta and his band, America’s Least Wanted, bring a blistering new show presenting some of the best of the American contemporary songbook, including songs by Tom Waits, Randy Newman and Leonard Cohen, as well D’Arrietta’s own from his solo fifth album, My Magnificent Narcotic.
With his trademark cyclonic musicality and irreverent growl, D’Arrietta and his band inhabit the underworld of the lyrical tragedies and the jocular narratives that explore the gamut of life between birth and death, loneliness, war, dreams, and our relationship with God.
He romps through the repertoire with his characteristic razor wire and whiskey vocal style, dark, laconic humour, and passionate performances. Beneath the roaring bluster, the sinewy strands of song weave poignant and compelling stories of love, lust and loss – D’Arrietta’s favourite themes. These are tunes that talk to each other!
The urban poet Waits, depicted the punks and hobos, the lost and invisibles of society, and could write love songs to shatter Cupid’s bow. So could Newman. So could Cohen. Only one of many musical conversations between the three – that of love. Religion too has a peek, with Newman, an Atheist Jew, Jewish wanderer Cohen, and the Catholic-shaped Waits, all bringing a critical spirituality to their songs.
D’Arrietta has a long relationship with the music of Tom Waits, and an affinity deeper than most with the ‘Cease and Desist’ order to prove it, once having to cancel his New York run of his hit show Tom Waits for No Man. He rewrote the entire show in days and maintained his run. His passion for the music is undiminished, enhanced by the years of creative, forensic interpretation. It was then that the roots of the America’s Least Wanted project first took hold. Subsequent stage shows My Leonard Cohen and Feeling Randy over the years further showcased D’Arrietta’s unique interpretive style, culminating now in America’s Least Wanted.
Featuring songs from the tough to the tender to the in-between, just a glance at the titles of is enough to give you an inkling of the grounds D’Arrietta explores, and with deft and devilish irony covers the terrain from tenderness to terror, and everything along the way.
Join D’Arrietta and band in a musical ode to the mysteries of life. A compelling show – legendary songs, magnificent musicians, an unforgettable night. Not to be missed!
America’s Least Wanted are:
Stewart D’Arrietta – Piano and Vocals
Tony Mitchell – Bass and Backing Vocals
Greg Henson – Drums
Danial Moore – Sousaphone, Trombone and Trumpet
About Stewart D’Arrietta
D’Arrietta is an award-winning composer and musical director having performed Australia-wide and internationally including touring festivals and theatres extensively in the UK, Montreal, Tokyo, New York, London, Czech Republic, Germany, Switzerland and Ireland.
A prolific composer and performer with five albums, five critically acclaimed live shows and dozens of composer, musical director, and producer credits, D’Arrietta is most recognised for Looking Through A Glass Onion, the John Lennon homage he co-created with John Waters in 1992 – one of the longest running, most successful shows in Australia.
Other credits include My Leonard Cohen with sold out shows at The Sydney Opera House, Edinburgh Fringe and Adelaide Fringe, The White Album Concert and Beatles Back to Back at the Sydney Opera House, Cafe Brel, the songs of Jaqcues Brel, Feeling Randy, an homage to Randy Newman, and the original musical Tuxedo and the Little Black Dress. He won Arts on Tour’s Drovers Award as MD and Producer for Jackie Weaver’s The Blonde, The Brunette and The Vengeful Redhead.
D’Arrietta co- created the musical Santango with Justin Fleming that played its premiere season in Las Vegas and soon followed up with the captivating Tom Waits For No Man, a one-man tour de force that premiered at The Soho Playhouse NYC, and was later performed under the name of Belly of a Drunken Piano. In New York, Variety called it ‘electrifying’, the Village Voice, ‘brechtacular’ and The New York Times credited its ‘rock solid emotion’. His homage played around the world including The Edinburgh Fringe in 2007, Montreal Jazz Festival and London Riverside Studios in 2008 and in 2018 was a smash hit at the Adelaide Fringe Festival garnering 5-star reviews.
