John Pizzarelli & Jessica Molaskey “The Heart of a Saturday Night” at Café Carlyle (Oct 5 – Nov 6)
Contact:
Rick Miramontez / Richard Hillman / Andy Snyder
rick@oandmco.com/ richard@oandmco.com/ andy@oandmco.com
(212) 695-7400
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
THE CARLYLE HOTEL
PRESENTS
ACCLAIMED JAZZ DUO
JOHN PIZZARELLI & JESSICA MOLASKEY
“THE HEART OF A SATURDAY NIGHT”
AT LEGENDARY CAFÉ CARLYLE
EXCLUSIVE FIVE WEEK ENGAGEMENT
OCTOBER 5 – NOVEMBER 6, 2010
New York, NY (September 23, 2010) — The Carlyle Hotel (Erich Steinbock, Managing Director) is pleased to present John Pizzarelli & Jessica Molaskey, the gifted musical husband-and-wife team who The New York Times call “caviar in a world of canned tuna. Once you’ve acquired the taste, there is no substitute,” for a 5-week engagement in the legendary Café Carlyle. Managing Director Erich Steinbock declares “When the wonderful John and Jessica are in residence at the Café Carlyle, we all know that autumn is in the air and that the season is kicking into high gear on Madison Avenue!”
Beginning Tuesday, October 5th and playing through Saturday, November 6th, Mr. & Mrs. Pizzarelli will offer an all-new program entitled, The Heart of a Saturday Night, a mix of familiar standards by Rodgers & Hart, Irving Berlin, George Gershwin and Duke Ellington, as well as more contemporary tunes by Joni Mitchell, Tom Waits and Jonathan Larson. Mr. Pizzarelli (guitar and vocals) will lead a quartet consisting of younger brother Martin Pizzarelli (bass), Larry Fuller (piano) and Tony Tedesco (drums).
Café Carlyle is located in The Carlyle Hotel (35 East 76th Street @ Madison Avenue).
John Pizzarelli & Jessica Molaskey: The Heart of a Saturday Night will play Tuesdays through Thursdays at 8:45PM with additional shows on Fridays and Saturdays at 10:45PM. There is an $85 music charge ($50 bar) Tuesday through Thursday and a $95 music charge ($50 bar) for both shows on Friday and Saturday. Dinner is served from 6:30PM. Every Monday night at 8:45PM (through December 13th), Woody Allen appears with the Eddy Davis New Orleans Jazz Band. There is a $100 music charge. For reservations please call 212-744-1600. For additional information, visit www.thecarlyle.com.
BIOGRAPHIES___________________________________________________
John Pizzarelli has been entertaining audiences for over 20 years as a singer/guitarist. He has said that Nat Cole “is why I do what I do.” Pizzarelli has set the standard for stylish nightclub entertainment and rollicking swing jazz showmanship. The Village Voice has said about a recent Pizzarelli performance, “We can say we're as lucky to listen to (Pizzarelli) as Nat Cole fans were in the years before he became a legend.” The New York Times said this after a live Pizzarelli show, “A master guitarist, connoisseur of song, mimic, and storyteller….the kind of joy that effuses from Mr. Pizzarelli seems to come as naturally as breathing.” And Variety adds, “He sings and scats and glides along his frets like a wizard on a deranged Ouija board.”
Using the Great American Songbook as a touchstone, Pizzarelli has made 20 albums as a solo artist. Themes of these CD’s range from Nat “King” Cole and Frank Sinatra (for whom he opened in 1993), Antonio Carlos Jobim, Richard Rodgers, The Beatles. His most recent release, Rockin' in Rhythm: A Tribute to Duke Ellington (Telarc), which went to #1 on the Jazz Week Jazz charts.
In 2009, Pizzarelli was the 11th artist to receive the Ella Fitzgerald Award, established in 1999 for the 20th anniversary of the Montreal Jazz Festival and conferred in recognition of the versatility, improvisational originality and quality of repertoire of a jazz singer renowned on the international scene. Past winners have included Harry Connick Jr., Diana Krall and Tony Bennett.
He has been featured on over 40 more albums as a sideman with such greats as diverse as Rosemary Clooney, James Taylor, Rikki Lee Jones, Dave Van Ronk and Natalie Cole.
Over the years he has performed in concert with his father, legendary jazz guitarist Bucky Pizzarelli, as well as Zoot Sims, Ray Brown, Slam Stewart, Buddy DeFranco, Kenny Davern, Dave McKenna, Milt Hinton, the Count Basie Orchestra, and others.
He has toured around the world with his quartet, from Singapore to Seattle, Rio to Rhode Island, Calgary to California. His symphony performances include those with The Boston Pops, New York Pops, Seattle Symphony, Vancouver Symphony and Palm Beach Pops, as well as clubs and concert performances around Europe.
Pizzarelli has a syndicated radio show entitled “Radio Deluxe” that he hosts with his wife, Broadway actress and singer, Jessica Molaskey from high atop Lexington Avenue in the deluxe living room, heard every weekend in over 70 cities around the US and Canada.
Together, John and Jessica have developed a winning cabaret show that they have performed around the US.
Jessica Molaskey’s voice has been compared to Peggy Lee, Chris Connor, k.d. lang and even Chet Baker. She has sung in concert from Lincoln Center to Carnegie Hall, and has had the great honor of performing at the Montreal Jazz festival. Jessica has performed regularly at Feinstein’s at the Regency with husband John Pizzarelli, and in 2005 made her sold-out solo debut at the Oak Room at the Algonquin hotel in New York. Due to popular demand, she returned for three weeks in 2006.
Jessica’s third solo CD Make Believe was given an “A” ranking and called “wondrous” by the Philadelphia Daily News on its first day out. Her debut CD, Pentimento, was proclaimed one of the top five entertainment records by Amazon.com for 2002. Jonathan Schwartz of National Public Radio called it “The best cd of the year.” Show Business Weekly called her second solo CD, A Good Day, “the best female vocal CD of 2003.” Her fourth CD Sitting in Limbo was in May 2007. Her latest CD A Kiss to Build a Dream On was released on Arbors Records in November 2008.
She is a veteran of a dozen Broadway shows, most recently the Roundabout Theatre’s recent revival of Stephen Sondheim’s Sunday in the Park with George at Studio 54. Other Broadway credits include the musical, A Man of No Importance at Lincoln Center written by Terrence McNally, Lynn Ahrens and Stephen Flaherty, Parade (directed by Hal Prince), Dream, Tommy, Crazy For You, Les Miserables, City of Angels, Chess, Cats and Oklahoma! Jessica has premiered music written by Ricky Ian Gordon, Adam Guettel, Jason Robert Brown, Michael John LaChiusa, and Stephen Sondheim.
Jessica has written songs for almost a dozen recordings including the critically acclaimed “Greed”, part of a commission for Audra McDonald’s Seven Deadly Sins at Carnegie Hall. Ms. McDonald performed Jessica’s composition “Cradle and All” – written with Ricky Ian Gordon – for the Lincoln Center Songbook Series and recorded it for Build A Bridge, her 2006 CD from Nonesuch.
Other recordings include Fine and Dandy, Myths And Hymns, Parade, Songs For a New World, Weird Romance, Chess, Oklahoma!, Windflowers: The Music of Jerome Moross, Fred Hersch’s CD Two Hands, Ten Voices and the recent cast album of Dream True by Tina Landau and Ricky Ian Gordon.
She co-hosts the nationally syndicated radio program, Radio Deluxe with John Pizzarelli, on which they have interviewed such stars as Tony Danza, Liza Minnelli and Regis Philbin. For more information, please visit www.jessicamolaskey.com.