Here’s the review by  Jeremy Gerard in Bloombergnews.com about Capathia and Louis’s show at Joe’s Pub.

There are two more shows at Joe’s Pub:  Sunday November 5th and 12th,  7:30 p.m.  And to buy the CD, Southside Stories go to CDbaby.com

 
      
   
 
 
   
    Nov. 1 (Bloomberg) — Eight times a week, Capathia Jenkins
belts out a funny, show-stopping number late in Martin Short’s
Broadway show, “Fames Becomes Me.” But there’s more here. If
you want the thrill of discovering an enthralling new talent,
spend next Sunday evening at Joe’s Pub in Manhattan’s East
Village.         

Jenkins will knock you flat. Her gifts go well beyond
gospel-inflected roof-raising. I’ve never been so seduced by
music completely new to me yet as embraceable as any from the
classic American songbook.         

She is the muse to Chicago composer-lyricist Louis Rosen.
The two have already collaborated on a dozen poems by Maya
Angelou set to Rosen’s music. Now they have recorded his “South
Side Stories,” a song cycle that betrays influences as diverse
as Harold Arlen and Rickie Lee Jones. Yet what is so memorable
about this pairing is how unselfconscious and confident both are,
Rosen as composer and songsmith, Jenkins his joyous, hand-in-
glove interpreter.         

For an appetizer, she opens with Rosen’s exuberant scoring
of Langston Hughes’s equally exuberant “Harlem Night Song”:         

“Come/Let us roam the night together/Singing/I love you.”         

They follow with several songs from the Angelou cycle,
ranging from humorous (“Preacher, don’t send me/When I die/To
some big ghetto in the sky”) to “Poor Girl,” a torchy ballad
in the tradition of “My Man.”         

Intimate Lyrics         

The “South Side Stories” songs are scored in a more pop
idiom. Rosen, who accompanies on piano and guitar, has a James
Taylor-like talent for setting intimate lyrics over facile,
catchy melodies. This cycle includes numbers about the changing
social landscape of Chicago’s South Side; the first teen-love
song I can remember that ends not in tragedy but in enduring
friendship; the complicated relationship between parent and
child. The most beautiful number is the samba-inflected “The
Peace That Comes,” about the death of a father and the
ambivalent feelings engendered.         

Jenkins, 40, is at home with her audience (which included,
on opening night, Short, his show’s composer, Marc Shaiman, and
the entire cast and crew), speaking briefly and charmingly about
each song. In addition to Rosen, 51, her accompanists included
David Loud on piano and Dave Phillips on bass. Don’t miss this
show.         

Capathia Jenkins and Louis Rosen will appear at Joe’s Pub,
at the Public Theater, 425 Lafayette St., at 7 p.m. on Nov. 5 and
12. Tickets are $20 with a two-drink minimum; food is available.
Information: +1-212-239-6200 or       http://www.joespub.com            .         

(Jeremy Gerard is an editor for Bloomberg News. The opinions
expressed are his own.)         

To contact the writer on this story:
Jeremy Gerard in New York at
      jgerard2@bloomberg.net            .