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Best of the Versed

Saturday, June 29, 2024 @ 7:30PM


Watch it on YouTube!



HAMPTONS SUMMER SONGBOOK BY THE SEA PRESENTS

Best of the Versed


“Celebrating the Opening Lyrics You May Not Know to Tunes You Thought You Did.”


Starring Steve Ross & Karen Murphy
Produced and Hosted by David Alpern

Explore the vivid universe of verse in the Great American Songbook: tunes both familiar and obscure, but all with now rarely-performed introductory lyrics, poetic, pithy, and artfully crafted to tie into so many Golden Age stage and screen musicals; or provide free-standing context – emotional, comical, always lyrical – as originally written by Ira Gershwin, Larry Hart, Cole Porter, Dorothy Fields, Johnny Mercer, Sammy Cahn, Herman Hupfeld and more. "As a tot when I trotted in little velvet panties", "In Verona my late cousin Romeo", "My love must be a kind of blind love", "I don't need a moon, a nook, a tune for violins", "My face is glowing, I'm energetic", "Men are really men no longer now". Name that tune? Google can help, but we"... tell you more and sing them all!


Steve Ross, dubbed "Crown Prince of Cabaret" by the New York Times, has earned that title over decades at venerable venues throughout Manhattan, across the country and around the world. His nearly dozen CDs include musical explorations of Stepen Sondheim, Alan Jay Lerner, Cole Porter and, of course Noel Coward, whose green velvet smoking jacket – or at least one tailored for Noel in London – was gifted to Steve by Britain's Noel Coward Society."The smoothest cabaret act in the world" – London Times


Karen Murphy's Broadway credits include: A Little Night Music, 9-to-5, 42nd Street, and Titanic. Off Broadway most recently she was in The Jerusalem Syndrome, and previously My Vaudeville Man, Zombie Prom, and Forbidden Broadway. National tours include: Finding Neverland, Mary Poppins, White Christmas, and Les Miz.


"Once in a while a cabaret performer comes along with a vision so unique, a performance so original, it can only be described as electrifying. Such a find is Karen Murphy” – Scott Siegel, concert producer/columnist


Producer and host David Alpern, son of a "girl singer" on the road and radio circa 1939, was a reporter, writer, editor and radio host for Newsweek Magazine over 40 years, interviewing politicians, policy experts and entertainers including Katherine Hepburn, Tony Bennett, and several stars of this LTV cabaret series: Steve Ross, Anna Bergman, Mark Nadler, K.T. Sullivan, Christine Andreas. Long a Sag Harbor resident, these days he reviews books for the East Hampton Star and hosts programs for local libraries.

The Singer

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