Judy Kuhn Extends 'Serious Playground' Concert thru Feb.28

Judy Kuhn, the acclaimed actress and singer, has extended the run of her sold-out show "Serious Playground - The Songs of Laura Nyro." Kuhn recently starred on Broadway in the musical Les Miserables and made a cameo appearance in the box office smash Enchanted.

The show will now be performed at the Iridium Jazz Club (1650 Broadway at 51st Street) on Thursdays at 7PM through February 28. All shows have a $35 cover and a $10 minimum. Doors open at 6:00 PM and a full dinner menu is available. Please call (212) 582-2121 for reservations.

The show is based on her new CD, "Serious Playground - The Songs of Laura Nyro," released last fall by Ghostlight Records. "Serious Playground" is the first-ever solo CD celebrating the pioneering singer-songwriter of the 1960s and 70s, who would have turned 60 last fall. The CD was produced by Music Director Jeffrey Klitz and Joel Moss, with Klitz leading an eight-piece band. Kurt Deutsch and Kuhn serve as executive producers. The recording is based on her sold-out concert at the "Lincoln Center American Songbook Series" in January 2007. That concert followed Judy's Obie Award-winning role in the Off Broadway production of Eli's Comin' at the Vineyard Theatre, which inspired her passion for Nyro's music.

"Serious Playground" features fresh arrangements of Nyro's best-known songs like "Stoney End," "Sweet Blindness" and "Save The Country," but also offers new interpretations of rarely-recorded songs like "To A Child," "Mother's Spiritual" and "Been On A Train." "Lonely Women," spare and haunted on Nyro's album "Eli and the Thirteenth Confession." "Upstairs By A Chinese Lamp," named an all-time favorite by Rickie Lee Jones, is given a delicate treatment, as if part of a chamber opera. "Save The Country," whose potent anti-war message had a particular impact during the tumultuous Vietnam era, has a renewed relevance in the current political climate.

Judy Kuhn has been nominated for three Tony Awards and three Drama Desk Awards for her work on Broadway in the hit revival of She Loves Me, the American premiers of Chess and Les Miserables, and Rags. She is the singing voice of Disney's Pocahontas and co-starred in the upcoming film Day on Fire, for which she also performed the soundtrack with John Medeski.

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