By Helen Bezuneh
Special to the AFRO
hbezuneh@afro.com
GoGo Symphony, a musical group that celebrates go-go music in the genre’s birthplace of D.C., is hosting “T’was the Night,” a classical jazz holiday show at 8:00 p.m. on Dec. 22. The Union Stage performance will combine the sounds of classical symphony music and Go-go music, but this time with a holiday twist.
“We’re going to have some Christmas songs, a lot of fun and partying,” said Liza Figueroa Kravinsky, founder and composer of GoGo Symphony from Arlington, Va. “It’s a kid-friendly event. Just expect a lot of go-go beats and a lot of strings and flutes and horns on top of that. We have Dee Dee as the MC and there’s going to be a lot of call and response with the crowd.”
“I composed most of the original music and arranged one of the Christmas songs,” she added. “I’ll be playing the violin and maybe shaking some jingle bells here and there, dancing around the stage.”
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In the words of the group’s website, GoGo Symphony has been performing “symphonies you can dance to” since 2012, when Kravinsky founded the group.
“I was raised on classical music,” Kravinsky told the AFRO. “But then I started playing in go-go bands, and you know how go-go puts anything over the go-go beat and makes it go-go. That’s what I did with classical music.”
The GoGo Symphony has been working hard in preparation for the holiday show, ensuring attendees will enjoy the lively performances.
“We’ve been rehearsing since September,” said Kravinsky. “We had to write some special arrangements of Christmas music in the GoGo Symphony format. We have new costumes, we have some decorations, we’re just trying to make it as festive as possible.”
William “Juju” House, principal drummer of GoGo Symphony from D.C., will perform a couple of songs with the symphony at the concert. The show will also feature a spotlight on House, who has toured with numerous renowned musicians such as Roberta Flack, Chaka Khan, Salt n’ Pepa and Luther Vandross.
“It’s going to be a really, really great show,” House told the AFRO. “I’m coming in doing a couple of Christmas songs performed by Chuck Brown.”
“The first part of the show that I’m going to be doing with Dee Dee, it’s going to be a Christmas jazz set, like the Erykah Badu type,” he added. “It’s truly going to be really nice, it’s going to be different, totally different than what you normally see from a symphony.”
Eucrita D. Willis, who goes by Ms. Cxree or Dee Dee, is the creative artistic director and manager of GoGo Symphony. Willis, a performing arts teacher from Newport News, Va., sings and dances with the symphony. She has toured with major artists, some of which include Shirley Murdock, Nephew Tommy, Damion Hall and David Peaston.
“We always like to have fun at GoGo Symphony shows. It’s an educational platform for youth, for families, from young to old, where they can actually hear some classical music that is intertwined with the D.C. sound of go-go and experience a whole collaboration of different genres.” Willis told the AFRO. “We’re doing some of our throwback music that we’ve had for some time with a little mixture of our new Christmas songs that were written and produced by our conductor.”
“We’ve done shows around the holidays for other venues and other people, but this is our first official holiday show,” she added. “Come prepared to have a good time and listen to some of the traditional, classical that we, even myself, grew up on as kids.”
The holiday show will also feature a raffle prize. Tickets for the show can be found on unionstage.com, the link for which is on gogosymphony.com.
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