Cornelia Street Cafe Hosts Phil Fried, 3/22

Cornelia Street Cafe will host musician Phil Fried on Monday, March 22nd. Located between West 4th and Bleeker Streets, Cornelia Street Cafe was from the beginning an artists' café. Within a month there were poetry readings and music performances; and then a tiny play written for the café; and fiction writers; and Eskimo poetry; and puppeteers; and a living portrait of James Joyce; and the Four Quartets and the entire Iliad; and mime shows on the street outside the café; and comedians; and fairy tales and storytellers and Punch and Judy shows.

Over the years it has presented an enormous variety of artists, from singer-songwriter Suzanne Vega to poet-senator Eugene McCarthy, from members of Monty Python to members of the Royal Shakespeare Company. It has offered a performance home to the Songwriters Exchange, the Writers Room, the Writers Studio, the Greek-American Writers Association, the Italian-American Writers Association, the New Works Project/Theatre, and many others.

For more information, visit: http://www.corneliastreetcafe.com.

Mon Mar 22

8:30PM 21ST CENTURY SCHIZOID MUSIC PRESENTS: PHIL FRIED
(Phil Fried; Anna Brandsoy; Jill Dawe)
Phil Fried: composer, performer, improvisor, blogger, writer, humorist, educator - not necessarily in that order.
Phil comes from a noted musical family. His father, Louis Fried, was an original cast member in several Broadway shows including Brigadoon and Carousel. His cousin was the noted composer Isadore Freed. Second to music is Phil's passionate interest in literature. He has written several texts and librettos including the text for his opera, The Dungeon of Esmeralda, and an adaptation of Hemingway's short story, "The Snows of Kilimanjaro." In 2006 he received a Centennial Commission from the Minnesota Orchestra. He was a 2008 McKnight Foundation Fellow grantee. Most recently Phil became the composer in residence and core member for Opera Bob, a new music collaborative in Minnesota.

Mon Mar 22 6:00PM
HAPPY BIRTHDAY SHOLEM ALEICHEM

(Bel Kaufman, author of Up the Down Staircase; Isaiah Sheffer, artistic director of Symphony Space; George Guidall, a golden voice in the audiobook industry; Art Bailey, pianist and accordionist; Tanya Kalmanovitch, violist and violinist)
Tonight's occasion is the 150th birthday of one of the world's most beloved writers.
BEL KAUFMAN grew up in Russia, learned English at age twelve, and went on to a distinguished literary, academic, and teaching career. She has won many awards for her writing and public speaking, addressing educators and students here and abroad. She is the granddaughter of the celebrated Yiddish humorist Sholem Aleichem.