Just two months after the death of his mother, Kate McGarrigle, Rufus Wainwright played an uber-intimate gig at (Axl Rose’s latest haunt) NYC’s Rose Bar. The performance was captured in this gorgeous video by Site & Sound, which is a new online documentary music series “dedicated to telling the individual stories of unique live performances” in the Big Apple.
After my first viewing, I got the feeling that this wasn’t your everyday well-dressed Rufus audience, and my suspicions have been proven correct. As Huffington Post notes, attendees included Susan Surandon, Drew Barrymore, Scarlett Johansson, Lou Reed, Alan Cumming, Lucy Liu, Natasha Lyonne, Michael Kors, Christian Siriano, Alexis Bledel, Amber Tamblyn, Penn Badgley, and Zack Quinto.
Check out Wainwright’s take on Shakespeare’s “Sonnet 43,” off his new album, above.