Jay Livingston News

The supremely talented singer and pianist Michael Feinstein collaborates with legendary composer-conductor-pianist André Previn for an album celebrating Previn's repertoire from his lesser-known catalog of pop songs, including many that were written for film. The album, titled Change of Heart: The Songs of André Previn, is set for release by Telarc International on April 16, 2013.

42nd Street Moon's 20th anniversary season kicks off on Monday, June 18, 2012 with Ticket to the Moon, a gala evening celebrating Moon's past, present and future. Activities at the Alcazar Theatre on Geary Street begins at 5:30 pm with cocktails and a silent auction, followed by a performance at 7 pm, directed and narrated by Moon's Artistic Director, Greg MacKellan.

After selling out the original 5pm Sunday, December 11 performance a month in advance, Bay Area Cabaret has added a second Stacey Kent concert, 7:30pm Sunday, December 11, 2011 at the Venetian Room of the Fairmont San Francisco (950 Mason Street). Grammy Award nominee and internationally-renowned jazz vocalist Stacey Kent makes her first Bay Area appearance in more than six years.

Bay Area Cabaret continues its 2011-2012 season December 11, 2011 with Grammy Award nominee and internationally-renowned jazz vocalist Stacey Kent, making her first Bay Area appearance in more than six years.

After selling out the original 5pm Sunday, December 11 performance a month in advance, Bay Area Cabaret has added a second Stacey Kent concert, 7:30pm Sunday, December 11, 2011 at the Venetian Room of the Fairmont San Francisco (950 Mason Street). Grammy Award nominee and internationally-renowned jazz vocalist Stacey Kent makes her first Bay Area appearance in more than six years.

NEW YORK FESTIVAL OF SONG (NYFOS) creates intimate concerts that breathe new life into an art form that is rich and emotionally resonant, yet is too often treated as genteel, intellectual, and predictable.

Bay Area Cabaret continues its 2011-2012 season December 11, 2011 with Grammy Award nominee and internationally-renowned jazz vocalist Stacey Kent, making her first Bay Area appearance in more than six years.

The Marriott Theatre in Lincolnshire, Illinois, north of Chicago, has an enormous subscription base, deep pockets, a talented and experienced in-house design team and a film property to adapt that touches on a number of important, stage-worthy themes (military patriotism, family, nostalgia, a timely re-visit to accusations of communism in America, parenthood, mid-century entertainment history and censorship, both military and network). And the show's lawyers have acquired the rights to a Hit Parade of jukebox-musical-worthy tunes. But is that enough to make a new stage musical out of the 1991 film 'For The Boys'?

NEW YORK FESTIVAL OF SONG (NYFOS) creates intimate concerts that breathe new life into an art form that is rich and emotionally resonant, yet is too often treated as genteel, intellectual, and predictable.

The renowned Gay Men's Chorus of Los Angeles (GMCLA) pulls out the stops with two matinee and one evening performance of its annual holiday musical extravaganza - featuring guest appearances by country music legend LeAnn Rimes and Broadway star Sheryl Lee Ralph, and led by guest conductor Tim Seelig, in his GMCLA debut - Saturday, December 18, 3 p.m. and 8 p.m., and Sunday, December 19, 2010, 3 p.m., at the Alex Theatre in Glendale. Some 150 choristers, resplendent in holiday finery, do Santa proud with a bundle of beloved seasonal works, and dazzling Twelve Days of Christmas 'Black-Light Puppet Spectacular.' A team of merry elves adds to the musical festivities, which kick off the choir's 2010-11 Season, its 32nd.

The renowned Gay Men's Chorus of Los Angeles (GMCLA) pulls out the stops with two matinee and one evening performance of its annual holiday musical extravaganza - featuring guest appearances by country music legend LeAnn Rimes and Broadway star Sheryl Lee Ralph, and led by guest conductor Tim Seelig, in his GMCLA debut - Saturday, December 18, 3 p.m. and 8 p.m., and Sunday, December 19, 2010, 3 p.m., at the Alex Theatre in Glendale. Some 150 choristers, resplendent in holiday finery, do Santa proud with a bundle of beloved seasonal works, and dazzling Twelve Days of Christmas 'Black-Light Puppet Spectacular.' A team of merry elves adds to the musical festivities, which kick off the choir's 2010-11 Season, its 32nd.

The renowned Gay Men's Chorus of Los Angeles (GMCLA) pulls out the stops with two matinee and one evening performance of its annual holiday musical extravaganza - featuring guest appearances by country music legend LeAnn Rimes and Broadway star Sheryl Lee Ralph, and led by guest conductor Tim Seelig, in his GMCLA debut - Saturday, December 18, 3 p.m. and 8 p.m., and Sunday, December 19, 2010, 3 p.m., at the Alex Theatre in Glendale. Some 150 choristers, resplendent in holiday finery, do Santa proud with a bundle of beloved seasonal works, and dazzling Twelve Days of Christmas 'Black-Light Puppet Spectacular.' A team of merry elves adds to the musical festivities, which kick off the choir's 2010-11 Season, its 32nd.

FEINSTEIN'S AT LOEWS REGENCY, the nightclub proclaimed 'Best of New York' by New York Magazine, and 'an invaluable New York institution' by The New York Post, continues its star-studded Winter/Spring 2010 season with the return engagement of Tony Award winning singer and actress BETTY BUCKLEY for performances from February 2-27.

Though Ervin Drake's 'The Friendliest Thing (Two People Can Do),' from his 1964 hit What Makes Sammy Run?, has been called the first song from a Broadway musical to be directly about having sex, Suzanne Carrico employs no vampy winks or purring vocals as she observes with heightened intellectual interest the unnecessity of foreplaying drinks and dances when a couple in lust could simply get right to it.  (Yes, I just made up two words in that sentence.  Deal with it.)  Her new show at The Metropolitan Room, opening less than three weeks afters winning the MAC Award for Outstanding Debut, is named for this suggestive showtune but the self-described geek cleverly treats the song as a subtext to Cy Coleman and Dorothy Fields' 'Welcome To Holiday Inn,' sandwiching the cerebral sexuality between slices of broader, comical pass-making.  This is either the smartest show about sex or the sexiest show about smarts in town.In outstanding company both offstage (Mary Cleere Haran is her director) and on (she's got music director/arranger Tedd Firth on piano and Steve Doyle on bass), Carrico has the kind of sunny, uncomplicated voice that can fill Harold Arlen and Leo Brown's 'Hooray For Love' with perky glee, matched with the kind of acting skill that can explore the dark dramatic longings of Arlen and Johnny Mercer's 'I Had Myself a True Love,' climaxing in an anguished belt that is far more about the woman she portrays than her ability to vocally shine.She calls this her hanky-panky show and most every number has something to do with sex.  There's the sweet simplicity with which she approaches Jimmy Roberts and Joe DiPietro's 'I Will Be Loved Tonight,' where a woman who has gone too long without a lover's touch anticipates how the evening's date will end, and the wry exasperation of 'Toothbrush Time,' William Bolcom and Arnold Weinstein's tense contemplation on why last night's lover is taking so long to get out of the apartment.  She savors the snazzy jazz jauntiness of Michael John La Chiusa's 'The Thief' and turns George Gershwin and B.G. DeSylva's 'Do It Again!' into a lopsided debate between the mind and the libido (guess who wins).The very funny sexpot character song, 'Femininity' (Jay Livingston/Ray Evans), is given an interesting personal twist as she introduces it with some of her own feelings as an adolescent girl surprised by the different way boys would look at her once she started developing.  Her admiration for the romantic passion expressed by Alan and Marilyn Bergman fuels her detailed story-telling in 'Like a Lover' and 'The Island.And for those who believe that hanky-panky is never complete without a bit of cuddling after, she finishes the evening with a very satisfied and satisfying 'Embraceable You' by the Gershwins.

On April 7, ArkivMusic released eight long-unavailable cast recordings on cd for the first time. New releases include DisinHAIRited, Hazel Flagg, Jimmy, The Last Sweet Days of Isaac, Let It Ride!, New Faces of 1952, New Faces of '56, and The Threepenny Opera.