Top Shelf Classics to Perform Tribute to Aretha Franklin and Gladys Knight

Boxcar Theatre announces a two-night engagement with Top Shelf Classics, a Bay Area band specializing in Motown music from the 60s, plus old school soul, funk and R&B favorites from the 70s and beyond. Inside Boxcar's intimate Palace Theater, they will perform a musical revue in honor of Aretha Franklin, Gladys Knight and Marvin Gaye. Performances start at 8 p.m. Friday and Saturday, November 8 - 9. Tickets, $37 - $63, are now on sale at boxcartheatre.org/top-shelf-classics.

Under the direction of LaDonna Trotman, Top Shelf Classics has for more than 15 years toured nationally and internationally with legends including the Temptations, Smokey Robinson and the Chi-lites, among many others. The band's distinguished ensemble includes lead guitarist Neil Stallings. Before joining Top Shelf, he shared the stage with King Floyd, The Four Tops and Sly Stone.

Jimmy James Page performs on keyboards and vocals. The two-time winner of the West Coast Songwriters' Song of the Year Award has performed with Lydia Pense and Cold Blood, the Dynatones, as well as Martha Reeves and the Vandellas. For years he was also a member of the national touring company of American Jukebox.

Additional instrumentalists include Michael Harper on bass, Lorenzo Hawkins on keyboards, and Rick Bailey on drums. The band's vocalists include Michael E. Clewlis, Wanda Diamond, Olaf J. Pollard and Calvin Tillery, who has performed with Santana, Boz Scagg and Rick James, among others.

For more information about Top Shelf Classics visit boxcartheatre.org/top-shelf-classics.

Boxcar Theatre was co-founded in 2005 by Nick A. Olivero, and has produced over 60 plays and musicals including Hedwig and the Angry Inch, Little Shop of Horrors, Clue, three Tennessee Williams plays in repertory and four Sam Shepard plays in repertory. It has also been the home for such companies as Crowded Fire and the Neo-Futurists as well as dozens of other emerging groups over the years. In 2007 the company opened its first venue, the Boxcar Playhouse in San Francisco's SoMa district, and in 2010 their second space, the Boxcar Studios in the Tenderloin. The company is currently located in The Palace Theater which opened in 2016.

Boxcar's marquee show, The Speakeasy, reopened in its current form in fall 2016. "An intoxicating delight," (San Francisco Chronicle), "Period perfect," (San Francisco Examiner), "A voyeur's playland" (San Francisco magazine), and "An extraordinary night out," (Frommer's) are among the rave reviews it has received. After a remarkable run of approximately 425 performances before an audience of more than 72,000 attendees, The Speakeasy will finally close on August 4.

Photo Credit: Joel Clifton

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