“OUR LOVE IS HERE TO STAY”:

The iconic North Bay legend, Holly Near, with Jan Martinelli and a pantheon of musical friends, will return to the stage on February 22 at 7PM at Ner Shalom’s New Cotati Cabaret, 85 LaPlaza, Cotati.

The concert will be a rare departure from Holly’s past Sonoma County performances, as she will be singing love songs, standards, and show tunes, and will be introducing new artists who will join her. In addition to well known pianist Jan Martinelli, other special guests will include Linda Hirschhorn, Francisco Herrera, Nancy Hayashibara , Ruby Skye Seidner, Mimi Pirard and Nancy Vogl.

The evening’s focus will be a musical guest of honor:  the Steinway Baby Grand piano donated to Ner Shalom, a piano that holds a family’s love and that survived the Holocaust. The concert will help fund the care of this piano, whose Ner Shalom classical program debut last May brought a record standing-room only crowd.

Holly Near brings to the stage a unique combination of highly trained vocal power, delightful humor and poetic reflection. For over 40 years, Holly has fused cabaret, folk and spoken word into a sound track for progressive thinking. Her powerful voice has creatively articulated the complexities of social change activism since the early seventies. With critical thinking as a major element in her songwriting, she has been a unifying force connecting the issues that so challenge the lives of activists, educators and community. Holly says, “Now that Pete Seeger, Odetta, Mary Travers, Maya Angelou, Ruby Dee and so many other elders have left us, artists of my generation are no longer elders in training. We are the elders.” 

Known for her stylistic range from Latin, Jazz and Funk to Blues and Folk, Jan Martinelli’s soulful approach to the bass can be heard on more than thirty CDs and albums. Jan was an original member of the Bay Area’s popular Wild Mango, a seven-piece World Jazz ensemble. She appeared on the cover of Southwest’s Inflight Magazine Spirit, in a feature article in Women & Jazz, and has played major jazz festivals such as Aspen, Barbados, Monterey, San Francisco and the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. Jan is currently a member of several Bay Area bands has been touring with Holly Near since 2012.

The piano that will share the stage with Holly, Jan, and friends has become a cause célèbre and is an ongoing element in Ner Shalom’s revival as an intimate concert venue in the historic building known in the 80s as the Cotati Cabaret. The Cabaret featured famous and soon-to-be famous singers and bands that included Janis Joplin, Jerry Garcia, Santana, Huey Lewis, Tower of Power, John Lee Hooker, Arlo Guthrie, Neil Young, Rita Coolidge, and Randy Newman.

Tickets are $30; VIP tickets are $40. To purchase tickets, click here or call Ner Shalom at (707) 664-8622.