A salon? Christine Ebersole, Cheyenne Jackson in New Orleans | Entertainment/Life

How did I end up here?

That question kept circling back to me all night. There I was on Sunday night in an upstairs ballroom above the Martine Chaissona Gallery on Camp Street in New Orleans, dish after dish served on exquisite vintage china, a 6-foot flower and candle arrangement reaching toward the ceiling, and Christine Ebersole — Tony winner, Broadway legend, someone I had to look up before I could fully appreciate what I was witnessing — standing 3 feet away singing the “Lullaby of Broadway” like it was the most natural thing in the world.

Nobody had mentioned she was coming. The invitation read “Un Salon Moderne à la Nouvelle-Orléans” — elegant enough that it answered the question of what to wear. That was about all I knew.

I had no idea what was coming next. As it turned out, that was the whole point.

I was there because last fall I met Blake Devillier, a Louisiana-based event producer. Devillier spent years in corporate America — most recently as CEO of Carl’s Jr. — but events are his true north. He and his husband, designer Jerad Gardemal, are building something unusual — gatherings where the guest list matters less than what happens in the room, which, based on Sunday night, the world needs more of. 

I walked into the ground-floor gallery with an old friend by my side. Greeters met us with drinks and tiny ham and cheese hors d’oeuvres. Hunt Slonem rabbits covered the walls. My friend and I had no idea what was happening, but we were both completely along for the ride.

After about 10 minutes in the gallery, one of the event staff appeared at our elbow.

“We would like to invite you into a visual experience before we go upstairs to dinner,” she said. “You’ll be the last group.”

We followed her into a black box room where floor-to-ceiling screens showed surreal, colorful exotic plants growing and blooming. Strange and beautiful music filled the space. We were all dressed to the nines, standing in the dark, watching make-believe flowers bloom.

We found a blue velvet-draped elevator and rode it to the second floor, where we walked into a ballroom exquisitely decorated from floor to ceiling — like something out of “Bridgerton” — a ballroom so theatrically beautiful it felt less decorated than conjured.

If Shonda Rhimes had rounded the corner, I would not have been surprised.

We took our seats among about 90 guests, passing CBS’ David Begnaud and New Orleans icon Yvonne Lafleur on the way. After just the right amount of time, the announcement came: Ebersole would perform with Billy Stritch, Liza Minnelli’s longtime music director. And then there she was — 3 feet away — and the only sounds in the room were her voice and the piano.

She sang four songs. Salad was served. I barely noticed.

At one point, I watched her sing the word “hush” and I sat there thinking: I have never heard a word pronounced more beautifully in my life.

After more conversation and gumbo, New Orleans artist and photographer Kasimu Harris spoke about his “Vanishing Black Bars and Lounges” series. MoMA recently acquired five of his photographs for its permanent collection. His photographs, he says, come from a place of love. In that room Sunday night, you could feel it.

Then came Broadway’s Cheyenne Jackson. I don’t know what the rest of the room was thinking, but I suspect it was some version of: him too? Self-deprecating, gorgeous, funny and extravagantly talented, Jackson opened with “I’m Feeling Good” — and he was not alone in that feeling.

Ebersole had already cracked something open in the room. Jackson walked through it. Even though I had barely touched my wine, I was intoxicated.

David Begnaud took the stage next, talking about his new Do Good Crew — asking celebrities “Who believed in you?” and launching his new podcast with Oprah Winfrey as his first guest. It fit the room perfectly.

Then, more gentle clinking of china as dessert was served before one last performance: Julia Ernst, who made her professional debut with the New Orleans Opera and is completing her master’s at Yale. Someone had called her “the voice of a generation.” As she sang, I reached over and without looking, grabbed my friend’s hand. The moment had so much beauty in it that I genuinely believed one of the crystal glasses might shatter. I needed to hold on to someone — to say without saying it: we are here. We are not alone in witnessing something this breathtaking.

We spend so much of our lives scrolling past beauty, having it served to us by algorithms that know our preferences but not our souls. What Devillier did was wild and completely intentional — and it took real courage. Not everything that is ambitious works. This did.

Most of us can’t conjure a ballroom above a Camp Street gallery or call in Broadway legends on a Sunday night. But we can gather people. We can invite people into our homes, set a beautiful table, and trust that something unexpected might happen when people are in a room together, present and unhurried.

That’s what I left thinking about — that and how just the right “hush” can go a long way, plus a shortbread cookie on the way out the door.