Tap Dancer Michela Marino Lerman Brings Betty Carter to Jacob's Pillow

July 16–17, 5:30pm | Becket, MA

Jacob's Pillow presents Michela Marino Lerman's Steppin' with "The Kid": A Celebration of Betty Carter on the Henry J. Leir Stage on July 16 and 17, making its Jacob's Pillow debut. Lerman leads an ensemble of tap dancers and musicians, with acclaimed vocalist Charenee Wade stepping in to embody Carter's singular presence.

Lerman's biography in tap is as deep as the tradition itself. Born in Greenwich Village and drawn to tap at six years old, she found her most important teacher in 1997 when, at eleven, she attended her first Sunday-night tap jam at Swing 46, hosted by James "Buster" Brown—an 84-year-old rhythm-tap master who had danced with Duke Ellington and all the major swing bands and was the only dancer ever inducted into both the Copasetics and the Hoofers fraternities.

Brown became her mentor and grandfather figure, teaching her his signature works and, more importantly, pushing her to find her own voice. When Brown died in 2002, Gregory Hines stepped in, teaching her to breathe and to understand silence as equal to sound. When Hines died unexpectedly in 2003, LeRoy Myers of the Copasetics took over — and on June 12, 2003, inducted Lerman as a Lifetime Honorary Member of the Copasetics, making her only the second woman in the fraternity's history, founded in 1949 in memory of Bill "Bojangles" Robinson.

DownBeat Magazine has called her jazz's premier tap dancer; Quincy Jones called her "an absolute tap dancing star who knows her roots." She has performed at Jazz at Lincoln Center, Carnegie Hall, the Newport Jazz Festival, the Hollywood Bowl, the Whitney Museum, Mass MoCA, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and has collaborated with Wynton Marsalis, Esperanza Spalding, Jon Batiste, Roy Hargrove, Benny Golson, and Ravi Coltrane, among many others.

Betty Carter, nicknamed "The Kid" by Lionel Hampton when he hired her at 16, was one of the most uncompromising and harmonically adventurous jazz vocalists of the 20th century, known for radically reworking standards, bending time, and discovering and nurturing young musicians including Cyrus Chestnut, Mark Whitfield, and Jacky Terrasson. She ran her own label, Bet-Car Productions, for years when no major label would touch her. Charenee Wade, who steps into Carter's role for this performance, is a Grammy-nominated jazz singer and musician who studied at New England Conservatory and has performed and recorded with the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra, Wynton Marsalis, and Gregory Porter, among others.

Henry J. Leir Stage, Jacob's Pillow, 358 George Carter Rd., Becket, MA. Tickets at jacobspillow.org.