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Cheryl Wheeler at University of Hartford
New England folksinger and songwriter Cheryl Wheeler will kick off the 2002 Music for a Change benefit concert series at the University of Hartford on Friday, September 13 at 7:30 p.m. in the University’s Millard Auditorium, Fuller Music Building, 200 Bloomfield Ave. in West Hartford. Tickets for this concert are $17, with the proceeds to benefit the Connecticut chapter of the National Organization for Women.
Singer-songwriter Kenny White will open the show, which is sponsored by the University’s Center for Community Service and WWUH (91.3 FM). Music for a Change brings national and local folk and acoustic artists to the campus, raising thousands of dollars from the proceeds for local charities.
If you have never seen Cheryl Wheeler in concert, you are missing a real gem of a performer. There are really two Cheryl Wheelers, and they are usually wrestling for control of the stage. There is the poet-Cheryl, writer of some of the prettiest, most alluring and intelligent ballads, and there is her evil twin, comic-Cheryl, a militant trend-defier and savagely funny social critic. As the two Cheryls merge on stage, Wheeler uses the combination of poet and comic to provide her audience with a most enjoyable and memorable show.
Wheeler was a regular on the Baltimore and Washington, DC folk scene before she took on the clubs in Newport, RI in the early 1970s. There she appeared with Tom Rush and Gordon Lightfoot and became a bass player in Jonathan Edwards’ group. Recognizing that Wheeler’s talents went far beyond bass guitar, Edwards became her mentor and producer.
Wheeler’s first full-length LP, Cheryl Wheeler, was released in 1986. Dan Seals took "Addicted" from that album and made it a number-one country hit, and Suzy Bogguss took "Aces" from the same LP to a Top 10 ranking. Following were a total of five more albums, including Mrs. Pinocci’s Guitar, which in 1996 shot up to number one for three weeks on the Gavin American charts. Wheeler has worked with a wide array of exceptional artists like Vince Gill, Pam Tillis, Janis Ian, Mary Chapin-Carpenter and Alison Krauss.
Sylvia Hotel, Wheeler’s most recent album, was released in 1999. It includes songs that are satirical in nature, as well as songs that ruminate about the state of our society and the woes of love. Full of bittersweet emotions, Wheeler’s song topics range from speaking out against gun violence to reminiscing about an absent lover while nursing a beer in a bar.
Kenny White’s debut CD, Uninvited Guest, released last year, has been 25 years in the making. During his long career in the music business, he has played keyboards on and arranged and produced records for Shawn Colvin, Marc Cohn, Peter Wolf, James Taylor, Emmylou Harris and the Neville Brothers. He wrote commercials for 12 years, and he has had a hand in scoring and songwriting for many films, including Message in a Bottle, Ed TV, Forces of Nature, and four John Sayles films.
For tickets, call the University box office at 860-768-4228, or 800-274-8587; or purchase them online at <www.hartford.edu/tickets>.
For more info about the Music for a Change concert series, call Irwin Nussbaum at 860-768-5026.
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