"Broadway At Birdland" Makes Mondays Celebratory
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Most of Broadway is dark on Monday nights. But one venue, just a block from the dimmed lights on West 44th Street in Midtown Manhattan, keeps the spirit of the New York theater community alive.
“Broadway at Birdland,” founded and hosted by performer Jim Caruso in association with TheaterMania, is a weekly concert series that features performers and composers of the “Great White Way.”
One recent concert, "Soul Deep: An Anthology Of Black Music," featured Tony Award-winners Chuck Cooper and Adriane Lenox, who along with other Broadway talent performed the music of Aretha Franklin, Bo Diddley, Little Richard and Sam Cooke.
“The entertainment value alone -- the rawness and the richness of the music and the black experience, it's great,” said Lenox. “You got blues you got jazz. It's a great American thing, this black American music. What's not to like?”
Monday nights at Birdland begin with a Broadway concert and end with "Cast Party," an open mic platform for professional performers and those waiting in the wings.
“'Cast Party’ is every kind of music,” said Caruso. “I usually start the evening with it's a night that celebrates Broadway, jazz, cabaret, pop, folk, comedy, didgeridoo, auto-harp, ventriloquist. We've had a little bit of everything over the past five years.”
Broadway veteran Luba Mason, last seen in "Chicago," got up to perform the John Kander and Fred Ebb classic "All That Jazz."
“You're not only in one of the hottest jazz clubs in New York here, where the sound and light is terrific, but the group here is really appreciative and fun,” said Mason. “It's all about having a good time.”
So, on Mondays at “Broadway at Birdland,” you can be entertained, or do the entertaining… and all that jazz.