01/16/2020
This January 18-19 and 23-25, the Cherry, located in Ithaca, is excited to host Apple:Tree, a mixed media “rolling cabaret” of song, art, and shifts in perspective. Acclaimed opera singer-turned-cabaret chanteuse Caitlin Mathes will sing a palette of music from Baudelaire to Brecht, from Piaf to Björk, paired with an immersive environment of her father (Al Mathes)’s visual art. The entire show surrounds an audience seated in rolling chairs, with performers and audience travelling around the space, encountering the art as the evening progresses. Apple:Tree grew out of Mathes’ admiration for her father’s work and the hope that the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.
Apple: Tree performs January 18, 19, 23, 24, and 25 at 8pm at the Cherry Artspace, 102 Cherry Street in Ithaca.
Caitlin Mathes is a maker and performer based in Ithaca. After winning the 2011 Lotte Lenya Competition (Kurt Weill Foundation), this singer-actress has been creating characters on the operatic stage, and making memorable evenings in the cabaret world. Some of her past shows have included Wild Weill’d West (a western themed Kurt Weill show) and Une Fleur Pas Mal (Baudelaire texts set to music by Léo Ferré.) Press on Ms. Mathes has been effusive:
“…mezzo-soprano Caitlin Mathes brought saucy charm and tonal muscle to the part”
— San Francisco Chronicle
“…the incredibly engaging Caitlin Mathes sang cabaret songs by Kurt Weill, Hans Eisler, Debussy and Satie, with all the moxie and deep-seated emotion of someone twice her age.”
— Peter Matthews (Feast of Music)
“Ms. Mathes’s gut-wrenching performance of Weill songs in English, German, and French penetrated deep into every heart and soul.”
— Coloratura (Portland Opera Guild)
The Cherry Artspace is Ithaca’s home for innovative performance: a fresh and flexible waterfront venue that opened in September 2017 on Cherry Street on the Cayuga Inlet. The Artspace hosts a wide range of artists in a variety of disciplines, administered by the not-for-profit Cherry Arts, Inc. The Cherry Arts centrally supports the work of the Cherry Artists’ Collective, a self-governing ensemble of locally-based professional artists, who develop new performance works that are radically local, radically international, and formally innovative.
