Arts & Entertainment
Billy Porter teams with Idina Menzel to record a holiday classic
As Christmas approaches every year, it always comes with the anticipation (and maybe also the dread) of the next glittery, fabulous new Holiday single to be dropped by a pop music star.
This season has already brought us Sam Smith’s rendition of Donna Summer’s classic “I Feel Love” (okay, not exactly a Christmas song, but coupled with those Target holiday commercials it seems as festive as “Jingle Bells”), but the winner might just have landed under our trees courtesy of not one, but two of Broadway’s brightest lights.
Tony-winning stage superstars Idina Menzel and Billy Porter joined their considerable forces to record a duet of the Irving Berlin-penned wintertime standard, “I’ve Got My Love to Keep Me Warm.” The also-Emmy-winning star of “Pose” and the voice of Elsa in Disney’s mega-hit “Frozen” (and the new Disney mega-hit, “Frozen 2”), who both performed last Thursday in Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, posted a video for the classic tune in which they put both their spectacular talents on full display.
The video opens with Menzel thawing out, Elsa-style, a frost-covered group of holiday-dressed dancers, who proceed to make merry around her as she delivers her rendition of the song. Then she turns things over to Porter, who has his own set of festive frolickers to accompany him as he takes his own smoking-hot turn through it. The pair then joins together for a duet on a third and final go-round of the tune that is sure to have even the Grinchiest among us feeling their tiny little hearts growing three sizes larger.
The track is featured on Menzel’s new album, “Christmas: A Season of Love,” on which she also performs duets with Ariana Grande, her husband Aaron Lohr, and fellow Broadway veteran and “Frozen” franchise alum. You can find those tracks, along with the rest of the album, on Spotify and Apple Music right now.
Porter is set to join Menzel onstage for a December 11 concert at New York’s Carnegie Hall. They will also appear together in the upcoming new film version of “Cinderella,” coming sometime in 2020.
“I’ve Got My Love to Keep Me Warm” was penned by Berlin – who was also the man behind “White Christmas” – in 1937, when it debuted in the Broadway show, “On the Avenue,” and it is considered part of “The Great American Songbook.” Many popular singers have covered it on hit recordings, perhaps most notably jazz by greats Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong with their duet version on the 1957 album, “Ella and Louis.”
Celebrity News
Madonna announces release date for new album
‘Confessions II’ marks return to the dance floor
Pop icon Madonna on Wednesday announced that her 15th studio album will be released on July 3.
Titled “Confessions II,” the new album is a sequel to 2005’s “Confessions on a Dance Floor,” an Abba and disco-infused hit.
The new album reunites Madonna with producer Stuart Price, who also helmed the original “Confessions” album. It’s her first album of new material since 2019’s “Madame X.”
“We must dance, celebrate, and pray with our bodies,” Madonna said in a press release. “These are things that we’ve been doing for thousands of years — they really are spiritual practices. After all, the dance floor is a ritualistic space. It’s a place where you connect — with your wounds, with your fragility. To rave is an art. It’s about pushing your limits and connecting to a community of like-minded people,” continued the statement. “Sound, light, and vibration reshape our perceptions. Pulling us into a trance-like state. The repetition of the bass, we don’t just hear it but we feel it. Altering our consciousness and dissolving ego and time.”
Denali (@denalifoxx) of “RuPaul’s Drag Race” performed at Pitchers DC on April 9 for the Thirst Trap Thursday drag show. Other performers included Cake Pop!, Brooke N Hymen, Stacy Monique-Max and Silver Ware Sidora.
(Washington Blade photos by Michael Key)
Arts & Entertainment
In an act of artistic defiance, Baltimore Center Stage stays focused on DEI
‘Maybe it’s a triple-down’
By LESLIE GRAY STREETER | I’m always tickled when people complain about artists “going political.” The inherent nature of art, of creation and free expression, is political. This becomes obvious when entire governments try to threaten it out of existence, like in 2025, when the brand-new presidential administration demanded organizations halt so-called diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) programming or risk federal funding.
Baltimore Center Stage’s response? A resounding and hearty “Nah.” A year later, they’re still doubling down on diversity.
“Maybe it’s a triple-down,” said Ken-Matt Martin, the theater’s producing director, chuckling.
The rest of this article can be found on the Baltimore Banner’s website.
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