Jonathan Cake, Melissa Errico & Kathleen Chalfant to Star in Salon/Sanctuary's 'MORE BETWEEN HEAVEN AND EARTH' Next Month

More Between Heaven and Earth, Salon/Sanctuary's original site-specific music theater piece, directed and with a script by Erica Gould based on the letters of Thomas Jefferson and Maria Cosway, returns to Fraunces Tavern on January 18th. Fraunces Tavern, built in 1719, sets the stage for the production, which features music prepared from the original 18th century manuscripts, researched by Jessica Gould.

Melissa Errico reprises her role as the trailblazing 18th century Italian singer, composer, and painter Maria Cosway. Obie award-winning actress Kathleen Chalfant returns to the role of Narrator, which she orginated in the premiere production, and Jonathan Cake of the Royal Shakespeare Company assumes the role of Thomas Jefferson.

Sparks flew between the widowed Jefferson and the married Maria when they met in Paris in 1786. Their passionate correspondence of almost 40 years included music Maria and Jefferson heard together in France, as well as works that Maria herself composed for him.

Jonathan, Melissa and Kathleen will be joined by soprano Jessica Gould, tenor Tony Boutté, and chamber orchestra for the environmentally staged performance.

The oldest surviving structure in Manhattan, Fraunces Tavern housed Washington's Cabinet when Jefferson was Secretary of State, and is the actual building where Jefferson wrote some of the letters used in the script.

Musical selections include works by Corelli, Cosway, Hewitt, and Sacchini, including arias and sinfonias from the 1786 Sacchini opera Dardanus. Never performed before in the United States, the editions used in this performance were prepared from the original 1786 score housed in the Weiner Music Library of Columbia University.

The performance promises to be an exciting and intimate evening that brings to vivid life the passionate, moving, and star-crossed relationship of Jefferson and Cosway, the turbulence of the French Revolution, and Jefferson's revolutionary views about the role of religion in American society. A treat for lovers of history, romance, politics, and music.

To contact Salon/Sanctuary Concerts, email salonsanctuaryconcerts@gmail.com, call (646) 470-1837 or visit www.salonsanctuary.org. For tickets, call 1 888 718-4253, go online at www.salonsanctuary.org. Prices: $25 seniors/students/EMA/FIAF; $35 general admission; $50 prime; $100 series supporter tax-deductible.

BIOS:

Jonathan Cake's theatre credits include: Antony and Cleopatra (Public Theater, RSC), Cymbeline (Lincoln Center), Medea on Broadway (w/ Fiona Shaw, Theatre World Award), Coriolanus (Shakespeare's Globe), Baby Doll (National Theatre, West End, Barclays Best Actor Award). Film credits include Brideshead Revisited, First Knight, Riverworld, Out of the Ashes, The Mastersons of Manhattan, Captain Cook's Extraordinary Atlas, Krews,The One and Only, True Blue, Diamond Girl, The Bench. TV credits include Desperate Housewives, Law and Order, Law and Order: Criminal Intent, Six Degrees, Empire, Off the Map, Extras, Chuck,The Swap, Inconceivable, The American Embassy, Degrees of Error, Cows, Grange Hill, Rebecca, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, The Thin Blue Line, A Dance to the Music of Time, Noah's Ark, Mosley, The Jump. Graduate of Cambridge University, Bristol Old Vic, Royal Shakespeare Company.

Melissa Errico appears in a recurring role on the new Cinemax series "The Knick" with Clive Owen, directed by Stephen Soderbergh. This year, Melissa was nominated for a Drama Desk Award for her performance as Clara in the critically acclaimed revival of "Passion" by Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine. She has also been seen in guest starring roles on "Blue Bloods" and "The Good Wife." She has played leading ladies on Broadway in My Fair Lady, Dracula, White Christmas, Anna Karenina, Amour (Tony Award nomination for Best Actress), High Society and Les Miserables. Off-Broadway: Importance of Being Earnest, Major Barbara and Candida. Solo CDs include Blue Like That (EMI) and "Melissa Errico- Legrand Affair" conducted by Michel Legrand and produced by Phil Ramone. Melissa has an extensive musical history as a concert performer, and was seen this season at Symphony Space, Wolf Trap and The Tilles Center. She has three daughters, is married to Patrick McEnroe and lives in Little Italy, NYC.www.melissaerrico.com

Kathleen Chalfant was nominated for Broadway's 1993 TONY Award as Best Actress for her role in Tony Kushner's Angels in America: Millennium Approaches. Her other Broadway and West End credits include Wit, Angels in America (Tony and Drama Desk nominations), M. Butterfly, Racing Demon, and Encores! Series Bloomer Girl. For her searing performance as Vivian Bearing in Margaret Edson's play Wit, Chalfant was awarded the Outer Circle Critics, Drama Desk, Obie, and Lucille Lortel awards, among others. In 2003, he won a second Obie Award and Outer Critics Award for her performance in Alan Bennett's Talking Heads. Her Off-Broadway credits also include The Vagina Monologues, Sister Mary Ignatius..., Henry V, Nine Armenians (Drama Desk nomination), Twelve Dreams, Dead Man's Cell Phone, and End Game, for which she won an Obie Award for Sustained Excellence in Performance.

Her film work includes Kinsey, Murder and Murder, Five Corners, Side Streets, A Price Above Rubies, and the upcoming independent feature film, Isn't It Delicious? In 2009, Chalfant performed in The People Speak, a documentary feature film that uses dramatic and musical performances of the letters, diaries, and speeches of everyday Americans, based on historian Howard Zinn's "A People's History of the United States." Television: The Affair, Rescue Me, The Laramie Project, A Death in the Family (American Masterpiece Theatre), Law & Order, Spin City, Steven King's Storm of the Century, Voices from the White House and Laurie Solt in The Guardian.

Soprano Jessica Gould has been noted for "a dramatic intensity that honored the texts" (The New York Times), "exquisite melismatic singing" (The Opera Insider) and for "expansive range, coloratura facility, and multi-hued, powerful sound" (Seen and Heard International). Her programming has been praised as "highly original" (The New York Times) and "impeccably curated" (Time Out New York). With actor Roger Rees and the Paul Dresher Ensemble she can be heard on the New World Records CD Tell the Birds, while chamber music performances include The Clarion Society, Sinfonia New York, The Four Nations Ensemble, The Virginia Arts Festival, The Guggenheim Works & Process Series with The Cassatt Quartet, and The Beinecke Library at Yale University. Numerous appearances abroad include the Festival Martedì in Arte at the Palazzo Davanzati, the Museo di Arte Sacra in Tuscany, the Library of the Museo di San Marco of Florence with Musica Ricercata and lutenist Andrea Damiani, and the UK Lute Society. Operatic performances include Donna Anna in Don Giovanni, Herz in The Impresario, the title role of Handel's Semele under the direction of Ken-David Masur, and Agrippina in Handel's Agrippina. As Founder and Artistic Director of Salon/Sanctuary Concerts, her many original programs featuring repertoire from the 8th to 18th centuries have garnered generous foundation awards and consistent critical praise. Upcoming performances of early music include solo concerts in Rome, Florence, and Amsterdam.

Tenor Tony Boutté has appeared in a wide range of roles, including Ottavio in Don Giovanni, Acis in Handel's Acis & Galatea, and Gandhi in the Philip Glass opera Satyagraha. As an oratorio and concert singer, Mr. Boutté has performed with Les Arts Florissants, Tafelmusik, Les Talens Lyriques, Opera Lafayette, the Washington Bach Consort, the New York Collegium, Violons du Roy, Boston Baroque, Orchestra of St. Luke's, and Musica Angelica, among others. Numerous premieres include John Eaton's Benjamin Button (Symphony Space,) Michael Gordon's Chaos, Betsy Jolas's Motet III, Bang on a Can Festival's Carbon Copy Building, Philip Glass's In the Penal Colony, and Arjuna's Dilemma by Douglas Cuomo (Brooklyn Academy of Music). Recordings range from Bach's St. John Passion (Smithsonian Chamber Orchestra) and operas by Lully (Armide) and Sacchini (Oedipe à Colone) to world premiere recordings of Carbon Copy Building and Arjuna's Dilemma. Festival appearances include Salzburg, Aspen, Bard, Schleswig-Holstien, Settembre, Aldeburgh, Versailles Autumn Festival and Tage Alte Muzik Regensburg. He is currently on the voice faculty of University of Miami's Frost School of Music and co-directs ARCANUM, a baroque ensemble based in Miami, FL. Upcoming recordings include works by de la Guerre and Philidor.

Erica Gould 's directing credits include the world premieres of Neil LaBute's plays autobahn and Stand Up (with Mos Def), On Point: From Sword Fight to Pas de Deux, a new dance-theatre piece that she developed in collaboration with dancers from The New York City Ballet(Salon/Sanctuary), SpeakEasy by Rajiv Joseph, Theresa Rebeck, others (Joe's Pub/Public Theater), the US premiere of Me Cago en Dios by Inigo Ramirez de Haro (La MaMa), Max and the Truffle Pig (NYMF), Dirty Paki Lingerie, which she developed with writer/solo performer Aizzah Fatima (Cherry Lane, 59E59, The Flea, Toronto, Edinburgh), and numerous productions of Shakespeare.Upcoming in 2014: her site-specific production of John Gay's vicious, political comic masterpiece, The Beggar's Opera. Erica is also a fight choreographer, and may be heard, along with Rick Sordelet, on the SDCF/American Theatre Wing Masters of the Stage podcast on Physical Staging and Fight Direction (americantheatrewing.org).

The newly formed Salon/Sanctuary Chamber Orchestra is comprised of of some of the brightest lights of the newest generation of period instrumentalists in New York City. Its members include graduates of the leading conservatories for historical performance who are active soloists and ensemble members in such organizations as Trinity Wall Street, the Clarion Society, and the Boston Early Music Festival, among others. No strangers to theatrical productions, several SSC Chamber Orchestra players appeared last year costumed and on stage as part of the two productions of Shakespeare on Broadway, performed by the Royal Shakespeare Company. Virtually all the players of the ensemble are actively engaged in their own efforts to expand the boundaries of early music through innovative programming and self-generated projects that consistently shake up the New York early music landscape.

Founded by Artistic Director Jessica Gould in 2009, Salon/Sanctuary Concerts offers the special chance to hear pre-Romantic music in intimate venues that complement the historical context of the repertoire. Pleased to present special projects that cast a light on historical issues through the prism of music, Salon/Sanctuary has forged a path apart from other presenters of historical performance through the production of many special interdisciplinary performances featuring luminaries from the worlds of opera, theater, film, and dance. The series has garnered critical praise for its innovative programming, and continues to attract a diverse audience for its path breaking offerings. Past and future soloists on Salon / Sanctuary include countertenor Anthony Roth Costanzo, lutenist Hopkinson Smith, soprano Julianne Baird, violinists Monica Huggett, Robert Mealy, and Cynthia Roberts, oboist Gonzalo Ruiz, Harpsichordists Bradley Brookshire, Jory Vinikour, and Kenneth Weiss, NYCB principal dancers Jared Angel and Megan LeCrone, and actors Kathleen Chalfant, Melissa Errico, Ethan Peck, Campbell Scott, and Matthew Modine.