Rufus Wainwright

The National Hispanic Cultural Center sits at the south end of the corridor where Central starts to quiet down and actually breathe a little. The Journal Theatre inside it is one of those rooms that most people in this city have never been in, which is a shame, because it seats around 700 and sounds like it was built by someone who actually cared whether the back row could hear consonants. It’s a proper performing arts space, not a retrofitted bar with a PA situation. Coming here feels like a different category of night out, the kind where you park, you sit down, and you pay attention.

Rufus Wainwright is doing this one solo, which means no band, no arrangements to hide behind, nothing between him and 700 people in a room with good acoustics. That’s either terrifying or exactly right, and with Wainwright it’s exactly right. He’s a songwriter who came up in the late nineties writing dense, orchestrated pop that borrowed freely from opera and Tin Pan Alley and somehow made it work, and his voice has only gotten more confident with age. Solo shows like this one tend to be where you see what someone is actually made of. He talks, he goes off-script, he picks songs based on the room. It’s not the same show he played last night somewhere else.

Here’s the concrete reason to go: the Journal Theatre almost never hosts someone at this level in a format this stripped down, and when it does, 700 seats means you’re close enough to watch his hands on the keys. Tickets are listed as TBD right now, so check the link before this one gets away from you. July 17, 8:30pm, Barelas. That’s your Friday.

Browse more events on the Route 66 corridor at the full calendar.