Also this issue: Momma Drama David Wise channels his grandmas into a show with everything and the kitchen sink. -Debra Auspitz Trio with Brio -David Shengold Get Lost -Toby Zinman Street Smart -David Anthony Fox Q&A with Merián Soto -Interview by Deni Kasrel Cry Havoc -Toby Zinman PROK -David Anthony Fox Tied with Strings Edward Said and Daniel Barenboim ponder music’s place in the world. -Andrew Ervin

January 23-29, 2003

artpicks

Jazz It Up

Few live performers know more about the weight of a legacy than Chris Calloway. A jazz singer for 20 years, she was first introduced to the public on account of her name: Her father, Big Band leader and scatter Cab Calloway, brought her onstage during an appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show in 1966. In the decades that followed, she launched a career performing with his Hi-De-Ho Orchestra, still attached, she says, to the "musical legacy" of her father and his phenomenally talented sister, Blanche Calloway, but also wrestling to branch out towards acting and musical roles: She first hit Broadway in David Merrick's notable production of Hello, Dolly!

Now Calloway has taken on the legacy of Billie Holiday in Lanie Robertson's Lady Day at Emerson's Bar and Grill, which comes to the Bristol Riverside Theatre this week. As the show explores the redeeming force of music throughout Holiday's lifetime, such a neat twist of casting should elicit a performance that draws on Calloway's own remembrance that growing up in the house of the blues, even with success, can be a challenging formative experience.

Lady Day at Emerson’s Bar and Grill, Jan. 28-Feb. 5, $32-$39, Bristol Riverside Theatre, 120 Radcliffe St., Bristol, 215-785-0100.

—Juliet Fletcher