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| THE PLEASING RECOLLECTION - new opera cabaret work - makes its NEW YORK DEBUT at FEINSTEIN'S/54 BELOW, 4/5-6 | |
| Posted by: Official_Press_Release 10:50 am EST 02/17/22 | |
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| THE NEW OPERA CABARET WORK "THE PLEASING RECOLLECTION" MAKES ITS NEW YORK DEBUT AT FEINSTEIN'S/54 BELOW MUSIC BY MARTIN HENNESSY - LIBRETTO BY STEPHEN KITSAKOS DIRECTED BY MURPHY DAVIS FEATURING ACCLAIMED BARITONE MICHAEL KELLY TWO SHOWS ONLY - TUESDAY, APRIL 5 AND WEDNESDAY, APRIL 6 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. Michael Kelly, the award-winning American baritone, has led a versatile and multifaceted career as a performer, LGBTQ+ activist, and educator. He has performed and concertized with major international opera and theater companies in a wide-ranging repertoire including Jazz at Lincoln Center, Carnegie Hall, Geffen Hall, the Kennedy Center, NYC Opera, Santa Fe Opera, Opernhaus Zürich, Theatre du Châtelet and with symphony orchestras across the US. An interpreter of composers Bernstein, Sondheim, and Ricky Ian Gordon, his repertoire includes appearances ranging from Passion in Paris to Kiss Me, Kate in St. Petersburg to the transgender character, Hannah Before, performing the role across the USA in As One, the most performed chamber opera in America today. A graduate of the Eastman School and Juilliard, he appears on two recordings of world premiere works by David del Tredici and Mohammed Fairouz, and will be heard on multiple recordings set to be released later this year. michael-kelly.com Instagram: @michaelktoday Martin Hennessy is a prize-winning composer of opera, art song and theater music. Awards include the Pellicciotti Opera Composition Prize, Meet the Composer, the American Music Center, New Dramatists and commissions from The Estate Project for Artists with AIDS. Devoted to building a bridge between American musical theater and opera, listeners often describe his music as a breath of fresh air. His opera theater works An Incident in Sutton Square and The Woman in Penthouse A with librettist Stephen Kitsakos premiered in 2020. Other works have been performed by Urban Arias, SongFest, Harvard Ballet, Guggenheim Works, and in theaters and concert halls across the country. The Boston Globe said, "The composer knows the piano and the voice but songwriting is also a gift, and he has it." The Cleveland Plain Dealer wrote, "the songs of Martin Hennessy overflow with poignant and dramatic splendor." His recordings can be found on Newport, Albany, GRP and Affetto, as well as his most recent, Nous Deux, commissioned by Blythe Gaissert for her 2021 album Home . martinhennessy.net Stephen Kitsakos is a librettist and theater writer. Commissions include the NEA, the Smithsonian, the American Opera Project, the Seattle Opera, NYSCA, Florida Council on the Arts, ASCAP Foundation, and many others. A graduate of the BMI Musical Theater Workshop, he was a longtime contributing writer for The Sondheim Review. His work has been championed by artists from Judy Blume to Judy Zabar, and has been featured in The New Yorker and The New York Times. His most recent theater libretto with Martin Hennessy, Single Occupancies, was hailed by Florida Weekly as "finely wrought words that linger after the curtain call of his witty and charming work." Atlanta's LGBTQ+ Peach Magazine has said "Kitsakos brings spontaneity and charm to his wicked and almost always witty deployment of wordcraft." stephenkitsakos.com Bénédicte Jourdois is a pianist, vocal coach, French diction and vocal literature teacher. A graduate of the Artist Development Program at the Metropolitan Opera, she is on the staff at the Met Opera and faculty at the Juilliard School. With Steven Blier, she directs the Schwab Vocal Rising Stars series at Caramoor. Born in Paris, Jourdois has performed in numerous venues in Europe and the U.S. including Alice Tully and Carnegie Hall, the Kennedy Center, Los Angeles Philharmonic, Los Angeles Opera, Chicago Lyric Opera, Houston Grand Opera, Opera Philadelphia, Washington National Opera, Spoleto Festival USA and many others. Murphy Davis helped to establish the prestigious Bay Street Theater in Sag Harbor, NY where he served as Producer and Artistic Director and was also the Director of Artistic Production at Manhattan Theater Club. He founded and was Artistic Director of Stonehill Theatre Project and was Artistic Producer for Artists United, a developmental off-Broadway theater. His work has had him in collaboration with top notch contemporary writing and acting royalty from Terrence McNally and Kate Burton to Joy Behar and Elaine Stritch. |
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| Link | http://54Below.com |
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