THE PLEASING RECOLLECTION to Make New York Debut at Feinstein's/54 Below

The Pleasing Recollection - a playful and witty musical adventure that blends opera and cabaret - will make its New York debut at Feinstein's/54 Below for two shows only on Tuesday, April 5 at 7:00 PM and Wednesday, April 6 at 9:30 PM. The Pleasing Recollection features music by Martin Hennessy and a libretto by Stephen Kitsakos. The show stars baritone Michael Kelly with music director Bénédicte Jourdois on piano. Murphy Davis serves as director. The show, which will have two preview performances at The Studios at Key West in Key West, FL from April 1-2, embarks on a national tour this summer. For tickets to the New York performances, please visit 54Below.com.

The Pleasing Recollection, set in the mid-1970s, follows a young man who lands ashore in Manhattan without a map. Negotiating his way into life in the performing arts, the piece chronicles his musical adventures as he charmingly stumbles into some of the era's musical and theater giants including Leonard Bernstein, Aaron Copland, Larry Kert, and Charles Ludlam. Kitsakos's joyful autobiographical story rolls forward with Hennessy's ingenious score at the intersection of cabaret and opera theater.

Librettist Stephen Kitsakos remembers, "In the late 1970s, while still a student at NYU, I got a job singing and playing the piano at Marie's Crisis, a piano bar on Grove Street in Greenwich Village. I stayed out too late, played a lot of Sondheim, and met some truly amazing people. New York in the 70s was a dangerous time, but also an exhilarating one. When we were all locked up in our pandemic bubbles, like many others, I started looking back on my life. I remembered both my adventures and my misadventures, and I felt like it was something important... a pleasing recollection."

The composer Martin Hennessy adds, "This show is for everyone who's ever followed that dream of making it in the arts, or anyone who's ever wanted to. Steve's story happens during that same era I was on the other end of things at Lincoln Center, learning the craft of accompanying art song and coaching opera. Our musical marriage is made in heaven because I felt his story as my own."

"It was a pleasure to write across genres," he continues. "Sometimes the lyrics called for straight-up Broadway tunes that use tight forms and structures for rhymed lyrics, and other times a more operatic palette, drawing from a more fluid and experimental source for the more poetic parts of Steve's libretto. Then there were areas in which a hybrid genre emerged. Although the score is vivacious and comic, it's studded with moments of introspection and self-discovery. It was a pleasure to pay homage to Bernstein, Sondheim, music of the 60s and 70s, and then Aaron Copland who created a distinctly American sound in classical music."

"I'm so proud to have the opportunity to portray such a beautifully realized queer protagonist," says the show's star Michael Kelly. "It's exciting to get to turn back the clock and revisit the gay culture of the 70s, an era that pulsed with gritty sexuality and endless possibilities."

The Pleasing Recollection arrives in New York at a productive time for its accomplished creative team. Hennessy and Kitsakos have begun collaborating on an operatic adaptation of the celebrated 202o novel Swimming in the Dark. Kitsakos's adaptation of Khaled Hosseini's A Thousand Splendid Suns, with composer Sheila Silver, will premiere in January 2023 at Seattle Opera. Kelly just performed Benjamin Britten: Songs and Proverbs of William Blake with the Brooklyn Art Song Society to rave reviews.

For updates on the show, please follow facebook.com/ThePleasingRecollection.

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