The Fifth Annual HARVARD/YALE CANTATA Announced At Feinstein's/54 Below

FEINSTEIN'S/54 BELOW, Broadway's Supper Club, again presents a cast of Harvard and Yale grads in The Fifth Annual Harvard-Yale Cantata. Join us for a unique evening at Feinstein's/54 Below, with Team Harvard looking to avenge another lucky narrow victory by Team Yale. Will it be five wins in a row for Yale? Harvard has a new team captain and a new music director, and they promise a strong showing. Most of the contests in this series have been very close, and the teams are always well-matched and brimming with talent.

The Harvard songwriters will include Bonnie Raitt ("Nick of Time"), Leonard Bernstein (Broadway's West Side Story, Candide, and Wonderful Town), and Pete Seeger ("Where Have All the Flowers Gone" and "Waist Deep in the Big Muddy"). The Yale team will feature songs by Maury Yeston (Broadway's Nine, Grand Hotel, and Titanic) and Cole Porter (Broadway's Kiss Me, Kate and Anything Goes). Performers for Harvard will include Debbie Deane, Matt Corriel, Jennifer Lauren Brown, Laura Sky Herman, Arianna Paz, Caro Ribeiro, John Forster, Matt Walker, and Jacob Rienstra. Additional performers will be announced as the date approaches.

The show is formatted after the Harvard-Yale Regatta. There will be seven heats, each with a Harvard song pitted against a Yale song. The show is produced by Tom Toce (Yale, 1978), who also hosts, in association with Victoria Ordin (Yale, 1995) and Jennie Litt (Harvard, 1986). Musical direction and accompaniment will be provided by Liz Kantor (Harvard, 2018) for Harvard and Andrew Gerle (Yale, 1994).

"The Harvard-Yale Cantata" plays Feinstein's/54 Below (254 West 54th Street) on Thursday, September 12, at 9:30. There is a $35-$40 cover charge ($60 premium) and a $25 food and beverage minimum. Tickets and information are available at www.54Below.com. Tickets on the day of performance after 4:00 are only available by calling (646) 476-3551.

MORE ABOUT THE HY CANTATA IV PRODUCTION TEAM

Tom Toce (Y '78) is a veteran theater and cabaret songwriter. He recently took the position of Director of Musical Theater at Urban Stages, the off-Broadway theater, and produces their annual Winter Rhythms festival. He won the MAC Award for Comedy Song for "Shalom, Santa" in 2014. He has directed and produced numerous cabaret shows in NYC over the past several years, including the first four Harvard Yale Cantatas at Feinstein's/54 Below, Living Standards, starring Marissa Mulder, and Hopelessly in Love: The Lyrics of Tom Toce, both at the Metropolitan Room. The HIL recording was also nominated for a MAC Award. As a performer, Tom was nominated for a 2016 MAC Award for his debut show Songwriter in the House, which played to great acclaim at the Metropolitan Room in 2015-16. Tom has written a number of shows for children, and his cabaret songs have been sung and/or recorded by Jane Monheit, Andrea Marcovicci, Tovah Feldshuh, Maude Maggart, KT Sullivan, and many others. Tom is a two-time Jeopardy! champion (his encyclopedic knowledge of the Great American Songbook helped) and a member of the Jeopardy Hall of Fame, for high score in a single game. More at www.tomtocemusic.com

Victoria Ordin (Y '95) writes about theater and cabaret in New York, having abandoned the low pay world of academia for the no pay world of arts criticism. Her work has appeared in the Weekly Standard, Huffington Post, Cabaret Scenes, and Broadway World. For four years, the native Angeleno wrote prolifically on Victorian Chick, her bicoastal memoir and culture blog. She is currently at work on the first of three book projects: an epistolary novel about two 40-something Manhattan writers who've never dated but fight like a married couple.

Jennie Litt, (H '86) is a lyricist, singer, playwright, performance coach, cabaret director, critic, aspiring audiobook narrator, and mother. She and her husband, composer-pianist David Alpher, can be heard on two collections of original cabaret songs, Alpher & Litt's Songs For Sapiosexuals (2019) and Two Apples (2014), both available on CDBaby, iTunes, Amazon, Spotify, YouTube, and other platforms. Their songs have been called "enchanting, "brilliant," and "masterful on many levels." Of the 2014 release Two Apples, Cabaret Scenes wrote "Filled with imagination, non sequiturs and joie de vivre, this lively album is uplifting in its originality and intelligent word and music play." Currently, the couple is collaborating on a musical based upon the lives of Britain's notorious Mitford sisters. Alpher & Litt are on the faculty of SummerKeys in Lubec, Maine, "a music adventure for adults," where they teach two weeks of master classes in cabaret every summer; they offer a similar winter cabaret retreat in upstate New York, under the name "Cabin In The Sky." They also create a student cabaret at Vassar College for the college's annual ModFest, a multidisciplinary celebration of the arts of the 20th and 21st centuries. Litt reviews cabaret for Cabaret HotSpot!, and is a member of the Board of Directors of the Manhattan Association for Cabaret (MAC).

Andrew Gerle (Y '94) is a composer/lyricist, librettist, pianist and author. His works for the theater include the musicals Meet John Doe (Jonathan Larson Award, cast album on Broadway Records), Gloryana (Kleban Award, Richard Rodgers Award), The Tutor (3 Rodgers Awards) and La Tempesta (with Fantasticks lyricist Tom Jones). He has performed as piano soloist with the National Symphony Orchestra (as winner of their Young Artists Competition), the Yale Symphony Orchestra, and the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, and on programs for National Public Radio and Television. He has served as musical director for many Off-Broadway, touring and regional theater productions, and been a pit and rehearsal pianist for Broadway productions including An American in Paris, Matilda and Ragtime. Andrew is also the author of The Enraged Accompanist's Guide to the Perfect Audition and Music Essentials for Singers and Actors (Hal Leonard/Applause Books), and is on the faculty of the Manhattan School of Music.

Liz Kantor (H '18) is a music director, conductor, arranger, and orchestrator based in Boston, and graduated from Harvard University with a B.A. in Molecular and Cellular Biology. Selected tour/regional

credits: Moulin Rouge, Emerson Colonial Theater; Jagged Little Pill, We Live in Cairo, and Transparent, American Repertory Theater; Songs for a New World, Broadway Jukebox, and Broadway Jukebox: Revolution, Brown Box Theatre Project; Beyond Words and United We Stand, New York Musical Festival. Educational credits: Next to Normal, Spring Awakening, No Way to Treat a Lady, 35mm: A Musical Exhibition, The Rocky Horror Picture Show.In 2016, SHE, Liz's original musical celebrating and empowering women, was produced at the American Repertory Theater's OBERON. In addition to being heavily involved in theatre, Liz also does Parkinson's research at Brigham and Women's Hospital and provides keys/organ/vocals for the indie rock band Hush Club. www.LizKantor.com

To post a comment, you must register and login.