Downtown Music Productions Presents A CHAMBER CHRISTMAS CAROL Dec 23 At St. Marks Church-in-the-Bowery

Downtown Music Productions will present A Chamber Christmas Carol on Sunday, December 23 @ 7:00 PM at St. Marks Church-in-the-Bowery, 131 E. 10 St. (at 2nd Avenue) in New York, New York.

This charming re-telling of Charles Dickens's timeless story will feature music by Ray Leslee, direction by Margarett Perry, and Music Direction by Mimi Stern-Wolfe. According to Margarett Perry, "Ray Leslee's take on this classic tale is simply magical." The Morgan Library & Museum commissioned A Chamber Christmas Carol in 2011. Linden Chubin, the Morgan's Director of Public Programming said, "This simple concert form is so unlike most...productions -- it challenges and stimulates the imagination like no other."

Featured performers (playing 35 roles among them) are Tom Ligon as Scrooge, along with Mark Boyett, Jack McCarthy, JD Mollison and Alex Sunderhaus. Musicians will be Josh Plotner (woodwinds), Jeff Carney (bass), Marshall Coid (violin), Ron Hay (trombone) and Mimi Stern-Wolfe (piano).

Admissions will be available at the door, with a suggested donation of $20. For more information, call 212-477-1594 or visit http://www.downtownmusicproductions.org/.

Ray Leslee composed Avenue X, the award-winning acappella musical about racial tensions in New York, produced at Playwrights Horizons and over 50 theatres around the world; Standup Shakespeare, directed by Mike Nichols on Broadway, with F. Murray Abraham and Alfred Molina Off-Broadway, and at Chicago's Steppenwolf Theatre in 2017 with Jeff Perry and Alice Ripley; A Steady Rain, national tour; Palestine at New York Theatre Workshop; The Three Musketeers national tour with the Acting Co.; Educating Rita with Laurie Metcalf and Little Egypt at Steppenwolf; Twelfth Night at Theatre For A New Audience; and A Good Man at the Vienna Chamber Opera, to name a few. He's currently writing The Learned Ladies, a comic opera based on the play by Moliere, with a libretto in verse by Brian Dykstra; and Maya Songs, the poems of Maya Angelou.

Downtown Music Productions' mission is to encourage composers with performing outlets for their music; to commission new works; to present socially oriented thematic programs; to present relevant and daring chamber, orchestral and operatic music for adults and children. Downtown Chamber & Opera Players' Artistic Director and conductor, Mimi Stern-Wolfe, received the 1989 Laurel Leaf Award from the American Composers Alliance for "distinguished achievement in fostering and encouraging American Music".

This program is made possible with public funds from the New York State Council on the Arts, with the support of Governor Andrew Cuomo and the New York State Legislature. Additional funding is provided by the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the New York City Council, NYSCA & NYU, and Women Composers.