Charmin Michelle

Come in from the cold and enjoy some holiday jazz and standards with Charmin Michelle and Rick Carlson!

You can enjoy your Sazerac Cocktail and Rock Salt Prime Rib while listening to Live Jazz, taking in a Cabaret Performance, or a Comedy Show with views of the Minnesota River. The Shakopee House is the rare occurrence of an upscale establishment where you can have a down-home good time.

With its Speakeasy vibe, Shakopee House is a place where you can let your hair down and enjoy yourself while sipping on amazing spirits. Unless you have a time machine that can transport you back to Prohibition-era Shakopee, this is the closest you are going to get to a great Minnesota Supper Club.

“Vic Volare – Slick, suave, and swank, our famed lounge lizard might as well be the real thing.” – Mpls. St. Paul Magazine

Vic Volare is the Twin Cities legendary crooner. His Rat Pack stylings have been thrilling crowds since 1996. With his band of merry men known as the fabulous Volare Lounge Orchestra, Vic has blazed a horn screamin’ high kickin’ trail of swing music and classic standards that keep ’em dancing all night long.

Charmin Michelle is a charismatic chanteuse whose conversational style recalls the late Billie Holiday and other legendary ladies of jazz. And, yet, her music is free of tiresome camp and easy nostalgia. She’s a savvy songstress and, while putting her own imprint on a melody, is always respectful of those who first inhabited it.

“Bobby Darin, Dean Martin, Sammy Davis, Jr. and Louis Prima all live on in the hellzappopin’ show of this Land O’ Lakes lounge lizard. Vic Volare is Minnesota’s cocktail pop king, bringing a big dose of the Vegas desert to the frozen tundra. A snappy dresser with a prize baritone and a Hollywood heartthrob’s casual confidence, Volare makes every club set a Rat Pack-style party. His tongue’s firmly in cheek, and his crowd’s generally dressed to kill in a mixture of high fashion and thrift shop threads. Volare’s backing Lounge Orchestra sounds especially good after a few dry martinis. ” — Tom Surowicz, Minneapolis Star Tribune

Puttin’ on the Glitz NYE 2021 Gala Program

Ballroom Dance music by The KJ Quartet featuring Charmin Michelle 6:30 – 7:25 pm Social 7:30 pm Greeting & Announcements 7:30 – 8:50 pm Dinner & Dessert 9:00 pm – Dance Begins 10:00 pm Drink Demonstration #1 10:45 pm Pizza Party 11:00 pm Drink Demonstration #2 12:00 am Happy New Year…2 0 2 2! 12:30 am – Dance Ends

La Danza’s 2021 NYE Gala! ladanzastillwater@hotmail.com www.Facebook.com/LaDanzaDanceClub/

A Musical Revue written and created by Dan Chouinard in collaboration with T Mychael Rambo, Thomasina Petrus, and Charmin Michelle.

With its four musical hosts, Rondo '56 paints a portrait in music and stories of St. Paul's thriving Black neighborhood in the decade before the freeway sliced it down the middle for the sake of progress.

Brimming with the iconic R&B favorites from the ten years following World War II, "Rondo '56" captures the heart and soul of the two-mile long neighborhood on either side of Rondo Avenue, just west of the Minnesota State Capitol, that was a vibrant and tight-knit community – home to most of St. Paul's Black population. Streets and schools were crowded. Businesses thrived. Doors to homes were left unlocked and the kids all knew they were being watched by everybody else's parents as well as their own. Stepping into the nascent Civil Rights era with dignity and determination this community would find itself targeted -- like so many other Black and poor neighborhoods of the mid century -- by massive government road and housing projects touted as urban renewal.

"Rondo '56" features the songs of such revered stars of the '40s and '50s as Louis Jordan, Nat King Cole, Ruth Brown, Dinah Washington, Mahalia Jackson and many more. A stunning and timely evocation of a community decimated by the powers that be, and revisited from our own time of hope, protest and civic renewal.

Rondo '56 was created in 2010 by Dan Chouinard with the help of the MN Historical Society, Rondo elders, and performer colleagues who lived in Rondo. This new edition of the show for Crooners is substantially updated in collaboration with co-hosts T Mychael Rambo, Thomasina Petrus and Charmin Michelle.

1. Mychael Rambo, Thomasina Petrus and Charmin Michelle: vocals and narration

Dan Chouinard: piano and narration