Charlotte Maltby Cast As New Maria in SOUND OF MUSIC Tour

Charlotte Maltby will join the cast as Maria Rainer in the national tour of Rodgers & Hammerstein's The Sound of Music, which premieres in Nashville with a one-week, limited engagement February 14-19, 2017, at Tennessee Performing Arts Center's Andrew Jackson Hall.

Maltby might justifiably be considered musical theater royalty - her father is writer/director Richard Maltby Jr. - and she recently played opposite Shirley Jones in her autobiographical musical, Have You Met Miss Jones? Maltby joins Ben Davis (Broadway's Violet, A Little Night Music and La Bohème) as Captain Georg von Trapp, a role he played in 2012 for Studio Tenn that was directed by that company's artistic director Matt Logan.

Joining Maltby and Davis on the new tour of The Sound of Music are Melody Betts as The Mother Abbess with Merwin Foard as Max Detweiler, Teri Hansen as Elsa Schraeder, Austin Colby as Rolf and Paige Silvester as Liesl. The von Trapp children will be played by Roy Gantz (Friedrich), Ashley Brooke (Louisa), Austin Levine (Kurt), Iris Davies (Brigitta), Kyla Carter (Marta) and Anika Lore Hatch (Gretl).

"I've always believed Maria was a 'star-making' part, rather than the leading role we remember from the movies and our experience; so I went looking for someone with star- making magic," said Tony Award-winning director Jack O'Brien on casting the iconic role of Maria. "Our original Maria in The Sound of Music, an undergraduate sophomore from Pace University, was just such an original - and as a truly youthful 'discovery' in her theatrical debut, she pretty much shattered both expectations and all previous molds. So when it came time for her departure, one wondered if the entire event might change into something very different.

"Then, Charlotte Maltby walked through the door. The daughter of celebrated writer and director, Richard Maltby, Jr, she was, of course, theatrical royalty personified; but was I prepared for her poise, her naturalness, her timing, her elegance? No, I was not. Was I prepared for that voice - one of the richest and most powerful I believe I have ever heard in a theatre before? No, I most assuredly was not.

"And yet, there she stood - and the tears in my eyes as I heard the first notes of 'The Sound of Music' testified that we were in a small age of theatrical miracles: there was lightning once more, pure, and anything but simple," O'Brien said. "Our discovery now is your pleasure; we are blessed by not only the continuing gift of this 'sleeping beauty' of a musical, but more so by the refreshing talent that is somehow inevitably attracted to perform in it."

The Sound of Music is the fourth production featured in the 2016-17 HCA/TriStar Health Broadway at TPAC season. Tickets are available online at www.tpac.org.

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