Openly gay Canadian singing/songwriting star Rufus Wainwright will play his first New Zealand concert in February - performing alone and unscripted. Rufus Wainwright Wainwright's Monday 4 February show at the PowerStation (35 Mt. Eden Road) continues his tour of latest album Release the Stars. The tour also takes in Australia, Japan, Norway, Sweden, Poland and Iceland. The singer, now 34, says he came out as gay while still a teenager. In 1999, he told Rolling Stone magazine that his father recognized his son's homosexuality early on. "We'd drive around in the car, he'd play Heart of Glass and I'd sort of mouth the words, pretend to be Blondie. Just a sign of many other things to come as well." One of his recent shows was a tribute to Judy Garland, who Wainwright describes as his 'idol'. The singer recreated Garland's legendary 1961 concert at New York's Carnegie Hall, saying "For a gay man, that was like the wedding of the century." Wainwright's nomination for a Brit Award for Best International Male Solo Artist was announced today. The video for his recent song Going to a Town is shown below.
Credit: GayNZ.com News Staff
First published: Tuesday, 15th January 2008 - 3:24pm