Laura Benanti Will Shine Spotlight on Students with #SunshineSongs Concert This Weekend

On the heels of her viral social media campaign, #SunshineSongs, Tony Award winning actress Laura Benanti is partnering with K4Connect and Seniorly to bring joy through music to senior living communities, aging loved ones isolated in their homes, children's hospitals, and beyond! On Saturday, May 2nd at 6:00 PM EST, the Sunshine Songs Concert will present the first intergenerational live viewing experience.

In March, Laura created #SunshineSongs, to invite students across the country to share videos of the performances they were not able to give this year due to the COVID-19 Pandemic. Laura first partnered with her friend Kate Deiter-Maradei to explore a way to distribute the performance videos to senior communities and Children's Hospitals, as a result creating the Sunshine Concert event which you can watch!

COVID-19 has suddenly changed the way we are all living, but for older generations and hospitalized children around the world, the impacts have been particularly significant. In senior living communities and Children's Hospitals, residents and patients under strict quarantine safety measures are unable to visit with family or friends. Together with the teams at Seniorly and K4Connect, they were hoping to remedy this by bringing a little bit of joy through streaming a variety of #SunshineSongs performances. "I was talking to my mom (Linda Benanti, a renowned voice teacher) and she shared how disappointed her students were that their school musicals were canceled due to Covid-19. These shows bring entire towns together in celebration of their talented young people and I wanted to provide a platform for them to be seen and celebrated! The tremendous outpouring of love on social media for #SushineSongs led me to my friend Kate Deiter-Maradei (a community activist) and together we devised a plan to bring #SunshineConcerts to vulnerable communities (our beloved Seniors as well as our young people in Children's hospitals) that might not be active on Social Media."

Seniorly will be providing the technical and creative live streaming expertise in collaboration with K4Connect's distribution. The live stream event will be directed by Ashley Rodbro and produced by Stephanie Cowan. Prompt, a mission-driven education company, is developing the website and providing creative support. To learn more about the initiative, please visit www.SunshineSongs.com