08/24/2026
SEMJA Review, by Sandy Schopbach
This will be part of the Oct/Nov SEMJA UPDATE at semja.org
Sunny Wilkinson, who lives in Lansing, visited Ann Arbor Sunday. The Blue Llama Club to be exact. She appeared with husband Ron Newman on piano, Ed Fedewa on bass and Larry Ochiltree on drums. It’s a group that has played together for 20 years. And they’ve got their gig down tight.
Wilkinson started out the first set with “Beautiful Friendship”, an emotion that she likes to share with her audience, talking to listeners between songs throughout the show. She varied between old favorites and adaptations of more recent pop hits such as Joni Mitchell’s “ Woodstock” and a jazzed-up version of “Big Yellow Taxi”. Brazilian tunes such as Milton Nascimento’s “Bridges” and Tonino Horta’s “Aqui O” are always a big part of any of her shows because, as she explained, growing up in the L.A. region, she learned to love Brazilian music, even singing some song in the original Portuguese.
Sunny also does a lot of s**t singing, embellished by her three-octave range. One number she did was “Sunny Side of the Street” where she played back and forth in s**t with Ed Fedewa's long bass solo. And she has a gift for singing softly and quietly as if telling you a story in private, as she did with “It Never Entered My Mind” by Rogers and Hart..
It was a great evening. And I’m sure the second set was every bit as good.
