Next Stage Arts Project and Twilight Music present contemporary folk singer/songwriters Cheryl Wheeler and Kenny White at Next Stage.

It has always seemed as if there were two Cheryl Wheelers, with fans of the New England songwriter relishing watching the two tussle for control of the microphone. There is poet-Cheryl, writer of some of the prettiest, most alluring and intelligent ballads on the modern folk scene. And there is her evil twin, comic-Cheryl, a militant trend defier and savagely funny social critic. As the poet and comic forces join, taking their separate turns and melding into the same artistic vision, Wheeler emerges as a delightful, gifted and openhearted performer.

Poet-Cheryl writes achingly honest songs of love and loss. Contrasting the prosaic landscapes of her native small-town America with the hopelessly rootless life of the traveling performer, she touches the common chords with any who feel the tug between our busy, noisome times and the timeless longing for simplicity and silence. Her deceptively plain-spun songs have been hits for such mainstream stars as Suzy Bogguss and Dan Seals, and have been recorded by the likes of Bette Midler, Maura O'Connell, Peter Paul and Mary, Kenny Loggins, Holly Near and Garth Brooks. Comic-Cheryl comes on like Groucho-in-a-housecoat; a fiercely everyday woman with a barbed-wire tongue. Shredding the mores of our gossipy, greedy, trend-obsessed culture, Wheeler always aims enough darts at herself to never seem sanctimonious.

Kenny White comes to the world of the touring singer-songwriter following a long and successful musical journey. He began his career in the 1970s, touring exclusively as the keyboard player for Jonathan Edwards and then with Livingston Taylor. Kenny became a fixture in the NYC studio scene throughout the '80s and '90s, producing and arranging hundreds of commercials for TV and radio, contributing to numerous film soundtracks, and working with the

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