JAMES BARBOUR'S HOLIDAY CONCERT 2009 Comes To NYC And LA
By: Gabrielle Sierra Nov. 17, 2009
Broadway star and vocal magician, James Barbour, will repeat last season's holiday sold-out success with this season's HOLIDAY CONCERT 2009 which will be presented in both New York and Los Angeles.
(57 East 54th Street - between Park & Madison) and continue through Saturday, December 19th with musical direction by opera's revered Constantine Kitsopoulos. The evening will feature a musically inspired reading of Clement Clarke Moore's planet-famous poem "The Night Before Christmas" which the scholar/philanthropist wrote for his nine children in 1822 while they lived at 57 East 54th Street the building which now houses the Café.
The Los Angeles schedule will present one concert only on Monday, December 21st at The Colony Theatre (555 N. Third St. - Burbank, CA) with musical direction by multiple Grammy Award nominated composer, producer, songwriter, arranger and rock impresario, Peter Wolf.
Both concerts are being produced by Treehouse Entertainment Inc. and Roberta Nusim for TMA (Theatrical Marketing Associates) and will feature special guest appearances by Broadway and Hollywood luminaries; to be announced in the coming weeks.THE HOLIDAY CONCERT playing schedule is as follows:
NEW YORK EVENINGS
Friday, December 11th 7:30pm
Saturday, December 12th 7:30pm
Monday, December 14th 7:30pm
Tuesday, December 15th 7:30pm
Wednesday, December 16th 7:30pm
Thursday, December 17th 7:30pm
Friday, December 18th 7:30pm
Saturday, December 19th 7:30pm
NEW YORK MATINEES Saturday, December 19th 3:00pm
NEW YORK CONCERT TICKETS MAY BE PURCHASED AT: www.SmartTix.com 212-868-4444 $60 (Premium Seating), $45 (Gold Seats), $25 (Silver Seats) (Plus $25 food & drink minimum per person)
LOS ANGELES EVEVNING Monday, December 21st at 7:00pm
LOS ANGELES CONCERT TICKETS MAY BE PURCHASED AT: www.ColonyTheatre.org 818-558-7000 (Ext. 15)
$40
(includes a reception after the show at the theatre)
ABOUT James Barbour
James Barbour was nominated for the Drama Desk, Drama League and Outer Critics Awards for Best Actor in a Musical for his portrayal of Sydney Carton in the Broadway musical version of A Tale of Two Cities, and won the Sarasota Magazine Best Actor Award for the Asolo Rep pre-Broadway production. He has starred on Broadway in such Tony-Award winning shows as Stephen Sondheim's Assassins, Disney's Beauty and the Beast as The Beast, Carousel as Billy Bigelow, Urinetown as Officer Lockstock and as Edward Rochester in Jane Eyre (Drama League Award nomination). He also appeared in the Broadway production of Cyrano and the national tour of The Secret Garden. His voice can be heard on the upcoming international recording of A Tale of Two Cities, the PS Classics recording of Assassins, the Sony Classical cast recording of Jane Eyre, The Gift on Geffen Records, the upcoming release of Frank Wildhorn's Dracula, as well as on the live CD recording of his self-produced stage show Broadway in Concert (for which he won an LA WEEKLY Garland Award). His television credits range from the pilots of "The District," "Just Shoot Me" and "Flashpoint" to appearances on "Sex and the City," "Ed," "That's Life," "Some Enchanted Evening: Celebrating Oscar Hammerstein" (PBS), "Beauty and the Beast: A Concert on Ice" (CBS), the PBS mini-series "American Experience: John & AbiGail Adams" (playing Thomas Jefferson) and the upcoming film version of A Tale of Two Cities for public television. Film credits include Alchemy (Tribeca Film Festival and ABC Family) starring opposite Tom Cavanagh and Sarah Chalke; Adam Sandler's Eight Crazy Nights, Waiting for Lefty, The Tell-Tale Heart and Twinkle Toes with Sally Kirkland. As an author and producer, James is responsible for creating three concert series, James Barbour: The Holiday Concert and Love Songs (both at New York City's famed Sardi's Restaurant) and Back From Broadway/Broadway in Concert (the latter in conjunction with Steinway Concert Artist Hershey Felder). Mr. Barbour is considered one of the most sought-after performers on Broadway today. He is on the A-list of actors asked to develop new works for the industry's leading writers and composers including Elton John, Bernie Taupin, Frank Wildhorn, and Christopher Durang to name a few. He is currently developing a new musical concert called The Romantics. Mr. Barbour has worked tirelessly in support of Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS and is on the Artists' Committee of The Actors Fund.
ABOUT Constantine Kitsopoulos
Constantine Kitsopoulos has made a name for himself as a conductor whose musical experiences comfortably span the worlds of opera and symphony, where he conducts in such venues as Carnegie Hall, AlIce Tully Hall and Royal Albert Hall, and musical theater, where he can be found leading orchestras on Broadway. Mr. Kitsopoulos is in his third season as music director of the Queens Symphony Orchestra and continues as general director of Chatham Opera, which he founded in 2005. This season Mr. Kitsopoulos also makes debuts with the New York Pops, Colorado Symphony, Pittsburgh Symphony, Houston Symphony, Elgin Symphony and Westchester Philharmonic In the 2007-2008 season, Mr. Kitsopoulos returned to the Baltimore, Detroit, Hartford and Milwaukee symphonies in addition to making his debuts with the San Francisco, Mobile, Princeton and Virginia symphonies. Orchestral highlights of previous seasons include conducting appearances with the Annapolis Symphony, Blossom Festival Orchestra, Calgary Philharmonic, Lubbock Symphony, Madison Symphony, National Arts Centre Orchestra, New Jersey Symphony, New York Virtuosi Chamber Symphony, Santa Barbara Symphony, Hong Kong Philharmonic, Brooklyn Philharmonic, and a complete performance of Stravinsky's "L'Histoire du Soldat" with members of the Philadelphia Orchestra. Mr. Kitsopoulos also continued to show his ability and interest in performing new works and conducting a wide variety of genres. In 2005 he conducted the Red Bull Artsehcro, an orchestra consisting of students from the top conservatories and university music programs in the country, in a concert at Carnegie Hall featuring a program of world premieres by Raul Yanez and Laura Karpman. In the 2006-2007 season, Mr. Kitsopoulos conducted DiCapo Opera Theatre's production of "The Merry Widow" and the Chatham Opera's debut production of Menotti's "Amahl and the Night Visitors." Previous season's operatic highlights include the DiCapo Opera Theatre's production of Gounod's "Faust" and all three versions of Puccini's "Madama Butterfly", the Hong Kong Municipal Opera production of Bizet's "Carmen" in both Hong Kong and Beijing, and Gluck's "Orefeo ed Euridice" at AlIce Tully Hall. Mr. Kitsopoulos also served as music director of the world premiere of Ed Dixon's "Fanny Hill" at the Goodspeed Opera House in Connecticut, where he created the productions orchestrations as well. In addition to his orchestral and classical commitments, Mr. Kitsopoulos is much in demand as a theatre conductor, both on Broadway and nationwide. This past season, Mr. Kitsopoulos was conductor and music director for the Tony nominated musical "A Catered Affair." In 2007, he conducted the Tony nominated "Coram Boy" and The American Conservatory Theatre production of Kurt Weill's "Happy End," for which he recorded the cast album at Skywalker Ranch. Other musical theatre highlights include serving as Music Director and Principal Conductor of Baz Luhrmann's highly acclaimed production of Puccini's "La Bohème", conducting the new musical "Mambo Kings" in San Francisco in 2005, serving s Music Director of Frank Wildhorn's "Dracula" and "Les Misérables" and conducting Matthew Bourne's Broadway production of Tchaikovsky's "Swan Lake". Constantine Kitsopoulos studied conducting with Vincent LeSelva, as well as Gustav Meier, Sergiu Commissiona, and Semyon Bychkov. He studied piano with Marienka Michna, Chandler Gregg, Ed Edson, and Sophia Rosoff. His first recording - Baz Luhrmann's production of La Bohème - was released by Dreamworks in 2002. His recording of Kurt Weill's "Happy End" was released in 2007 by Ghostlight Records. The cast album of "A Catered Affair" was released in 2008 by PS Classics.
ABOUT Peter Wolf
Peter Wolf is a multi-grammy nominated, world-renowned composer, producer, songwriter and arranger, and was recently knighted and awarded with the highest honor his birth country of Austria has to give, das Groesse Ehrenkreuz der Republik Oesterreich fuer Kunst und Kultur. Born in Vienna, Wolf studied classical piano at the Vienna's Conservatory of Music and won the European Jazz Festival as a solo pianist at age 16. He was awarded twice with the Deutscher Schallplattenpreis for his work on Andre Heller and Erika Pluhar . He came to America in his early 20's and began playing keyboards for Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention in the late 70's. He was one of America's top ranking studio keyboardists and arrangers from 1980 to 1985 and became a hugely successful music producer and songwriter. He has written eight #1 songs and produced, arranged and/or written for a wide range of musical talents including THE JEFFERSON STARSHIP ("We Built This City", "Sara") COMMODORES ("Nightshift"), WANG CHUNG ("Everybody Have Fun Tonight", "Let's Go") El DeBarge ("Who's Johnny" from "Short Circuit") GO WEST ("King of Wishful Thinking" from "Pretty Woman", "Faithful") HEART ("These Dreams", "What About Love") Patti LaBelle ("On My Own") Kenny Loggins ("Playing With The Boys" from "Top Gun", "Avalon") ESCAPE CLUB ("I'll Be There") PABLO CRUISE, Grace Slick, SANTANA, THE POINTER SISTERS, CHICAGO, Cliff Richard, Natalie Cole, THE SCORPIONS, N'SYNC, Oleta Adams, SERGIO MENDES and JOE SAMPLE. In addition to his career in the world of rock and popular music Wolf has also scored a number of major motion pictures including the 1993 hit "Neverending Story III", and "Weekend at Bernie's II". Wolf has also composed many scores in Europe including the new animated picture for the recently Oscar-awarded "Best Foreign Film" producer, Sven Ebeling, entitled "Nutcracker and Mouse King" featuring a star-studded cast. For that score he was nominated for the Deutscher Filmpreis. He scored Leon DeWinter's movie "The Hollywood Sign", starring Rod Steiger, Burt Reynolds and Tom Beringer. His impressive compositional credits also include the score for the number one German picture in 1997 "Irren Ist Maennlich", as well as films such as "Die Cellistin", "Widows", "St. Pauli Nacht" and "The Fearless Four". He is now composing songs and score for the new American picture "Band On the Run" to be released in 2007. Just in June this year, he received the "Billy Wilder Award" of the Austrian Film Academy and University of Vienna. Peter just finished a shortfilm for the Sundance Filmfestival called "A through M". For next year he already has agreed to do three filmscores for various American and European films. His TV credits include the enormously popular and second largest TV show in the history of international television, "Kommissar Rex" sold into 107 countries including Asia, Australia, Europe, South America and Canada for the fourth season. He has also composed music for RTL, Pro 7 and SAT 1 productions such as TV movies, "Koerner & Koeter", "Das Allerbeste Stueck", "Dance on the Volcano". He composed the music and produced the entertainment blocks of the World Sports Awards at the Royal Albert Hall in Londontwo years in a row. In 2006 he will take over scoring the highly successful series SOKO-Donau for ZDF and ORF .Wolf composed and performed an 86 minute original millennium symphony he was commissioned to create for the 20th Annual SoundCloud Festival, one of the world's renowned and acclaimed open air music festivals, that took place on September 4th 1999 in Linz, Austria on the Danube River in front of an audience 123,000 people. Wolf's PROGRESSION Symphony includes performances by Klaus Maria Brandauer, Coolio, James Ingram, Cliff Richard, Jennifer Paige, Vincenzo LaScola, Steve Lukather of Toto, Julian Rachlin, and Peter's wife, singer and lyricist Michelle Wolf. Due to its enormous success, he composed and performed a second original symphonic piece for 2004 entitled "SENSE-ATION", in front of 110,000 people. He has recently signed a new deal with Universal Records International-UK as a jazz and classical artist, where both symphonic CDs are available.His first tour through Europe in September 2005 was a big hit with European Jazzcritics. A swiss journalist wrote , that Peters Band "..was better than anything I heard in Montreax this year." He is also writing a musical with his writing partner, lyricist, Michelle Wolf, and world-renowned author Leon DeWinter. The musical will premiere in the historical Ronacher in Vienna, Austriain fall of 2007, and then move on to Tokyo and Berlin. Presently Peter is working on prerecords for two new American produced motion pictures where music is the focal point of the plot. With 75 million records sold , Peter was voted second most successful musician of the last century by a premiere Austrian magazine, trailing only Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart . Peter and his wife, Michelle, maintain homes in both the Los Angeles area and in his native Austria and travel easily between the worlds of both American and European culture and music.
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