Two artists with very different performance styles are showcased in two completely opposite venues Sunday. Both play confidently to the beats of their inner muses and, as they sing and strum, each is enormously comfortable in his skin.
Tom Wopat, known to television viewers in the late 1970s through the mid-1980s as handsome star Luke Duke of “The Dukes of Hazzard,” turns to a first and early love.
“I am first and foremost a singer,” he said, taking a rehearsal break to talk about his critically acclaimed cabaret show, Love Swings, which is showcased at the 2,000-seat concert hall of the Music Center at Strathmore. “Ninety percent of the time I’m doing Broadway shows and touring with my band.”
Wopat, who starred in “Annie Get Your Gun,” “Chicago” and “42nd Street” on Broadway, finds his singing tour a welcome respite from the eight-shows-a-week schedule in New York. He notes that his traveling quartet, comprised of piano, drum, bass and saxophone players, makes “my work much easier by the experience and talent of those around me.”
In his 75-minute show, Wopat performs a couple of songs on guitar, some Judy Collins and Beatles tunes — all, he says, with jazz arrangements. Acknowledging a fairly eclectic taste in music, he calls himself “a saloon singer a la what Sinatra used to do,” and though the show has little narrative, there’s a musical cohesiveness.
“If there’s anything that really ties the show together, it’s that I feel extremely comfortable with the material that I do,” he continued. “I will share personal things with the audience, what some of the songs really mean to me and why we do them.”
If you go
Tom Wopat in Love Swings
Where: The Music Center at Strathmore, 5301 Tuckerman Lane, North Bethesda
When: 2 p.m. Sunday
Info: $26 to $66; 301-581-5100; strathmore.org
Stanley Jordan on Guitar
Where: Blues Alley Jazz Supper Club, 1073 Wisconsin Ave. NW
When: 8 and 10 p.m. Sunday
Info: $25; 202-337-4141; bluesalley.com
Over at Blues Alley, Grammy-nominated guitar virtuoso Stanley Jordan continues proving himself as a forward-thinking innovator. Classically trained in piano, theory and composition at Princeton University, Jordan calls himself “a multistylist who approaches music in a jazzy way.” He uses his “touch” or “tap” musical technique on solo guitar to connect with audiences through songs that aurally illustrate unifying truths about man’s relationship to nature and humankind. “The technique I’ve developed allows me to bring piano music to the guitar,” he said, adding he will play the slow movement of Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 21 on solo guitar in what he considers the most comfortable and intimate of venues.
“I’ve been playing Blues Alley for 25 years,” he said. “I love the atmosphere; it’s become like a second home in a way.”
