Head to New York’s Feinstein’s/54 Below on Tuesday, January 19th, for a celebration of BIG RED SUN, the new musical by John Jiler and Georgia Stitt. Directed by Hunter Foster, this concert presentation features Jill Abramovitz, Adam Cochran, David Josefsberg, Betsy Morgan, Maurice Murphy, and Michael Philip O’Bohn rien singing new orchestrations by Stitt, played expertly by Alec Berlin (guitar), Randy Landau (bass), Shannon Ford (drums), and Rob DeBellis (reeds), with the composer at the piano.
Eddie and Helen Daimler were great swing musicians in the 1940s, but now in the early 1960s their teenage son Harry, a budding songwriter himself, lives alone with his mother and writes songs about his great war-hero father. In an effort to write more truthfully, Harry unearths a dark family secret. World War II carved a silent divide between those who fought and those who waited – a truth unshared. In a few short years, the simple melodies of Kern and Berlin were replaced by the dizzying energy of jazz and the beginnings of rock and roll. BIG RED SUN is the story of a family that changed as much as their music did.
Winner of the Harold Arlen Award from ASCAP, BIG RED SUN has been developed at NAMT (National Alliance for Musical Theatre), TheatreWorks Palo Alto, Goodspeed Musicals, ASCAP, The York Theatre, Oklahoma City University and The University of Nebraska.
New Musicals at 54 is a series presented by Programming Director Jennifer Ashley Tepper. Some of the 10 new and diverse musicals by today’s most talented writers have had out-of-town productions, some have had workshops… now’s your chance to be first to see them in NYC! Join us at New Musicals at 54 for one-night-only concerts celebrating each new show with songs, behind-the-scenes stories, and all-star casts!