Kate Baldwin, Eisa Davis, Jason Gotay & More to Perform at OUT OF MYSELF — SONGS OF PETER FOLEY

Prospect Theater Company and the newly launched Peter Foley Music Project have partnered to present Out of Myself-Songs of Peter Foley, a concert celebrating the legacy of the late award-winning composer and lyricist. Tickets are now available and can be purchased at www.prospecttheater.org/peter-foley-music-project-concert



Held on Monday, June 5th at 7:30pm at Peter Norton Symphony Space (2537 Broadway, at 95th Street), Out of Myself-Songs of Peter Foley will feature Broadway stars including two-time Tony Award nominee Kate Baldwin, Pulitzer Prize finalist & Obie Award winner Eisa Davis, Tony Award nominee Melissa Errico, Tony Award nominee Manoel Felciano, and Jason Gotay, alongside additional soloists and choral ensemble singers to be announced. The concert will feature a dazzling range of Peter Foley's theater songs from The Hidden Sky, The Names We Gave Him, Bloom, Songs from an Unmade Bed, and more. Grammy & Emmy Award winner Rob Berman will music supervise.

Peter Foley was an award-winning composer and lyricist who Stephen Sondheim described as "among the best of his generation at setting lyrics and writing music that evokes character and mood." He wrote primarily for the theater but also for concert, cabaret, television, and film. Foley's songs have been performed in concert at Lincoln Center's American Songbook, Kennedy Center's Millennium Stage, the New York Festival of Song, Symphony Space, Town Hall, Joe's Pub, and Feinstein's/54 Below. His music is known for its originality, sophistication, beauty, and unique choral sound.

Foley died in 2021 at age 54 after a 10-year battle with ocular melanoma, a rare cancer. The Peter Foley Music Project, a non-profit foundation, was created to further his artistic legacy. For more information please visit www.peterfoleymusic.org.

"We are overjoyed to be presenting so many highlights from Peter's wide-ranging catalog, from intimate theater and art songs to large, dramatic choral numbers," said Kate Chisholm, Executive Director of the Peter Foley Music Project, "And we're thrilled to be partnering with Prospect Theater Company, one of New York's leading champions of new musical theater, to celebrate Peter's legacy and introduce his extraordinary work to new audiences."

Rob Berman, Music Supervisor, shared: "For me, Peter's music consistently hits the sweet spot of great intelligence without being overly cerebral, combined with deep emotion that avoids being overly sentimental. It is beautiful and challenging. His ear for inventive harmony and rhythm always surprises and his stylistic versatility all in the service of story and character is so impressive."


Melissa Errico, a frequent performer of Foley's work, describes Foley's unique sound: "Peter wrote music that is bound by good sense-foundation, logic, structure-but nothing is ordinary. Nothing was created except for music that would reach for emotional, psychological, romantic, poetic and sensual heights. It's a marvel how he could be both a down-to-earth craftsman and a poet of the highest order."


Manoel Felciano, who has performed and presented many of Foley's songs, observes: "Peter was that rare composer/ lyricist who was equally gifted at both. His music is as sophisticated and surprising as it is catchy, and his lyrics poetic and graceful- across an astonishing stylistic range. You end up caught off-guard at how your head and your heart are moved in tandem: astonished at the craft, pierced by the insight."

Prospect's Producing Artistic Director Cara Reichel added, "Prospect was honored to present the NYC premiere of Peter Foley and Kate Chisholm's stunning musical The Hidden Sky, and we are thrilled to have this chance to lift up and share Peter's magnificent body of creative work."

Additional information, including additional performers, will be announced shortly.

For more information, please visit www.prospecttheater.org/peter-foley-music-project-concert.


BIOGRAPHIES

Peter Foley

(Composer/Lyricist), 1967-2021, was an award-winning composer and lyricist for theater, television, film, and recital who Stephen Sondheim described as "among the best of his generation at setting lyrics and writing music that evokes character and mood." His musical theater works include The Hidden Sky (Book by Kate Chisholm; world premiere at Prince Music Theater in Philadelphia, nominated for six Barrymore Awards; New York premiere at Prospect Theater Company), The Names We Gave Him (Book & Lyrics by Ellen McLaughlin; commissioned by The Public Theater), I Capture the Castle (Book by Cara Reichel, Lyrics by Marion Adler; commissioned by Signature Theatre), Bloom, Whitechapel, and The Bear. For his music and lyrics to The Hidden Sky, he received the Richard Rodgers Award, Stephen Sondheim Award, Jonathan Larson Foundation Award, and an NEA New American Works grant. Foley's other stage works include music for "To Sing" in Mark Campbell's Songs from an Unmade Bed (New York Theatre Workshop; original cast album on Sh-K-Boom Records) and scores for several plays (Shakespeare Theatre of New Jersey, St. Ann's Warehouse, Berkeley Theater Project). His songs have been performed at Lincoln Center's American Songbook, Kennedy Center's Millennium Stage, New York Festival of Song, Symphony Space, Town Hall, Joe's Pub, Feinstein's/54 Below, and more. Scores and themes for television include "Listening to America with Bill Moyers" and seven seasons of the Emmy-nominated, Peabody Award-winning PBS series "Art:21". An alum of Yale University, he was a fellow/resident artist at the MacDowell Colony, Millay Colony, Eugene O'Neill Theater Center National Music Theater Conference, and Sundance Institute Playwrights Retreat at Ucross. His artistic legacy is being furthered by the Peter Foley Music Project. www.peterfoleymusic.org

Rob Berman

(Music Supervision) is an Emmy and Grammy Award winning New York based conductor and music director. For fifteen years he was the music director of Encores!, New York City Center's acclaimed series of great American musicals in concert, where he conducted over thirty productions, including the recent revival of Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine's Into the Woods, which transferred to a Broadway run and for which he received a Grammy Award as co-producer of the original cast recording. Other Broadway credits include Steve Martin and Edie Brickell's Bright Star, Dames At Sea, Tuck Everlasting, Wonderful Town, The Pajama Game, Irving Berlin's White Christmas; and revivals of Finian's Rainbow, The Apple Tree, and Promises, Promises. Rob's association with Stephen Sondheim has also included the off-Broadway revivals of Pacific Overtures and Passion at Classic Stage Company directed by John Doyle, as well as the Kennedy Center's production of Sunday in the Park with George, for which Rob won a Helen Hayes Award for music direction. For nine years, Rob was music director of the Kennedy Center Honors, for which he won an Emmy Award for Outstanding Music Direction. Rob has conducted fifteen original cast recordings, including the Encores! productions of Paint Your Wagon, Merrily We Roll Along, and Gentlemen Prefer Blondes.

Kate Baldwin

(Performer) is a two-time Tony Award nominee and four-time Drama Desk nominee, having starred on Broadway as Irene Molloy in the revival of Hello, Dolly! and the 2009 revival of Finian's Rainbow as Sharon McLonergan. She originated the roles of Sandra Bloom in Big Fish on Broadway and Leslie Lynnton Benedict in Giant at The Public Theatre. She starred as Jen in Keen Company's revival of John & Jen and garnered a Lucille Lortel Award nomination for Superhero at Second Stage. Other Broadway credits: The Full Monty, Thoroughly Modern Millie and Wonderful Town. She starred in The King and I at the Lyric Opera of Chicago, The Women at The Old Globe, Henry V at the Shakespeare Theatre of New Jersey, She Loves Me at Williamstown Theatre Festival, and The Music Man and South Pacific at Arena Stage (Helen Hayes Award nomination). At Berkshire Theatre Group, she was seen in A Little Night Music, Bells Are Ringing and Constellations. On television, her work includes a guest star on NBC's "Law & Order: SVU" and a featured role in the PBS filming of Stephen Sondheim's "Passion" and the Disney+ series "Just Beyond." She is a graduate of Northwestern University and lives with her husband and son in Maplewood, NJ.

Eisa Davis

(Performer) is an award-winning, multi-disciplinary artist working onstage, onscreen, and in hybrid performance spaces. Her musical works include two albums (Something Else and Tinctures), The Essentialisn't (upcoming at Jack in Brooklyn, winner of a Creative Capital Award) and music and lyrics for Walter Mosley's Devil In A Blue Dress. Her thirteen full length plays include Bulrusher (Pulitzer finalist), Angela's Mixtape (a New Yorker Best of the Year), and the bilingual Mushroom (translated by Georgina Escobar, world premiere, People's Light, 2022). Notable collaborations: the black femme celebration AFROFEMONONOMY // WORK THE ROOTS, for which she directed and starred in a film of the late Kathleen Collins' Remembrance; penning two episodes for Spike Lee's She's Gotta Have It on Netflix; performer/creator in Carrie Mae Weems' Grace Notes; text for the Cirque du Soleil ice show Crystal; and serving as producer and writer for the upcoming FX limited series Justified: City Primeval. She has originated stage roles in Lynn Nottage and Duncan Sheik's The Secret Life of Bees (AUDELCO Award), Dave Malloy and Rachel Chavkin's Preludes, Kings (Drama League nomination), Julius Caesar (Shakespeare in the Park), This, The Call, Luck of the Irish, and Passing Strange. Screen work: Branden Jacobs-Jenkins' adaptation of Octavia Butler's Kindred, Extrapolations, Men of Divorce (upcoming), Mare of Easttown, Betty, Pose, The Looming Tower, House of Cards, The Wire. A Cave Canem fellow, New Dramatists alumna, Obie winner for Sustained Excellence in Performance, and USA Fellowship and Herb Alpert Award winner in Theatre, Eisa was born in Berkeley, CA and lives in Fort Greene, Brooklyn. 



Melissa Errico

(Performer) is a Tony Award-nominated Broadway star, concert artist, and author. Her latest album, Out Of The Dark: The Film Noir Project was recently released from Warner Music/Ghostlight Records and is dedicated to Peter Foley. Of Peter, she has said: "His soul couldn't help but strive for beauty and everything that entailed. Our first collaboration was on his brilliant musical Whitechapel when we were in college together. Our last collaboration was a song he contributed to my film noir album- both dealt with dark subjects with a deep light from within, which was his light." The project began life as a specially commissioned bilingual series of concerts at the French Institute/Alliance Francaise. After a year that included two engagements in London, her Carnegie Hall debut, and a tour that took her from Singapore to Paris and LA, she performed her first week-long jazz club residency in February 2023 at the Birdland Jazz Club in NYC. An active writer all her life, she has since 2016 authored a series of pieces for The New York Times under the special rubric of "Scenes From The Acting Life," which she is in the process of adapting into a book. She is the proud mother of three teenagers: Victoria, Diana and Juliette, and is married to Patrick McEnroe. 



Manoel Felciano

(Performer) is honored to be celebrating the extraordinary artistry of his dear departed friend Peter Foley. Currently playing Tom Watson in the Broadway revival of Parade. Broadway: Dear Evan Hansen, To Kill A Mockingbird, Sweeney Todd (Tony nomination), Amélie, Disaster!, Brooklyn, Jesus Christ Superstar, Cabaret. Off Broadway: The Alchemist, By The Way, Meet Vera Stark, The Secret Life of Bees, The Changeling, Trumpery, Much Ado About Nothing (NYSF), Shockheaded Peter. Regionally: Twelfth Night (dir. Rebecca Taichman), The Tempest, Much Ado About Nothing, (Old Globe!) world premiere of Mothers and Sons with Tyne Daly, The Exorcist with Brooke Shields, Clybourne Park, Caucasian Chalk Circle, November, Jerry in Zoo Story, Elektra with Olympia Dukakis, Ragtime (Kennedy Center), Three Sisters (Williamstown), George in Sunday in the Park with George with Kelli O'Hara. TV: "Evil", "Blacklist", "Elementary", "NCIS", "Trauma", "The Unusuals". BA Yale, MFA NYU. Adjunct, Columbia MFA Acting.



Jason Gotay

(Performer) recently performed his autobiographical solo show Where You'll Find Me at the Minetta Lane Theater (available on Audible). He made his Broadway debut in the original company of Bring It On: The Musical written by Lin Manuel-Miranda, Tom Kitt, and Amanda Green, nominated for the Tony Award for Best Musical. Other Broadway/New York credits include Peter Parker/Spider-Man in Spider-Man: Turn off the Dark, Che in New York City Center's acclaimed revival of Evita, Irving Berlin's Call Me Madam, and Transport Group's Renascence written by Carmel Dean and Dick Scanlan. He has appeared in the world premieres of Stephen Schwartz's The Prince of Egypt, Disney's Freaky Friday, and A Bronx Tale, as well as NBC's Peter Pan Live! He most recently starred in HBO Max's "Gossip Girl" reboot, and has performed solo acts at Green Room 42, Le Poisson Rouge, and Tavern on the Green.

THE Peter Foley MUSIC PROJECT

is a 501c3 charitable foundation whose mission is to further the artistic legacy of composer/lyricist Peter Foley (1967-2021) through promoting and supporting performance, recording, and publication of his works. www.peterfoleymusic.org.

ABOUT PROSPECT THEATER COMPANY

Prospect Theater Company is dedicated to fostering and showcasing today's new voices shaping tomorrow's musicals. Over two decades, the company has premiered more than 35 musicals in New York City, in addition to new plays and numerous re-inventions of classic works. Reflecting its investment in the future of the field, Prospect leads a variety of developmental initiatives: including an annual Musical Theater Lab for emerging writers, and the IGNITE Series of new musical theater in concert. In 2020, Prospect launched the VISION Series of original music-theater works on film, created for online streaming. In recognition of its enterprising and risk-taking new musical theater, the company has received an OBIE Award grant, and its role as a community anchor for emerging artists that strengthens the quality, diversity, and dynamism of American theater was honored by the American Theatre Wing.

Up next at Prospect Theater is the New York premiere of the award-winning, indie-rock musical Lizard Boy, with book, music and lyrics by Justin Huertas and directed by Brandon Ivie. Recently, Prospect produced the musical song-cycle Notes From Now - Songs of Resilience & Renewal (2022) featuring a lineup of newly-commissioned original songs created by 21 of today's brightest musical theater writers. Previously, Prospect produced the Drama Desk Award-nominated Einstein's Dreams (2019) by Joanne Sydney Lessner & Joshua Rosenblum, adapted from the novel by Alan Lightman, and the Drama Desk and Outer Critics Circle Award-nominated The Hello Girls (2018), by company founding artists Peter Mills & Cara Reichel. Both of these shows ran Off-Broadway at 59E59 Theaters and have original cast albums available from Broadway Records. Other notable productions include: Kerrigan & Lowdermilk's The Mad Ones (2017); Ryan Scott Oliver and Hunter Foster's Jasper in Deadland (2014); the Drama Desk nominated Tamar of the River (2013) by Joshua H. Cohen and Marisa Michelson; Carner & Gregor's Unlock'd (2013); Gordon Greenberg's revisal of Working (Drama Desk Award, Outstanding Ensemble, 2012) including new songs by Lin Manuel Miranda; and Elizabeth Lucas' re-imagining of Guettel's Myths and Hymns (2012).