The Show
Off “Old King’s Highway” on Cape Cod, looking like a cross between a cow barn and a Congregational Church, sits the Cape Cinema. On a hot summer night, underneath Kent Rockwell’s art deco swirl of heavenly bodies (once the largest mural in the world) and in front of the movie screen that premiered The Wizard of Oz in 1939, the Artists Den cast the cinema in a new light with a performance by indie-pop darling Ingrid Michaelson.
On a hot summer night, in front of the movie screen that premiered The Wizard of Oz in 1939, the Artists Den cast the cinema in a new light with a performance by indie-pop darling Ingrid Michaelson.
Ingrid Michaelson
Befitting a musician of the digital age, Staten Island native Ingrid Michaelson first gained wide exposure through TV spots: four of her songs (including “Breakable” and “Keep Breathing”) were featured on Grey’s Anatomy, and “The Way I Am” served as the soundtrack to an Old Navy commercial. Amazingly, she did it all independently, fueled by entrepreneurial skills and the sheer talent to back it up. Be OK – the follow-up to Michaelson’s breakthrough debut album, Girls and Boys – was released in 2008 on her own Cabin 24 label. Since then, she’s gone on to release multiple studio albums and make her Broadway and film debuts.
The Venue
The Cape Cinema opened in June 1930. Designed by Alfred Easton Poor (Wright Brother’s Monument) with its facade modeled on the Congregational Church in Centerville, Massachussetts and its sides given the appearance of a cow barn, it is an architectural gem. The Cinema’s crowning glory, however, is the mammoth mural across its curved ceiling – more than 6400 square feet in size – designed by Rockwell Kent, one of America’s most original and controversial artists. When installed, it was claimed to be the largest single mural in the world, dwarfing even “Tintoretto’s Paradise” in the Doge’s Palace in Venice. Photography courtesy of Jim Curran and Sallly Fiore for Artists Den Entertainment