Nellie McKay

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This performance may contain adult language and themes.

Sister Orchid marks Nellie McKay’s seventh label release in just thirty-one years. Her previous albums, all of which have been reasonably well received, are My Weekly Reader, Get Away from Me, Pretty Little Head, Obligatory Villagers, Home Sweet Mobile Home, and Normal as Blueberry Pie (A Tribute to Doris Day).

On Broadway, she won a Theatre World Award for Outstanding Debut Performance for her portrayal of Polly Peachum in The Threepenny Opera. She also cocreated and starred in the award-winning Off-Broadway hit Old Hats and has written and produced musical biographies around a compelling gallery of ladies, from environmental pioneer Rachel Carson to the convicted murderer and underdog Barbara Graham. Most recently, she wrote, produced, and performed solo in The Big Molinsky: Considering Joan Rivers and in A Girl Named Bill: The Life and Times of Billy Tipton, a mid-century, cross-dressing jazz bandleader, which the New York Times named one of the best concerts of 2014.

McKay’s big-screen work includes roles in P.S. I Love You and Downtown Express. She also contributed movie music to Rumor Has It, Monster-in-Law, Gasland, Last Holiday, and Private Life. In the world of television, her music has been heard on Mad Men, Boardwalk Empire, Weeds, Grey’s Anatomy, NCIS, Nurse Jackie, and SMILF. She has appeared on TV shows, such as The Late Show with David Letterman, Conan, Ferguson, and The View, and performed in numerous radio programs on NPR’s Mountain Stage, A Prairie Home Companion, eTown, and Marion McPartland’s Piano Jazz. The Chase Brock Experience, a dance company based in Brooklyn, New York, produced a ballet of her album Obligatory Villagers, and her writing has appeared in the Onion, Interview, and the New York Times Book Review.

A renegade songwriter with an ultra-flexible Great American Songbook sensibility

—Rolling Stone

Funny and touching, ceaselessly clever and scarily talented

—New Yorker

One of America’s great eccentric musical treasures delivers it all with uncanny sass, diverse musicality and a big wink.

—Star Tribune