When Storm Large came to Club Hancher last year, she blew the doors off the place, so Hancher is taking the tempest outside this Friday night, September 6, for a free concert on the Hancher Green.
It’s one fall Storm you’ll be happy to be drenched in.
Bursting onto the scene in 2006’s Rock Star: Supernova and then forging her own eclectic career, Large is a force of nature. From jazz standards to driving rock ballads, Large can do it all.
Storm spent the ’90s singing in clubs throughout San Francisco. Tired of the club scene, she moved to Portland to pursue a new career as a chef, but a last-minute cancellation in 2002 at the Portland club Dante’s turned into a standing Wednesday night engagement for Storm and her new band, the Balls. It wasn’t long before Storm had a cult-like following in Portland, and a renewed singing career that was soon to be launched onto the international stage.
Highlights of the 2017-18 season included debuts with the San Francisco, Pittsburgh, Phoenix, Vancouver, Jacksonville, and RTÉ National Symphonies, as well as return engagements with the Houston, Toronto, and Toledo Symphonies. Storm and her band, Le Bonheur, continue to tour concert halls across the country. The 2016-17 season included debuts with the Atlanta, Baltimore, and BBC Symphony Orchestras, and the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, as well as return engagements with National Symphony Orchestra and Detroit Symphony Orchestra.
Other recent highlights include engagements with the New York Pops, Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, Louisville Orchestra, Memphis Symphony, and the Knights, as well as performances at the Grant Park Music Festival in Chicago. She joined Michael Feinstein as special guest on the Jazz at Lincoln Center Popular Song series, as well as with Liza Minnelli, Joel Grey, and the Pasadena Pops.
Storm made her debut as guest vocalist with the band Pink Martini in April 2011, singing four sold-out concerts with the National Symphony Orchestra at the Kennedy Center in Washington, DC. She continues to perform with the band, touring nationally and internationally, and she was featured on their CD, Get Happy. Storm has also sung with Grammy winner k.d. lang, pianist Kirill Gerstein, punk rocker John Doe, singer-songwriter Rufus Wainwright, and Rock and Roll Hall of Famer George Clinton.
She debuted with the Oregon Symphony in 2010, and has returned for sold out performances each year thereafter. Storm made her Carnegie Hall debut in 2013, singing Weill’s Seven Deadly Sins with the Detroit Symphony as part of the Spring for Music festival. The NY Times called her “sensational,” and the classical music world instantly had a new star.
In 2007, Storm starred in Portland Center Stage’s production of Cabaret with Wade McCollum. The show was a smash hit, earning Large glowing reviews. Her next endeavor, the autobiographical musical memoir, Crazy Enough, played to packed houses in 2009 during its unprecedented 21-week sold-out run in Portland. Storm went on to perform a cabaret version of the show to critical acclaim at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, Adelaide Festival in Australia, and Joe’s Pub in New York. Her memoir, Crazy Enough, was released by Simon and Schuster in 2012, named Oprah’s Book of the Week, and awarded the 2013 Oregon Book Award for Creative Nonfiction.
Storm is featured in Rid of Me, a film by Portlander James Westby, starring Katie O’Grady and Theresa Russell. In 2010, she starred at the Mark Taper Forum with Katey Sagal and Michael McKean in Jerry Zak’s production of Harps and Angels, a musical featuring the work of Randy Newman.
In the fall of 2014, Storm & Le Bonheur released a record designed to capture their sublime and subversive interpretations of the American Songbook. Entitled simply Le Bonheur and released on Pink Martini’s Heinz Records, the recording is a collection of tortured and titillating love songs: beautiful, familiar, yet twisted … much like the lady herself.
Showtime on Friday, September 6, on the Hancher Green is 7 p.m. No tickets are required.