Elaine Paige & Laura Benanti Add Shows for American Songbook Series

Lincoln Center's acclaimed series American Songbook will close its 2012 season with two shows being added to the series: a second show by the legendary Elaine Paige on February 12th and a second show by Broadway star Laura Benanti on February 11th. Paige has a previously announced show on February 10th at 8:30pm. Paige's new show is on Sunday, February 12th at 6:30pm. Benanti's previously announced show is at 8:30pm on February 11th. Benanti's new second show is also on February 11th, at 10:30pm. Tickets for these two shows go on sale today.

Elaine Paige is usually described as "The Queen of British Musical Theater" and with good reason. Olivier Award- winner Paige first astounded theater audiences with her creation of the role of Eva Peron in Evita. Her subsequent roles as Grizabella in Cats, Florenz in Chess, Edith Piaf in Piaf, and the leads in Sweeney Todd, Sunset Boulevard, Anything Goes and The King and I added to her luster. She performs concerts around the world, has a weekly BBC 2 radio program, sells multi-platinum CDs, was awarded the Order of the British Empire and is currently appearing as Carlotta in Follies on Broadway. About this current performance Ben Brantley of The New York Times writes that "Ms. Paige performs "I'm Still Here" with a galvanizing fierceness that makes this much-performed song sound fresh and stinging."

Laura Benanti won the Tony Award for Best Featured Actress in a Musical in 2009 for playing the tomboy Louise who transforms herself into the stripper Gypsy Rose Lee in Gypsy. That role also garnered Benanti the Drama Desk and Outer Critics Circle Awards, and The New York Times' Ben Brantley declared it "the performance of her career." She has also starred in the musicals A Little Night Music (Tony nominee), Nine, and Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown (Tony nominee, Drama Desk and Outer Critics Circle Awards for Best Featured Actress in a Musical). Dramatic roles include In the Next Room, or The Vibrator Play on Broadway as well as the cancelled television series The Playboy Club. Benanti possesses a bell-clear soprano and the ability to inhabit characters with total conviction. In her cabaret shows she lets out an antic sense of humor, a surprising quality in someone of such beauty.

American Songbook takes place in the spectacular Allen Room, located in Frederick P. Rose Hall, home of Jazz at Lincoln Center on Broadway at 60th Street. The Allen Room possesses one of New York's greatest settings – a stunning vista of Central Park and the Manhattan skyline that provides an evocative backdrop for the performers.

TICKETS can be purchased online beginning December 8, 2011 at Lincoln Center's website www.AmericanSongbook.org, via CenterCharge at 212-721-6500 , at the Alice Tully Hall, Avery Fisher Hall Box Office, or at the Frederick P. Rose Hall Box Office.

New: Premium packages-including wine, dinner, and the best seats in the house-are available for the first time this year, for $250. More information at AmericanSongbook.org.

Photo Credit: Walter McBride/WM Photos