After Dinner Speakers: Lenny Kravitz, The Reduced Shakespeare Company, Patrick Keilty

b. 26 May 1964, New York, USA. Kravitz's family ties - his Jewish father was a top television producer; his Bahamian mother an actress - suggested a future in showbusiness. As a teenager he attended the Beverly Hills High School where his contemporaries included Slash, later of Guns N'Roses, and Maria McKee of Lone Justice. Kravitz's interest in music flourished in 1987 with the completion of the first of several demos which concluded with an early version of Let Love Rule. These recordings engendered a contract with Virgin America, but the company was initially wary of Kravitz's insistence that the finished product should only feature "real" instruments - guitar, bass, keyboards and drums - rather than digital and computerized passages. Although denigrated in some quarters as merely retrogressive, notably in its indebtedness to Jimi Hendrix, Let Love Rule proved highly popular. Kravitz then gained greater success when Madonna recorded "Justify My Love", a new, rap-influenced composition quite unlike his previous work. In 1991, the artist continued his unconventional path by writing a new arrangement to John Lennon's "Give Peace A Chance" as a comment on the impending Gulf War. The resultant recording, credited to the Peace Choir, featured several contemporaries, including Yoko Ono and Sean Lennon. The latter also appeared on Mama Said, wherein Kravitz's flirtation with 60s and early 70s rock was even more apparent. The set spawned the US Top 5/UK Top 20 hit "It Ain't Over 'Til It's Over", a kiss-off to his soon to be ex-wife, actress Lisa Bonet. The prolific Kravitz then wrote an entire album for French chanteuse Vanessa Paradis, and collaborated with artists as diverse as Curtis Mayfield, Aerosmith and Mick Jagger. The hard rocking title track of the follow-up Are You Gonna Go My Way? was another worldwide success, breaking into the UK Top 5. Circus featured a stripped-down version of his trademark sound, displaying his talent as a writer of more contemporary sounding material rather than the 60s pastiches of his earlier albums. The belated follow-up, 5, saw Kravitz embracing digital recording and attempting a more relaxed fusion of soul and hip-hop styles. The singer topped the UK charts in February 1999 with "Fly Away", thanks to extensive media exposure as the soundtrack to a Peugeot car advertisement.