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The Down Town Glee Club's Annual Spring Concert Salutes Hal Prince 

By: May. 04, 2018
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The prestigious all-male singing group, The Down Town Glee Club, under the baton of Grant Mech, tips its collective hat to legendary Broadway producer Hal Prince in its annual Spring Concert, entitled Prince of the City, also featuring special guest, mezzo soprano, Amy Maude Helfer on Thursday, May 17, 2018 at 7:30 PM at The Baruch Performing Arts Center

This year, the group will celebrate the joys of singing glee in a new home, The Baruch Performing Arts Center, located at 55 Lexington Avenue, New York City. The group presents tunes from iconic Broadway shows shepherded by Prince. In over six decades, the 90-year old producer/director has won an astounding 21 Antoinette Perry (Tony) Awards, and has been responsible for shows such as Damn Yankees, Fiddler on the Roof, West Side Story, Cabaret, The Phantom of the Opera, and many more. The concert will feature medleys of music from Fiddler on the Roof and The Phantom of the Opera as well as popular numbers "Heart," "You're Just in Love," "Not While I'm Around" and other magnificent songs that have been entrancing Broadway music lovers from the 1950s to the present.

The Down Town Glee Club has been entertaining audiences for 91 years. It all came about in February 1927 when a group of men met on Vesey Street to form a new cultural organization, which they called the Down Town Glee Club. The club's founders, Channing Lefebvre and Arthur Schwartz, became the club's first conductor and president, respectively. Their first concert on May 12, 1927, featured more than one-hundred men performing in the grand ballroom of the Hotel Roosevelt. The club continues to present two concerts each year, with music from a wide array of genres, including Broadway, sacred, folk and standards, as well as traditional choral music.

Amy Maude Helfer, mezzo-soprano, is a singing actor, whose recent credits in operetta and musical theatre include soloing with Opera Theater of Connecticut at the Sanibel Music Festival, leading roles with NY Gilbert and Sullivan Players, soloist at Ivoryton "Playhouse on the Shore" and leading roles with Madison Lyric Stage and Winter Opera Saint Louis. Amy is Artist-in-Residence at Dayton Opera and a 2013 semi-finalist in the Lotte Lenya Competition, produced annually by the Kurt Weill Foundation.

Conductor Grant Mech holds degrees from Westminster Choir College, where he studied with Margaret Cusack. An alumnus of Opera New Jersey's young artist program, Grant has appeared as a singer in numerous operatic productions, including The Cantanti Project, dell'Arte Opera Ensemble, Delaware Valley Opera, New Rochelle Opera, Opera NJ, Garden State Opera and Opéra du Périgord in France. He has also sung in concerts and recital and has appeared in concerts with the early music ensemble La Fiocco from Bucks County Pennsylvania. Grant is the director of music at Good Shepherd Episcopal Church in New York and the choral director at Rancocas Valley Regional High School in Mount Holly, NJ.

The Down Town Glee Club, Prince of the City, Thursday, May 17, 2018 at 7:30 PM at the Baruch Performing Arts Center, 55 Lexington Avenue, New York City (entrance is on East 25th Street),

Tickets are $16 for seniors, students and veterans and in advance. Tickets are gratis for active military. Purchase tickets here. Use code FIVEOFF to receive $5 off the regular ticket price. Tickets at the door are $21.




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