Jeff Harnar's New Cy Coleman Album 'A COLLECTIVE CY' is Now Available for Pre-Order

PS CLASSICS, the label dedicated to the heritage of Broadway and American Popular Song, has announced that the new album from multi-award-winning concert artist Jeff Harnar – A Collective Cy: Jeff Harnar Sings Cy Coleman – is now available for pre-order on iTunes. Customers that pre-order the album will receive immediate downloads of the two songs: “I've Got Your Number,” Jeff's duet with Ann Hampton Callaway, and “Witchcraft.” The full album will be released on CD and digital formats on Friday, September 8.

Harnar brings his exuberance, interpretive acumen and “voice that out-Sinatras Sinatra” (BroadwayWorld) to bear on a titan of popular song whose work won multiple Tony, Grammy and Emmy awards over a six-decade career. Adapted from an award-winning stage show, A Collective Cy represents 40 years of Harnar's fruitful collaboration with music director Alex Rybeck. Here Rybeck conducts a full orchestra with charts arranged specifically for this recording, which works its witchcraft on 17 Coleman songs, from classics to lesser-known gems. In addition, the album includes special guest vocalists Ann Hampton Callaway, Liz Callaway, Nicolas King, and Danny Bacher (who also solos on saxophone), along with featured guitarist Sean Harkness The album is produced by Bart Migal. A Collective Cy is also available for pre-order on Amazon.com.

Harnar will celebrate the album with a special concert tour with shows in Carmel, IN at Feinstein's at the Carmichael (9/8), St Louis, MO at Blue Strawberry (9/15), Chicago, IL at Hey Nonny (9/20), London, England at The Pheasantry (9/27-28), and New York, NY at Birdland (10/2), with other national tour dates to be announced.

A Collective Cy is no mere anthology, but rather is a bravura celebration of a composer equally at home in the worlds of pop and Broadway, in performances soaked in Harnar and Rybeck's jazz-tinged theatricality. Much as Coleman did, Harnar and Rybeck marry stage-worthy savvy to the seeming effortlessness of jazz. It's an approach and an album of which Coleman himself would have heartily approved, and indeed, two-time Coleman collaborator Tommy Tune raved, “Jeff Harnar's singing and Cy Coleman's music make a perfect duet.” David Zippel, Coleman's lyricist on their Tony Award–winning City of Angels – who also wrote liner note for this new album – concurred: “Cy would've loved it.” 

The guest artists that brighten the album include Ann Hampton Callaway, pairing with Harnar on a sly and provocative “I've Got Your Number,” and her sister Liz Callaway joining Harnar for “Our Private World,” their intertwining voices illuminating the purity of the melody while allowing it to soar. Nicolas King and Danny Bacher, two of the most prominent young jazz singers on the scene, offer their vocal sparkle to a dazzling trio in “Rhythm of Life.” Guitar luminary Sean Harkness lends his prowess to a tender duet on “It Amazes Me.” The revered bassist Jay Leohart and music director Alex Rybeck show a different skill set with their backup vocals on “A Doodlin' Song (Doop-Doo-De-Oop).”

A Collective Cy features highlights from Coleman's legendary musicals Sweet Charity (“My Personal Property,” “If My Friends Could See Me Now”), Seesaw (“My City,“ “I'm Way Ahead”), and City of Angels (“With Every Breath I Take”), plus little-known songs like “So Little Time” (cut from Barnum),

The stage version of A Collective Cy, originally directed by Sara Louise Lazarus, won the Bistro Award for “Outstanding Major Engagement” and was a New York Magazine “Critic's Pick.” Edge New York raved, “this is a major event and this sparkling show deserves a special Cy-tation.” According to The New York Times, “Tapping the tender pulse behind Coleman's brassiness, his 'Witchcraft' is an x-ray version that examines the skin beneath the calluses of this brazen tease.”

This jazz-inspired meeting of Jeff Harnar, a passionate explorer of the Great American Songbook, and Cy Coleman, a master of both sophisticated pop standards and catchy Broadway show tunes, is a scintillating combination. A vocalist at the height of his powers, Harnar blazes a unique path through this ravishing set that stands out brightly among the tributes to Coleman and his contemporaries. PS Classics is proud to present this ideal pairing of artist and repertoire.

Jeff Harnar is an award-winning cabaret, concert and recording artist. His Carnegie Hall appearances include both the Cole Porter and Noël Coward Centennial Galas. Jeff's televised PBS concerts include “The 1959 Broadway Songbook” with music director Alex Rybeck and “American Songbook: Stephen Sondheim” co-starring KT Sullivan. Jeff toured with Broadway's Shauna Hicks in their Symphony Pops Concert “I Got Rhythm: Mickey & Judy's Hollywood.” Jeff has won multiple MAC, Bistro and BroadwayWorld Cabaret Awards and The Noël Coward Foundation Cabaret Award. In 2022, Jeff released his fifth solo album, the critically acclaimed I Know Things Now: My Life in Sondheim's Words with a twenty-piece orchestra conducted by Jon Weber (PS Classics). Also in 2022 Jeff was named the Chicago Cabaret Professionals National Honoree, was the recipient of the Mabel Mercer Foundation's Mabel Mercer Award, and the winner of three BroadwayWorld Cabaret Awards: Best Vocalist, Show and Director. In 2023 the Manhattan Association of Cabarets honored Jeff as “Celebrity Artist” and I Know Things Now won the Major Recording Award. He performs in the movie Joshua Tree, 1951: A Portrait of James Dean from Iconoclast Films. www.jeffharnar.com  

PS CLASSICS, founded in 2000 by Tommy Krasker and Philip Chaffin, is a nine-time Grammy Award nominee for its cast albums of Assassins, Nine: The Musical, Grey Gardens, Company, A Little Night Music, Sondheim on Sondheim, Follies, Porgy and Bess, and Fun Home. The label's catalog includes award-winning cast recordings; solo albums by such artists as Cheyenne Jackson, Victoria Clark, Steven Pasquale, Liz Callaway, Tony Yazbeck, Stephanie J. Block, Judy Kuhn and Rebecca Luker; and restorations of long-lost musicals, including Vernon Duke's Sweet Bye and Bye, Cole Porter's Something for the Boys, George Gershwin's Sweet Little Devil, and Vincent Youmans' Through the Years. The label's expansive catalog continues to find new audiences; Anthony Rapp brought his one-man show Without You (recorded by the label in 2012) to New York City this past winter, and the Off-Broadway hit Gutenberg! (recorded by the label in 2009) arrives on Broadway next month. Darius de Haas, who recorded the celebrated Strayhorn collection Day Dream for PS Classics in 2002, will be playing Billy Strayhorn himself this fall in Pittsburgh in the world premiere of Something to Live For, while selections from the label's acclaimed New Broadway Cast Recording of On the Town will be featured in the upcoming Leonard Bernstein biopic Maestro. www.psclassics.com.

A Collective Cy: Jeff Harnar Sings Cy Coleman – Track Listing

1. You Fascinate Me So (lyric by Carolyn Leigh)

2. My Personal Property (lyric by Dorothy Fields, from Sweet Charity)/ My City (lyric by Dorothy Fields, from Seesaw)

3. It Amazes Me (featuring Sean Harkness on guitar – lyric by Carolyn Leigh)

4. I've Got Your Number (featuring Ann Hampton Callaway – lyric by Carolyn Leigh, from Little Me)

5. With Every Breath I Take (lyric by David Zippel, from City of Angels)

6. Rhythm of Life (featuring Nicolas King and Danny Bacher – lyric by Dorothy Fields, from Sweet Charity)

7. The Best Is Yet to Come (lyric by Carolyn Leigh)

8. A Doodlin' Song (Doop-Doo-De-Oop) (featuring Jay Leonhart and Alex Rybeck – lyric by Carolyn Leigh)

9. Some Kind of Music (lyric by Carolyn Leigh)

10. So Little Time (lyric by Michael Stewart, cut from Barnum)

11. Our Private World (featuring Liz Callaway – lyric by Betty Comden & Adolph Green, from On the Twentieth Century)

12. Witchcraft (lyric by Carolyn Leigh)

13. The Rules of the Road (lyric by Carolyn Leigh)/ Come Summer (lyric by Carolyn Leigh) / I'm Way Ahead (lyric by Dorothy Fields, from Seesaw)

14. If My Friends Could See Me Now (lyric by Dorothy Fields, from Sweet Charity)