{"id":29650,"date":"2021-07-15T23:28:28","date_gmt":"2021-07-16T03:28:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/?p=29650"},"modified":"2021-07-15T23:54:22","modified_gmt":"2021-07-16T03:54:22","slug":"natural-women-excited-to-be-part-of-concerts-in-the-park-series","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/natural-women-excited-to-be-part-of-concerts-in-the-park-series\/","title":{"rendered":"\u201cNatural Women\u201d excited to be part of Concerts in the Park series"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Lockdown after lockdown has taken its toll on live music. Musicians who often thrive in front of a real audience have had to make do with virtual venues, but as things begin opening back up, they are looking forward to finding their audience again.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Natural Women, a tribute to music icons Aretha Franklin, Gladys Knight and Chaka Khan, is thrilled to appear before Town Park audiences next Wednesday, July 22, as part of Aurora\u2019s Concerts in the Park Summer Series.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Fronted by Jillian Mendez, Natural Women was founded about two-and-a-half years ago and, as such, had a limited window to perform for crowds before the pandemic hit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt\u2019s fantastic that we finally have an opportunity to play for an audience that we don\u2019t have to imagine in our minds,\u201d says musical director Bryan Humphreys, who will also appear at the bandshell on drums. \u201cNatural Women [celebrates] three of the most influential female artists in the soul and R&B genre. It\u2019s highlights from their careers, going right back to the early stages up to and including some more recent hits that they have had. It\u2019s kind of like a retrospective in a way. We\u2019re focusing on those singers in particular because you don\u2019t often hear people doing shows where they\u2019re featuring those three women in particular, especially Gladys Knight. We feel that she is maybe the unsung hero, if there is such a thing among those three.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As they look ahead to the concert, Mr. Humphreys says he wants the concert to be a bit of a break from the challenging realities of our new normal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI want audiences to leave feeling they have gone back in time to the extent that they just forget about anything to do with lockdowns, emergency declarations and anything like that,\u201d he says. \u201cWe want to transport them away from all that, even if it means having to be in your chair most of the time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe\u2019re really anxious just to get out there and play and feel that relationship between the band and audience because it has been a while since the group has had a chance to do this. We\u2019re dying for that. It has just been so long since we\u2019ve had an opportunity that this is going to be great.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To be a part of it, pre-registration for a space at Town Park is required and this can be done by visiting aurora.ca\/summerconcerts. Showtime is 7 p.m.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

By Brock Weir<\/strong>
Editor
Local Journalism Initiative Reporter<\/em><\/p>\n\r\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Lockdown after lockdown has taken its toll on live music. Musicians who often thrive in front of a real audience have had to make do with virtual venues, but as things begin opening back up, they are looking forward to finding their audience again. Natural Women, a tribute to music icons Aretha Franklin, Gladys Knight […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4,5,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-29650","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general_news","category-news","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3D2k4-7Ie","publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-04-14 13:36:29","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29650","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=29650"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29650\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29650"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29650"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29650"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}