Beloved nightclub and Broadway vet Teri Ralston (Company, A Little Night Music) returns to New York's famed Metropolitan Room on Monday, 17 November, at 9pm to reprise the cabaret show she recorded there, live, this past January, and to celebrate the release of the resulting CD: I'VE GOTTA GET BACK TO NEW YORK. Both the cabaret show and this debut solo recording encompass significant songs from Teri's celebrated career (as well as other personal favorites), and are sprinkled with intimate, amusing backstage stories involving some of the biggest names in musical theatre. Teri will be joined at the Metropolitan Room by musical director Shelly Markham. Tickets are $25.
Composer
Stephen Schwartz (
Wicked, Pippin) was at the Metropolitan Room in January for the live concert recording. "There are many who can sing," he says, "but few who bring such infectious joy to their performance. Listening to
Teri Ralston doing what she so clearly loves, a smile is simply irresistible."
The CD title, I'VE GOTTA GET BACK TO NEW YORK, was inspired by Teri's recent move from Los Angeles back to Manhattan where her career really began more than 35 years ago. But oddly enough, although that career has spanned theater, concert hall recitals, cabaret, and television, Teri had never recorded a CD of her own…until now. I'VE GOTTA GET BACK TO NEW YORK contains 22 songs that include show tunes from such stage and screen composers as
Stephen Sondheim and
Stephen Schwartz, plus numbers from artists like
Peggy Lee,
Amanda McBroom, and
Shelly Markham. Also featured on the CD is guest performer and Company co-star Pam Myers (singing "Another Hundred People" from Company, and "Little Green Apples"). In addition, there are two studio-recorded bonus tracks ("Losing My Mind" from Follies and "The Road Not Taken" from Too Old for the Chorus). I'VE GOTTA GET BACK TO NEW YORK was produced by
Lee Lessack for LML Music, and independently by
Mark Winkler and
Shelly Markham. It was officially released on September 9th. Complete track listing and sample songs are at
www.LMLmusic.com.
"We recorded I'VE GOTTA GET BACK TO NEW YORK live at the fabulous Metropolitan Room (where I love to perform!) and we were really able to capture the energy and excitement of the evening," explains Teri. "Doing cabaret is such a personal experience, both for the audience and the artist: You get to open up and connect and laugh with each other in ways that just can't happen in other circumstances. I have so much fun in this show, sharing backstage stories and singing songs that have come to mean so much to me over the years. I'm extremely grateful to my friends who kept nudging me and encouraging me to make this CD. It took years, but I finally did it. And I made it a live recording, which was so important to me. To borrow from
Stephen Sondheim, 'Look, I made a hat, where there never was a hat.' And I couldn't be happier with the result."
Teri Ralston is available for interviews. A review copy of I'VE GOTTA GET BACK TO NEW YORK is available upon request.
BIOGRAPHY
Teri Ralston was attending San Francisco University when she was cast in the rock musical Your Own Thing, which brought her to New York. One night she went to see an Off-Broadway production of Jacques BreI is Alive and Well and Living in Paris, and fell in love with the show. Not knowing any better, she called the stage manager, insisted on an audition-and was promptly cast! Serendipity stepped in when actor/writer
George Furth caught her performance and thought she would be perfect for one of the roles in a new musical he was writing. In no time she was cast as Jenny, one of Bobby's "good and crazy married friends," in the groundbreaking Company. It was the beginning of a long and fruitful relationship with two giants of the American theater-composer
Stephen Sondheim and producer/director
Hal Prince.
Teri reprised her Company role for the California and London productions, after which she went right into the next Sondheim/Prince collaboration, A Little Night Music. After that, she was cast in two shows created by some of Broadway's brightest talents, but which closed out of town. One of them, The Baker's Wife, began her long association with composer
Stephen Schwartz, who wrote the song "Chanson" specifically for her. The second show, Home Again, Home Again, allowed her to work with the great
Cy Coleman.
Teri's association with Sondheim's work has continued over the years. As a performer, she has appeared in Side by Side by Sondheim several times; she has also played Sally in three different productions of Follies, Mamma Rose in
Gypsy, and Yvonne in Sunday In The Park With George. In Los Angeles, she stood by for
Lois Nettleton as Desiree in A Little Night Music, and for
Carol Burnett in the 1998 revised version of Putting It Together at the
Mark Taper Forum. She also starred in Moving On, the latest in a long string of Sondheim revues, when it made its U.S. premiere at the
Laguna Playhouse in 2001. And last year she played family matriarch Madame Armfeldt in the
South Coast Repertory production of A Little Night Music.
Teri is also an accomplished director, where her own extensive theater experience has been put to good use. Her actor/director credits include Side by Side by Sondheim (co-starring with
Peggy Lee) and Follies (playing Sally alongside theatre stalwarts
Julie Wilson,
Betty Garrett,
John Raitt,
Harvey Evans, and
Kurt Peterson). Other directing credits include Into the Woods, A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, and A Little Night Music. She has also directed productions of No, No Nanette, My One and Only, Me and My Girl, Man of La Mancha,
Jacques Brel…, Quilters, Candide, Side Show,
The Fantasticks, The Baker's Wife, and The King and I-as well as the Los Angeles premieres of The Octette Bridge Club and Gloria Duplex.
Since re-establishing herself in New York, Teri has performed in a workshop of Natural Woman (directed by
Michael Blakemore with music by
Carole King), and appeared in Bajour at the York Theater, Marcy in the Galaxy with the
Transport Group at the Connelly Theatre, Hats! The Red Hat Society Musical at the New Denver Civic Theatre in Colorado, and in a workshop of Unbeatable, a new musical due in New York later this year.
Teri has also performed as a soloist with
Michael Feinstein, and sung with both the New Mexico Symphony and the Los Angeles Philharmonic at the Hollywood Bowl in Gershwin concerts. She has thrilled audiences in nightclubs across the county with her cabaret act, and was the featured entertainer with Crystal Cruises for two years. She is featured on five original cast albums and three CDs recorded in London.
Her television credits include: Frasier, Dharma and Greg, Geppetto, George Carlin, Wings, Murder She Wrote, The Slapp Maxwell Story, One Day at a Time, Married With Children, and The Bold and The Beautiful.
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