“Two singer-songwriters sit on the edge of a cliff…”

With these words, we are drawn into the world of Both Sides Now – a theatrical concert that explores the music and lives of long-time friends and one-time lovers, Joni Mitchell and Leonard Cohen. Created by, and starring Robbie Schaefer and Danielle Wertz, the cabaret-style performance traverses decades alongside songs such as A Case of You, Hallelujah, Big Yellow Taxi, Suzanne, and many more. Both Sides Now is at once a piece of the 60’s and 70’s, and of right now — offering us a story about the messiness of being human, of lives persistently lived at the edge of growth, and of finding the courage to turn toward one another, again and again.

Artist Bios:

Robbie Schaefer

Robbie is a rabbi, singer-songwriter and theatre/film artist. The guitarist and songwriter for the indie folk band Eddie From Ohio has several solo releases as well, including the 2023 single Under the Sun.

He is the founder of Lamplighters, an online community that cultivates small-batch, relationship-driven, inclusive Judaism.

He is also the founder of OneVoice, an international non-profit that unites and empowers youth through music and the creative arts. The organization was active from 2011-2023 and completed projects in Tanzania, Nicaragua, India, Greece, and Israel.

Robbie has shared the stage with Jason Mraz, Sara Bareilles, Josh Groban, Keb ‘ Mo, and Emmylou Harris, among others. His first work for musical theater, Light Years, which explores his relationship with his father, a Holocaust survivor, saw its world premiere at the Tony Award-winning Signature Theatre in 2018. The musical is now a feature film entitled Burst The Silence (Rolling Pictures), which is due for release on streaming platforms in 2025.

He is currently at work on a new musical, The Blue Poppy, an Irish-Jewish ghost story written in collaboration with Scottish playwright Grace Barnes, and Songs From The Wilderness, a new album of Jewish musical midrash (interpretation), due for release in early 2026. 

Also, he likes olives. A lot. 

Danielle Wertz

Danielle is a storyteller, collaborator, jazz musician, composer and arranger. Described as, “untarnished by the politics of music” (Jazz Music Archives) and “a masterful ballad interpreter” (New York City Jazz Record) she has rapidly gained national acclaim.

After being named a 2015 Thelonious Monk International Jazz Vocals Competition semi-finalist, Danielle independently released her debut album, Intertwined, which ranked #4 on Capital Bop’s list of “Best DC Jazz Albums of 2017.” That same year she placed 2nd in the Ella Fitzgerald Jazz Vocal Competition and 3rd in the Mid-Atlantic Jazz Vocal Competition.

In 2023 Danielle released her sophomore album, Other Side. With this project she made a quantum leap as a composer and conceptualist. Reimagined and rewritten during the pandemic, the album pairs her original compositions with carefully crafted arrangements of standards from the Great American Songbook. Jazziz called the album “expressive and polished” and Jazz Weekly noticed a “Joni Mitchell’d tenderness to her material.” Danielle continues to be an avid collaborator internationally and as a member of the NYC jazz scene, and is looking forward to headlining her first European tour in 2025.

Also, she loves chocolate. A lot.

Join us for a rare double bill with Patty Griffin and Rickie Lee Jones, two of America’s most distinctive and celebrated singer-songwriters.

Patty Griffin is among the most consequential singer-songwriters of her generation, a quintessentially American artist whose wide-ranging canon incisively explores the intimate moments and universal emotions that bind us together.

Over two decades, the 2x GRAMMY® Award winner – and 7x nominee – and Americana Music Association Lifetime Achievement award winner, has crafted a remarkable body of work in progress that prompted the New York Times to hail her for “[writing] cameo-carved
songs that create complete emotional portraits of specific people…[her] songs have independent lives that continue in your head when the music ends.”

2019 saw the acclaimed release of the renowned artist’s GRAMMY® Award-winning 10th studio recording, PATTY GRIFFIN. One of the most deeply personal recordings of Griffin’s remarkable two-decade career and first-ever eponymous LP, PATTY GRIFFIN made a top 5 debut on Billboard’s “Independent Albums” chart amidst unprecedented worldwide acclaim, and later, a prestigious GRAMMY® Award for “Best Folk Album.”

Griffin’s new album, CROWN OF ROSES, is a deeply personal and introspective work that explores themes of identity, nature, family, and womanhood. Emerging from a creative drought during the pandemic, Griffin found herself re-evaluating the stories she’d long told herself. The result is an eight-track collection that is both sparse and emotionally rich, blending folk, Americana, and blues. With CROWN OF ROSES, Griffin offers a record that’s both grounded and transcendent — one that invites listeners to release old narratives, embrace new truths, and stay truly alive while they’re here. Having crafted a rich catalog that chronicles love and death, heartache and joy, connection and detachment, Patty Griffin continues to push her art forward, as always imbuing every effort with compassion and craft, uncanny perception, and ever-increasing ingenuity.

Rickie Lee Jones is an American musician and storyteller who has been inspiring pop culture for decades, beginning with her first two seminal albums, Rickie Lee Jones and Pirates. Named the “premiere song-stylist and songwriter of her generation” (New Yorker), the two-time Grammy winner will release her first all jazz album in April 2023, produced by Russ Titelman. In 2021, Jones released her celebrated memoir Last Chance Texaco, named Book of the Year by MOJO and a Best Book of the Year at Pitchfork and NPR. The Independent writes, “There has always been something defiant about Rickie Lee Jones . . . a voice from a dream, elusive yet familiar, transcendent, a messenger from another place.”

Following critically acclaimed sell-out runs at The Edinburgh Fringe Festival, Adelaide Fringe, and sold-out shows in the UK and the US, The Carole King & James Taylor Story comes to a theatre near you. Taking you on an incredible journey through the careers of the six-time Grammy Award winner, twenty-time platinum hit maker Carole King, five-time Grammy Award winner, and American folk legend James Taylor, this is a show not to be missed.

Featuring passionate renditions of Fire and Rain, Sweet Baby James, I Feel the Earth Move, Natural Woman, You’ve Got a Friend, and many more, this astonishing back catalogue is realised with authenticity by Phoebe Katis and Dan Clews, both well-established artists in their own right.

“Dan Clews is too great a talent to ignore”Sir George Martin
“sent chills down my spine”***** The Upside News
“Will leave any folk-rock fans wholly satisfied”**** BroadwayBaby
“Wow, what an experience”BBC Radio
“performance was immaculate”**** Three Weeks