Housing Works Hosts Benefit Concert with Rebecca Pidgeon

On April 18, British singer/songwriter Rebecca Pidgeon will present "Live From Home: An Evening with Rebecca Pidgeon," a benefit concert for Housing Works, an organization that raises funds for New Yorkers living with HIV/AIDS. The event will be followed by a conversation and Q&A led by Clara Mamet of "The Neighbors" fame, to discuss Pidgeon's new album, "Blue Dress On."

"It's the first time I've produced my own album since I was a kid," says Pidgeon, a veteran recording artist who co-produced "Blue Dress On" with guitarist Tim Young. "Not since Ruby Blue."

"Blue Dress On" takes a marked turn from her acclaimed 2012 album "Slingshot." The British singer-songwriter and stage and screen actress sees the 13-track set as charting a new direction while at the same time returning her to her musical roots in Ruby Blue, an English folk rock/pop band active in the late '80s/early '90s.

Pidgeon left the group in 1990, to further a solo career and pursue an acting career, and to be with playwright David Mamet, whom she married in 1991 after starring in his play "Speed-the-Plow" at London's National Theatre.

Her solo recording career commenced in 1994 with the release of her solo debut album "The Raven." "Slingshot" was her sixth solo effort, and she considered it a creative breakthrough.

"I reached a point where I felt I had to take my singing more seriously and really make a 100 percent commitment to it, instead of saying this is something I do that's not acting," Pidgeon, said at the time. "I finally said to myself, 'I am a singer.'"

Although the deeply melodic "Slingshot" was centered on Pidgeon's ideas of "simplicity, air and space," she takes a different tack in "Blue Dress On."

"It sounds a bit more live, like a band," she said, "more electric and rough around the edges. I was on the road quite a bit last year with Tim supporting Marc Cohn and 'Slingshot,'" she continues. "But I'm always creating, thinking about the next record, mulling it over and collecting songs and thinking about where I want to go with it. For this one, I wanted to have a different kind of sound than the more gentle sounds on Slingshot, and I got a bit more experimental, with sounds like those on the indie sound records I grew up with -- Adam and the Ants, Siouxsie and the Banshees, early Kate Bush -- that kind of British indie sound."

Hear all about it when 19-year-old actress Mamet moderates this Q&A with Pidgeon about her new album, including the final cover song co-written by David Batteau and David Mamet, who penned a "talk-verse."

The event will raise funds for Housing Works, a volunteer-run organization that donates 100 percent of profits to provide housing, healthcare, job training and advocacy.