Lisa Simone is feelin’ good about her new Australian tour
Jazz singer and Broadway star Lisa Simone will return to South Australia a year after her “dazzling” performance at last year’s Adelaide Cabaret Festival.
Her Majesty’s Theatre will host American jazz royalty when Lisa Simone returns to town in July.
After impressing audiences at last year’s Adelaide Cabaret Festival Lisa Simone is heading back to Australia this year for a one-night-only show. The only daughter of the jazz icon and “high priestess of soul” Nina Simone, Lisa has carved out an impressive musical career of her own from Broadway to the international jazz scene with starring roles in Rent, The Lion King, and Les Miserables, along with a Grammy-nominated stint performing with Liquid Soul.
“In 2021, I walked away from performing and everything associated with entertainment because I felt no joy,” Simone tells InReview. “In 2023, upon landing in Australia every aspect of the experience, both on and offstage, was joyful. It is this feeling that inspires me to return to Australia.”
In June 2024 InReview’s Shannon Pearce praised Simone’s “dazzling” performance at the Festival Theatre, which “highlight[ed] how these songs hold the jazz histories that are often forgotten by audiences here in Australia who are so far culturally removed from the suffering that laid the path for jazz music”.
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While last year’s show Keeper of the Flame celebrated the songs and legacies made famous by her late mother, this time around Simone promises a night of storytelling, music and new material — with a new band, the ‘All-Star Quartet’ behind her. But fans of the Simone dynasty can also expect to hear Lisa’s spin on the musical heirlooms like ‘I Put a Spell on You’, ‘Feelin’ Good’, and ‘Mississippi Goddam’.
“Adelaide left such a lasting impression I actually requested to return this year,” Simone says.
Lisa Simone will perform at Her Majesty’s Theatre on Saturday July 26, tickets on sale now