(click photos to enlarge)
Theater Pizzazz had a chance to meet and greet the cast and musical interpreters of Cole Porter’s lost treasure “The Ambassador Revue” which will launch at The Town Hall on Friday June 27th, 8 p.m. kicking off the 2014 Summer Season of Broadway Preludes.
NY Theater & Music News – Sandi Durell and Magda Katz
This one-night-only event features Grammy Award-winning 1920s and 30s musical interpreters Vince Giordano and The Nighthawks (HBO’s “Boardwalk Empire,” Woody Allen’s Radio Days, and Martin Scorsese’s The Aviator), and special guest stars including acclaimed soprano Amy Burton (The Metropolitan Opera, City Opera, Carnegie Hall), Tony Award nominee Anita Gillette (Chapter Two, They’re Playing Our Song, Brighton Beach Memoirs), Jason Graae (Falsettos, A Grand Night for Singing), Ted Louis Levy (Jelly’s Last Jam, Black and Blue), Grammy-winning jazz and blues vocalist Catherine Russell (featured on soundtracks for HBO’s “Boardwalk Empire” and the film Kill Your Darlings), two-time Tony nominee Tom Wopat (Catch Me If You Can, Annie Get Your Gun, Sondheim on Sondheim), with three time-Tony nominee Randy Skinner (42nd Street, Irving Berlin’s White Christmas), Sara Brians and Mary Giattino-Styles. The Ambassador Revue features direction by author and musical theatre historian Ken Bloom – who discovered the lost Cole Porter score – (Broadway Musicals: The 101 Greatest Shows of All Time; The American Songbook: The Singers, Songwriters & The Songs) and choreography by Randy Skinner.
When the Jazz Age crossed over to France in the 20s, Cole Porter was in the center of it all. In 1928, he created a revue for the Café des Ambassadeurs, Paris’ hottest night club, which became quite the sensation. Later that year, Porter had his first hit on Broadway and The Ambassador Revue fell into oblivion until 2012 when the score was rediscovered by Ken Bloom and Christophe Mirambeau in an archive in Milan, Italy. Bloom and Mirambeau mounted a concert staging of The Ambassador Revue in Paris that relaunched the historic Maison de la Mutualite in 2012, nearly 85 years after its Parisian premiere. Bloom’s Town Hall staging of the revue will mark the first time that Porter’s score will be heard on an American stage and the first time that the original musical arrangements by Freddy Buck will be heard since the 1928 production in Paris.
http://thetownhall.org/event/543-cole-porters-the-ambassador-revue
*Interviews: Sandi Durell
*Video/Photos: Magda Katz
