St. Cecilia Music Center (SCMC) will present folk artist Aimee Mann in concert on Thursday, February 29, 2024 on the Acoustic Café Folk Series. After several albums with ’Til Tuesday, Mann began her solo career in 1993 with the album Whatever and made a name for herself through her independent success and the founding of her record label, SuperEgo Records. Along the way, Mann forged a powerful new sound driven by her distinctive singing style—stripped-down, folky, acoustic but also forceful and cerebral, exploring psychological themes with dark wit and an eye for the world’s ugliest power plays. She has appeared on many film soundtracks, most notably the score for Paul Thomas Anderson’s Magnolia, with “Save Me” landing her Academy Award and Golden Globe nominations for Best Original Song. Mann has also made numerous cameo appearances in films such as The Big Lebowski and TV shows like Portlandia and The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story, in which she sang an indelible cover of The Cars’ song “Drive.”
Executive & Artistic Director of SCMC Cathy Holbrook says, “We are thrilled to bring Aimee Mann to St. Cecilia Music Center on the Acoustic Café Folk Series for our 140th anniversary season. Aimee has just released her newest album “Queens of The Summer Hotel” on her own SuperEgo Records, with great reviews from The New York Times and other music media outlets. We are delighted that she has selected St. Cecilia Music Center in Grand Rapids as one of her tour destinations that include multiple performances at Los Angeles’ Largo at the Coronet and New York’s City Winery. We just can’t wait to meet her on February 29th for this very special concert evening!”
Tickets for Aimee Mann will go on sale Friday, October 20, 2023, at 10 a.m. at scmcgr.org or by calling 616-459-2224. A section tickets are $75, B section are $60 and C section tickets are $45. There is a $4 ticket fee per ticket.
75 VIP tickets for Aimee Mann will be sold at $165 pp and will include the following benefits:
- One premium reserved ticket in the first 15 rows
- An Invitation to a private pre-show soundcheck performance with Aimee Mann performing songs that will not be performed during the regular concert
- A limited edition cartoon booklet drawn by Aimee Mann
- A commemorative Aimee Mann tour laminate
- Merchandise shopping opportunity before doors open to the public??
- $10 coupon for merc shopping at the February 29th concert
- Merchandise shopping opportunity before doors open to the public
- Early entry into the venue
Reviews
NPR Music named her “one of the top 10 living songwriters” alongside the likes of Paul McCartney, Bob Dylan and Bruce Springsteen. Her last solo album won her some of the best reviews of a storied career. Paste opined: “She is innately tuned into our fragility and resilience. Like the Velvet Underground’s Nico, she’s our mirror. Through her songs, she reflects life as it so often is—a contorted, gasping mess—but somehow she still finds beauty in its imperfection.”
Britain’s Independent called Charmer “(2012) another sweet viper’s bite of post-Freudian dyspepsia from the singer-songwriter who loves to mistrust.” Or, as the New York Times wrote, “The sugarcoated poison pill is a reliable device for Aimee Mann, a singer-songwriter given to ravaging implication and dispassionate affect… That it all goes down so easily seems like a sneaky way to make a point.”
Aimee Mann Bio
Queens of The Summer Hotel, the new album from Aimee Mann, is out now via her own SuperEgo Records.
The new music continues to receive critical praise:
“The theatrical prompt puts good use to Mann’s more maudlin songwriting instincts and gives her occasion to indulge in lush orchestrations.”—The New York Times
“Queens of the Summer Hotel is nearly flawless.”—No Depression
In support of the new release, Mann confirms a select run of headlining tour dates this fall and winter. Kicking off on November 13, the shows include multiple performances at Los Angeles’ Largo at the Coronet and New York’s City Winery.
Mann started developing the new music in 2018 when she agreed to write songs for a stage adaptation of Girl, Interrupted, Susannah Kaysen’s memoir about her psychiatric hospitalization in the late 1960s. It was material that Mann understood well, having had her own struggles with mental illness. The resulting music comes together in Queens of The Summer Hotel.
In many ways Queens of The Summer Hotel is the unintentional part two to Mann’s 2017’s Grammy-winning album Mental Illness, both exploring themes of self-harm, depression, and suicide. However, Queens of The Summer Hotelwas written more quickly than any of Mann’s previous records. The assignment to write songs for someone else’s project offered Mann a sense of liberation, freeing her to enter another person’s consciousness and story—and a brand-new set of musical structures—through the lens of Kaysen’s own alienation. Although several different characters narrate the songs, they’re not strictly tied to any narrative. But together, they form a portrait of one woman’s crisis of disassociation as seen through another woman’s eyes.
After several albums with ’Til Tuesday, Mann began her solo career in 1993 with the album Whatever and made a name for herself through her independent success and the founding of her record label, SuperEgo Records. Along the way, Mann forged a powerful new sound driven by her distinctive singing style—stripped-down, folky, acoustic but also forceful and cerebral, exploring psychological themes with dark wit and an eye for the world’s ugliest power plays.
In 2017, Mann released her acclaimed album Mental Illness, which won Best Folk Album at the 60th Annual Grammy Awards. The New York Times proclaimed, “Mental Illness wallows in its troubles, and it’s an exquisite wallow,” while the Los Angeles Times declared “Every doomed syllable is sacred and every tragic rhyme fits, as though each song were a puzzle to which only Mann knows the solution.”
In addition to her solo albums, she has appeared on many film soundtracks, most notably the score for Paul Thomas Anderson’s Magnolia, with “Save Me” landing her Academy Award and Golden Globe nominations for Best Original Song. Mann has also made numerous cameo appearances in films such as The Big Lebowski and TV shows like Portlandia and The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story, in which she sang an indelible cover of The Cars’ song “Drive.” Other extracurricular activities include performing for President Obama and the First Lady at the White House and starting a Podcast with Ted Leo called “The Art of Process.”
For more about Aimee Mann see aimeemann.com.
TICKETS
Aimee Mann
- Thursday, February 29, 2024
- VIP tickets $165
- A section $75
- B section $60
- C section $45
Season Subscription Tickets for 2023-2024 Spectacular Jazz Series and Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center Series are now available online at www.scmcgr.org or by calling 616-459-2224. Detailed information for all concerts can be viewed at www.scmcgr.org.
**Ticket prices: There is a $7 fee on each subscription ticket. Single tickets have a $4.00 per ticket fee. All concerts start at 7:30pm.
