Theater for the New City to Celebrate David Amram's 86th Birthday in 'BACK TO WHERE IT ALL BEGAN'

Celebrate David Amram's birthday in "Back to Where All Began: Amram at 86 " at Theater for the New City on Monday, December 12, at 8 p.m.

The first half of the program will be five of Amram's classical chamber music compositions, performed by players from NY Philharmonic, Boston Symphony, Metropolitan Opera Orchestras, and American Ballet Theater Orchestra, through the auspices of the New York Chamber Music Festival's founder, violinist Elmira Darvarova. The Festival appointed Amram as their composer-in-residence for the 2016-17 season, celebrating the 50th anniversary of Leonard Bernstein's choosing Amram as the New York Philharmonic's first-ever composer-in-residence for the 1966-67 season.

The featured piece on the first half of the evening will be the NY Premiere of THREE LOST LOVES for violin, alto saxophone and piano, based on romances of characters in the novels of Willa Cather, Zora Neale Hurston and Jack Kerouac. The soloists are violinist Elmira Darvarova, saxophonist Ken Radnofsky and pianist Thomas Weaver. Special guest artist Howard Wall french hornist with the New York Philharmonic will perform Amram's Blues and Variations for Monk, and Ronald Carbone, principal violist the American Ballet Theater Orchestra, will perform Amram's "The Wind and the Rain."

The second half of the night will be an AMRAM JAM with Amram's jazz quartet joined by Irish singer/author and leader of the band Black 47 Larry Kirwan, Israeli bazookie and guitar soloist Avram Pengas, glockenspiel virtuoso Kevin Twigg, Bassist Rene Hart, percussionists Adam Amram and Robbie Winterhawk, singers Martha Redbone, Morley Kaman and Alana Amram, jazz saxophonist Erik Lawrence, pianist Aaron Whitby, singer-songwriter Richard Barone, poets Frank Messina and Anbessa Tawani, and surprise guest luminaries from the worlds of Latin, folk, jazz and Native American music.

There will also be readings of Jack Kerouac's prose with music, which Kerouac and Amram pioneered for the first-ever public jazz/poetry readings in New York City, presented in 1957.

For tickets and the full show listing, visit TheaterfortheNewCity.net.