Natalie Douglas Celebrates Roberta Flack in a Special Tribute Show

    Multiple award-winning cabaret and jazz artist, Natalie Douglas, returns to Live at the Orinda! on April 21 at 5 p.m. with a special tribute to the music of Roberta Flack.
    A Grammy Award-winning legend, Flack was diagnosed in 2022 with ALS (often called Lou Gehrig’s disease) and no longer performs. She does, however, continue to oversee the Roberta Flack Foundation, which supports aspiring creatives and other causes important to her.
    “Roberta’s gifts in the vocal arena are astounding – her pacing, her tone, her phrasing. But she started out at Howard University (when she was only 16) as a classical pianist. One of her teachers overheard her singing and suggested she concentrate on her vocals,” 
said Douglas.
    “When putting together a show, I dig deep into the performer to learn not just what everyone already knows, but to share lesser-known stories that are illuminating as to who the person is,” said Douglas.
    One of those stories involves a song now synonymous with Flack – “The First Time Ever I Saw His Face.”
    “She had put it on one of her albums, but it wasn’t going anywhere. Then Clint Eastwood heard it on the radio and loved it. He asked if he could license it for his film ‘Play Misty for Me’ and offered $1,000 for the rights, because that was all the money he had left in his budget. He was told he could have it for a thousand pennies because they didn’t think the song was going anywhere. He obtained the rights, put it in his movie and the song exploded with popularity.”
    Although Douglas will be celebrating the music and life of Roberta Flack, the audience will have the pleasure of enjoying her own powerful and expressive vocals. Vocals that allow Douglas to easily transition from a smoky contralto to a rich soprano in such a smooth and natural way – that, according to Live at the Orinda! producer Michael Williams – they can “sometimes take you by surprise.”
    “Natalie’s tribute shows have become legendary as you not only learn things about the artist to whom she’s paying tribute, you learn things about Natalie through her stories and the way she interprets the material,” said Williams. “She creates an intimacy with her audience that makes you feel like she’s your best friend, and you can’t wait to hear what she has to say next.”
    Douglas believes cabaret allows artists to share with the audience something about themselves, or if it’s a tribute show, something about the humanity of the people they are celebrating.
    “In cabaret, there’s a dialogue between the singer and the audience. I think that’s what we really crave when we go to a live performance. When someone is singing about heartbreak on stage, and we feel it as an audience, something special happens that is healing for us as a global community,” said Douglas.
    Before putting together a tribute show, Douglas does a great deal of research, which speaks of her love of learning. The singer graduated from high school at 16 and earned a Magna Cum Laude Bachelor of Arts degree in psychology, theater and women’s studies from University of Southern California. At the tender age of 19, she began graduate school at University of California, Los Angeles, where she obtained a master’s degree in psychology and theater.
    “I love doing the research. Although it can be daunting trying to condense all the information into an approximately 70-minute show,” said Douglas. “Of the 21 tribute shows I’ve done so far, only Roberta Flack and Dolly Parton received consistent praise from the people I contacted. They all had stories about how kind they were. Both women have taken their fame, their money, their power and used it to help future generations.”
    The same thing could be said about Douglas. A respected educator, she has worked with singers of all ages in both the United States and Europe and continues to present diversity workshops and master classes in public and private schools.
    A few years ago, Douglas did some research on her own family. Adopted as a baby, she joined Ancestry.com to research her birth parents and discovered her biological father, Rev. Arnold Townsend.
    A pillar of the African American community in San Francisco, Townsend was delighted to meet the daughter he never knew existed. Townsend had no idea his high school girlfriend was pregnant when he left for college. He and Douglas, however, have been making up for lost time with lots of late-night texts and visits back and forth. He will attend her April 21 concert in Orinda.
    In addition to celebrating Roberta Flack, Douglas will also perform songs from her new album “Back to the Gardens,” which was released late February and includes two of Flack’s songs.
    “The album primarily contains songs that influenced me growing up, songs that I love, that helped form who I am. It also includes ‘You’ll Never Know,’ the first song I ever learned from my mom when I was four years old,” Douglas said.
    Live at the Orinda! is a concert series featuring world-class performers from around the globe in specially curated musical evenings at the iconic Orinda Theatre. Performances begin at 5 p.m. at the Orinda Theatre, 4 Orinda Theatre Square.
    For tickets, call 925.254.9060 or go to orindamovies.com.