Matthew Modine, Melissa Errico Lead MORE BETWEEN HEAVEN AND EARTH

Internationally renowned actor, Golden Globe Winner, and multiple Emmy Nominee Matthew Modine and TONY-Award Nominee and Broadway Star Melissa Errico star in a unique dramatic presentation drawn from the passionate letters of Thomas Jefferson and painter/composer/musician Maria Cosway, intertwined with the performance of music mentioned in their correspondance, including works by Sacchini, Hewitt, and rarely performed compositions by Cosway herself.

Featuring performances by Jessica Gould, soprano and Karim Sulayman, tenor with Members of the Clarion Society Orchestra Stage Direction by Erica Gould

A Benefit for Americans United for Separation of Church and State

Protean genius and primary architect of the Doctrine of Separation of Church and State, Jefferson was also an accomplished violinist and four-year resident of Paris before he became our third President. His romance with the married, Italian-born painter/composer/musician Maria Cosway during his post as Minister Plenipotentiary to France leaves a trove of letters which render the soundscape of the French Revolution with startling precision. This performance will combine a theatrical presentation of excerpts from their passionate correspondence, which continued for forty years, interwoven with performances of the music they heard. Repertoire will include selections from Sacchini’s opera Dardanus, songs by James Hewitt, and rare compositions by Cosway herself. More Between Heaven and Earth is part of a larger artistic endeavor to "reclaim the Founding Fathers from the Tea Party." A portion of the proceeds from the performance will be donated to Americans United for Separation of Church and State.

DATE:
Saturday, December 17th, 2011

TIME:
8:00pm

LOCATION:
The AbiGail Adams Smith Auditorium
417 East 61st Street Between 1st and York Avenues

TICKETS:
$100 front seating, $50 rear seating, $35 students with ID
To reserve tickets, please go to http://www.salonsanctuary.org

In addition to being an internationally renowned actor, Matthew Modine is also a filmmaker, writer, and photographer. He has worked with many of the film industry’s most acclaimed directors on films which include, Birdy, Full Metal Jacket, Married to the Mob, and Shortcuts and more recently Showtime's Weeds. He has been nominated for multiple Emmys and is the recipient of a Golden Globe Award, Venice Film Festival Volpi Cup and Golden Lion for his work as an actor. Last year he starred as the iconic Atticus Finch in a theatrical adaptation of Harper Lee’s classic novel, To Kill A Mockingbird, at the Hartford Stage, which proved to be the most successful hit production in Hartford Stage's 45-year history. He most recently was seen in the Broadway revival of The Miracle Worker. He is currently filming the The Dark Knight Rises.

An activist and a passionate environmentalist, his passion for protecting our natural environment began while studying oceanography in college. Matthew is the founder of Bicycle For A Day (BFAD), a global initiative focused on promoting the use of bicycles for transportation, to improve ones personal health, to reduce dependence on foreign oil and to reduce the poisonous effects carbon emissions have on our environment. In 1994, Matthew created what has become a practice throughout the entire motion picture industry. He created a budget that demonstrated how a single agency could save millions of sheets of paper and cut their paper cost and shipping budgets in half - by simply double-siding scripts. He encouraged the famous William Morris Agency to take this step and all the film industry followed suite. Double-sided printing of scripts has resulted in a savings of an estimated 13 millions sheets of paper each year, or 208,000,000 sheets since 1994.

Melissa Errico Called "divine," "the voice of enchantment," and "one of the most valuable assets of the musical theater" by The New York Times, Melissa has starred in seven Broadway musicals, including Amour, composed by multi-Oscar-winning composer Michel Legrand (Yentl), for which she was nominated for a TONY Award for Best Leading Actress in a Musical, High Society, Anna Karenina, Dracula, and the 2009-2010 Broadway revival of White Christmas. Melissa's career began as Cosette in Les Miserables when she was only 18, for which she took a leave of absence from Yale University and returned to graduate with high honors and an art history/philosophy degree. That year, she went on to star as Eliza Doolittle in Fair Lady on Broadway, a role she reprised opposite John Lithgow at the Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles in 2003. In 2002, Melissa starred with Raul Esparza in The Sondheim Celebration's Sunday In The Park With George at The Kennedy Center, for which Stephen Sondheim wrote some new lyrics for her interpretation of Dot. She has also appeared opposite Jeremy Irons in Camelot at the Hollywood Bowl, a performance she reprised with Jeremy Irons in the summer of 2011 for one-night only on Broadway at The Shubert Theater. In 2010, Melissa was nominated for Best Actress in a Play at the Drama Desk Awards for her work in the title role of George Bernard Shaw's Candida, and during the summer of 2011, Melissa co-starred with Alec Baldwin in Gift Of The Gorgon by Peter Shaffer. Her film credits include Frequency, Life Or Something Like It (opposite Angelina Jolie), and the independent film Patrimony. She has been a series regular on Darren Starr's CBS show Central Park West and appeared in numerous network guest star roles, including on Six Degrees and Miss Match.

Melissa has appeared with the Cleveland Orchestra and the New Jersey Symphony with Steven Reineke, the Royal Philharmonic at The Palladium Theater, and the National Symphony at the Kennedy Center, and has toured with such conductors as Michael Tilson Thomas, and concert artists like Brian Stokes Mitchell and Michael Feinstein. Her most recent solo CD, Legrand Affair, produced by Phil Ramone, is a celebration of the songs of Legrand, who orchestrated and conducted a 100-piece symphony for the recording, and collaborated with Melissa as he has done only a handful of times, with artists including Barbra Streisand, Sarah Vaughn and Johnny Mathis.

Erica Gould is a seasoned theatre director and choreographer with over 40 productions and workshops across the country, Canada, and the UK to her credit, including the world premieres of Neil LaBute’s plays autobahn and Stand Up (w/ Mos Def), Adopt a Sailor w/ Sam Waterston and Liev Schreiber (Town Hall), SpeakEasy (Joe's Pub/Public Theater), and many musicals, productions of Shakespeare, and new plays by writers including Jose Rivera, Rajiv Joseph, Anna Ziegler, Sam Hunter, and Adam Szymkowicz. Her most recent productions include Dirty Paki Lingerie by Aizzah Fatima, Naked in a Fishbowl (Cherry Lane), and John Gay's The Beggar's Opera. She has taught at Yale, Fordham, Bard, NYU, and the O'Neill National Theatre Institute, among others, was a Drama League Directors Project Fellow, a Senior Boris Sagal Directing Fellow at Williamstown, and has received a Gracie Allen Award for her work in radio-theatre (directing What Light From Darkness Grows for NPR, w/ Phylicia Rashad and Harry Lennix), and a TCG grant to work with Dah Theatre in Belgrade. The inaugural recipient of the SDCF's Live-on-Screen Fellowship for on-camera directing, she is currently directing her first film, Yaatra, with Dipti Mehta. She has collaborated with Melissa before, most recently in development workshops starring Melissa and TONY Award-winner Chuck Cooper that Erica directed of a new music-theatre adaptation of Tom Wolfe's The Bonfire of the Vanities, composed by Stephania deKennessey.

MusicWeb International has praised SSC programming: “It is a rare occurrence at any concert or opera when every possible aspect of the performance experience succeeds completely. I am not simply referring to the musicians, concert hall or instruments but to the gestalt: the unified whole that makes the sum greater than all of its parts.” Founded by Soprano and Artistic Director JESSICA GOULD in 2009, SALON/SANCTUARY CONCERTS offers an alternative to the conventional concert hall, presenting internationally recognized artists and ensembles performing pre-Romantic music in the kinds of spaces for which the repertoire was intended. Sacred music is presented in appropriate sanctuaries, while salon repertoire is heard in the AbiGail Adams Smith Auditorium at the 1799 Mount Vernon Hotel Museum and Garden, where Salon/Sanctuary is the concert series in residence. Salon/Sanctuary takes pride in originating special projects that offer the chance to view historical issues through the prism of music. From Ghetto to Palazzo, Salon/Sanctuary’s recent production of works of Jewish-Italian composer Salamone Rossi, was listed as a Critic’s Pick in The New York Times.