Not too long ago, I bought some tickets for an Arsht Center event to give as a gift. Since then, I've remained on the venue's snail-mail list, and this past Sunday, a little postcard caught my eye. In trying to get me to sign up for a membership, it was touting a private "members-only" sale of tickets for upcoming performances.
The photos on the card hyped up big shows like the traveling production of Dreamgirls and the like.... Until I flipped it over and looked at a list of available tickets in tinier type. In the middle of it all was this: "Lauryn Hill."
Wait, what? The increasingly elusive chanteuse has hardly been on a promotional whirlwind lately. It's been 12 years since the release of her hard-to-match solo debut, The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill, and the follow-up still has yet to appear. Still, in a recent interview with NPR's All Things Considered, Hill confirmed she was working on a new material. The pursuit of the interview, and the final delayed meeting, also apparently left the story's reporter and editor in confused tears -- the kind of strange reaction that Hill often seems to provoke in recent years.
But beyond all that, besides that little glossy postcard in the mail, the Arsht Center seems to be giving up few details on the show. It doesn't show up in any of the center's online box office's upcoming performance schedules.
Meanwhile, the Sun-Sentinel has this cryptic event listing for "a Very Special Evening with Lauryn Hill" on November 6, and it's confusing. The venue is listed as the James L. Knight Center -- a separate concert venue in a different part of downtown -- although the web site listed is for the Arsht Center. That sounds like Broward-resident confusion though, and it's likely they really mean the Knight Concert Hall at the Arsht Center.
The only November 6 performance listed on the Arsht Center web site so far is one by Jerry Seinfeld, but it's at the Ziff Opera House, so another engagement at the concert hall is possible. Besides, Hill has confirmed she'll be playing this year's Rock the Bells festivals, so maybe it's part of a larger return to the public eye.
So is the Arsht trying to lure potential members in with the promise of a still-unconfirmed show, or is this a very coy way of slowly letting the cat out of the bag? We'll report back to you with full details when we get them.
