Concert will benefit Beacon exchange program
Ten years ago, singer and actor Kelly Ellenwood lost her voice after contracting whooping cough, an ironic twist because for four years she played the part of an opera prima donna who began singing like a frog in The Phantom of the Opera on Broadway.
To help regain the vocalizing, in 2016 she joined Stephen Clair (guitar) and Kathleen Bosman (violin, viola) to perform songs by German American composer Kurt Weill and French chanteuse Edith Piaf. On June 22, at 6 p.m., the Saint Rita trio (supported by Nate Allen and Brad Hubbard) will perform a program called Lost & Found at the Howland Cultural Center in Beacon featuring deep cuts and popular songs from the pair’s repertoire.
The show is a benefit for Beacon High School’s German American Partnership Program, established in 2022 with support from the German founders of the Beacon-based software firm Docuware. It brings foreign students to Beacon in October. On June 28, to complete the annual exchange, 18 Beacon teens and two teachers leave for Munich.
Ellenwood, known for getting things done around town, got the call and implemented the nuts and bolts with the Parent Teacher Student Organization. This year, with help from the U.S. State Department and the Goethe Institute in Manhattan, the school district took over responsibility for its administration.
Growing up in Nebraska, Ellenwood studied in Finland as an exchange student and aimed to be a diplomat, but the arts beckoned. There is no German language program at Beacon High School, she says, but “last year, a bunch of students, led by Skylar Clair, started a German study group and some of the kids are going this year, so this is changing lives.”
Rita, “patron saint of the impossible,” says Ellenwood, is also the name of a new 100-seat music venue at the KuBe Art Center that she and her family plan to open with trombonist Dick Griffin on July 19 in the former high school’s band room. Relevant to the concert, Piaf is said to have asked friends “to pray for Saint Rita, patron saint of lost causes” before her death from liver cancer in 1963 at age 47.
The June 22 show will include Piaf’s most popular song, “La Vie En Rose,” which sold 1 million discs in the U.S. when released as a single in 1947. After Mack David translated the lyrics into English in 1950, eight artists charted with it, including Bing Crosby and Louis Armstrong.
Weill fused pop and classical music and collaborated with Ogden Nash, Bertolt Brecht and Ira Gershwin, among others. His hits include “Mack the Knife,” “Bilbao Song” and “Alabama Song” (covered as “Whisky Bar” on the first album by The Doors). “We do a down-and-dirty version” of the latter, says Ellenwood, which is saying something because the song is about “prostitutes looking for the next trick — sex, drugs and rock ’n’ roll — in 1930.”
The Howland Cultural Center is located at 477 Main St. in Beacon. Tickets are $20 at dub.sh/saint-rita-show.
