Porchlight Music Theatre is proud to announce it is the local Chicago beneficiary for the live streamed broadcast of Hershey Felder as George Gershwin Alone - Live from Florence, Italy on Sunday, Sept. 13 at 7 p.m. CDT from Teatro della Pergola. Featuring the music and lyrics of George and Ira Gershwin, book by Felder, directed by Stefano de Carli and Felder, and adapted from the stage play directed by Joel Zwick. Tickets for Felder’s one-man show are $55 per household and are available for purchase at PorchlightMusicTheatre.org. This production will benefit national US theatres and arts organizations including Porchlight Music Theatre. Porchlight Music Theatre is a beneficiary of 50% of ticket sales from the live performance sold via Porchlight’s website.
George Gershwin Alone tells the story of America’s great composer, who with the groundbreaking Rhapsody in Blue, made a “Lady out of Jazz.” The show incorporates the composer's best-known songs from “The Man I Love” and “Someone to Watch Over Me,” through the hits of An American In Paris and Porgy and Bess, to a complete performance of Rhapsody In Blue. George Gershwin Alone has had over 3000 performances worldwide, including Broadway, London’s West End, Los Angeles, Chicago, San Diego, San Francisco, Boston, Philadelphia, Washington DC and more.
Ticket holders will receive their live stream link on Friday, Sept. 11, via the email used to register for the event. The performance is able to be streamed from a smart TV, computer, smartphone or tablet. Purchase of ticket includes the live broadcast AND a week of extended “on-demand” viewing access to the recording of the live broadcast (available one-hour after the live broadcast ends). Viewing access ends on Sunday, September 20 until 1:59 p.m. CDT. Tickets cannot be transferred or shared.
ABOUT HERSHEY FELDER
Named to Time Magazine’s 2016 Top 10 Plays and Musicals, Hershey Felder has played over 6,000 performances of his self-created solo productions at some of the world’s most prestigious theatres and has broken box office records consistently. American Theatre Magazine has said, “Hershey Felder is in a category all his own.”
His shows include George Gershwin Alone (Broadway’s Helen Hayes Theatre, West End’s Duchess Theatre); Monsieur Chopin; Beethoven; Maestro (Leonard Bernstein); Franz Liszt in Musik, Lincoln: An American Story, Hershey Felder as Irving Berlin, Our Great Tchaikovsky, and A Paris Love Story. His compositions and recordings include Aliyah, Concerto for Piano and Orchestra; Fairytale, a musical; Les Anges de Paris, Suite for Violin and Piano; Song Settings; Saltimbanques for Piano and Orchestra; Etudes Thematiques for Piano; and An American Story for Actor and Orchestra. Hershey is the adaptor, director and designer for the internationally performed play-with-music The Pianist of Willesden Lane with Steinway artist Mona Golabek; producer and designer for the musical Louis and Keely: ‘Live’ at the Sahara, directed by Taylor Hackford; and writer and director for Flying Solo, featuring opera legend Nathan Gunn.
Upcoming projects include Anna and Sergei, a new play featuring the music of Sergei Rachmaninoff, as well as a new musical based on the award-winning book Out on a Ledge by Eva Libitzky. Hershey has operated a full-service production company since 2001, and in 2020 created a new brand LIVE FROM FLORENCE, that operates a “theatre at home broadcast company,” based in Florence, Italy. He has been a scholar-in-residence at Harvard University’s Department of Music and is married to Kim Campbell, the first female Prime Minister of Canada.
ABOUT GEORGE GERSHWIN
George Gershwin was born in 1898 to Russian-Jewish immigrant parents in Brooklyn. Together, he and his brother Ira wrote standards such as “The Man I Love,” “Someone to Watch Over Me,” “Embraceable You,” “Fascinating Rhythm,” “I Got Rhythm,” “’S Wonderful” and “They Can’t Take That Away from Me.” His groundbreaking opera, Porgy and Bess, is now considered an American classic. All told, George Gershwin wrote more than 1,000 songs for the stage and screen as well as works for the opera house and the symphony orchestra. In 1937, Gershwin died of an undiagnosed brain tumor at the age of 38, never knowing how famous and beloved he and his work would become.
ABOUT PORCHLIGHT MUSIC THEATRE
As the home for music theatre in Chicago now in its 26th season, Porchlight Music Theatre is nationally recognized for reimagining classic productions, developing new works and showcasing musical theatre’s noted Chicago veterans and rising stars. Porchlight elevates the genre by providing intimate and powerful theatrical experiences of music theatre through the lens of the “Chicago Style.” The 2017–2018 year marked a milestone for Porchlight as the company became an Artist In-Residence at the historic Ruth Page Center for the Arts in Chicago’s Gold Coast. Porchlight’s rich history includes the staging of more than 70 productions with 15 Chicago premieres and five world premieres. Through Porchlight’s “Off the Porch” new works program, the musicals of the next generation are developed and given a first audience. Porchlight's education programming serves schools, young artists, hobbyists and emerging professionals. Its musical theatre summer camps return for the fourth smash year in 2020 developing skills in young performers and offering scholarships to qualifying students. The company’s many accolades include 31 Black Theatre Alliance nominations and 12 awards, as well as a total of 167 Joseph Jefferson Award nominations resulting in 42 Jeff Awards including five consecutive Best Production awards for The Scottsboro Boys (2017), Dreamgirls (2016), Sondheim on Sondheim (2015), Ain’t Misbehavin’ (2014) and A Class Act (2013).
Porchlight Music Theatre is proud to announce it is the local Chicago beneficiary for the live streamed broadcast of Hershey Felder as George Gershwin Alone - Live from Florence, Italy on Sunday, Sept. 13 at 7 p.m. CDT from Teatro della Pergola. Featuring the music and lyrics of George and Ira Gershwin, book by Felder, directed by Stefano de Carli and Felder, and adapted from the stage play directed by Joel Zwick. Tickets for Felder’s one-man show are $55 per household and are available for purchase at PorchlightMusicTheatre.org. This production will benefit national US theatres and arts organizations including Porchlight Music Theatre. Porchlight Music Theatre is a beneficiary of 50% of ticket sales from the live performance sold via Porchlight’s website.
Porchlight Music Theatre is partially supported by generous contributions from the Abe and Ida Cooper Foundation, Actors’ Equity Foundation, Allstate, Bayless Family Foundation, Michael Best & Friedrich LLP, Chapman | Spingola, Attorneys at Law, the Gaylord & Dorothy Donnelley Foundation, Elegant Event Lighting, Elevate Energy, James P. and Brenda S. Grusecki Family Foundation, Hearty Boys, Hopsmith, A.L. and Jennie L. Luria Foundation, the MacArthur Fund for Arts & Culture at the Prince Foundation, the Pritzker Traubert Foundation, Daniel and Genevieve Ratner Foundation, The Saints, Dr. Scholl Foundation, the Stuart Family Foundation, the Topfer Family Foundation and Walton Street Kitchen. The season program is partially supported by a grant from the Illinois Arts Council Agency, a state agency, and by a CityArts Grant from the City of Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs & Special Events.
Hershey Felder in George Gershwin Alone - Live from Florence. Photo by Mark Garvin