The early 90s was an exceptionally fertile time for music. 1991 alone graced the world with landmark albums by Nirvana, Massive Attack, De La Soul, Teenage Fanclub, U2, My Bloody Valentine, Smashing Pumpkins, Michael Jackson, Hole, REM, Throwing Muses, A Tribe Called Quest, Enya, Primal Scream, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Slint, Metallica, Saint Etienne, and Pearl Jam.
It also gave us I Wonder Why, the debut single by Curtis Stigers.
The song was a collaboration with powerhouse producer Glen Ballard. It became a calling card hit for Stigers, announcing his career as an artist and charting in Belgium, Germany, Holland, Norway, the UK, and the United States.
Intriguingly, it scored its highest chart positions in both Denmark and Ireland.
His eponymous debut album soon followed, which featured two other hit singles, You're All That Matters to Me and Never Saw a Miracle. Curtis Stigers sold 1.5 million copies.
32 years later, Curis will be performing at the National Concert Hall this August with the RTÉ Concert Orchestra under the baton of Golden Globe-nominated arranger and conductor Brian Byrne, who is no stranger to working with artists of numerous genres, including Katy Perry, Bono, Barbra Streisand, Lisa Stansfield, Van Morrison, The Corrs, Sinead O'Connor, Gladys Knight, Liza Minnelli, and Alanis Morissette to name a tiny few.
Byrne scored Kristen Sheridan's 2001 film, Disco Pigs, which was written by Enda Walsh and featured Oppenheimer star Cillian Murphy in his breakthrough role, and also rearranged and rejigged the theme tune of The Late Late Show for the 21st century.
For this very special event, Curtis Stigers will celebrate some of the artists who have inspired him in a wide-ranging repertoire, including John Lennon, Randy Newman, Tom Waits, Richard Thompson, Nick Lowe, Elvis Costello, Leonard Cohen, Steve Earle, George Gershwin, Jerome Kern, Oscar Hammerstein II, and many others.
"I have a previous life as a pop sensation," Stigers once joked. "But it was the 1840s."
He creates music that loosely sits on an intersection of pop, soul, jazz, and what has been daubed adult contemporary soft rock.
In 2004, Stephen Holden authored a live review entitled, A Jazzman Goes Honky-Tonk in the august pages of The New York Times. "Mr. Stigers is really a jazz artist with a rock-'n'-roll heart," Holden wrote. "Like others of his generation, he has an ear for popular standards that locates Cole Porter, The Beatles, and Elvis Costello along the same songwriting continuum. Mr. Stigers may be from Boise, Idaho, but there's a craggy New Orleans drawl in his voice, and he plays the saxophone with the fervour of a late-50's honker."
Born in Hollywood, raised in Idaho, and a former resident of Manhattan, Stigers is now based back in Boise, where he assists in raising hundreds of thousands of dollars each year for the Interfaith Sanctuary Homeless Shelter.
This exclusive National Concert Hall one-off performance will see Curtis Stigers sing a selection of timeless classics that have inspired him to become the artist he is today.
For the Love of Song: Curtis Stigers Live in concert with the RTÉ Concert Orchestra, will be presented at the National Concert Hall, Dublin, on Friday August 25th - find out more here.
