Michael Feinstein and David Hyde Pierce Join Forces At Feinstein's, 12/1-12/30

Feinstein's at Lowes Regency, the nightclub proclaimed "Best of New York" by New York Magazine and "an invaluable New York institution" by The New York Post, will conclude its star-studded Fall 2009 season with the first joint engagement of the club's founder Michael Feinstein and Emmy and Tony Award winning Broadway and TV star David Hyde Pierce from December 1 - 30.

Their debut collaboration will feature holiday favorites and standards by composers such as Cole Porter ("You're The Top"), Noël Coward ("Together With Music") and Marc Shaiman and Alan & Marilyn Bergman ("The Best Of Friends"). Feinstein's longtime Musical Director John Oddo will lead the all-star quintet. All shows take place at the Loews Regency Hotel (540 Park Avenue at 61st Street).

Michael Feinstein - the multi-platinum selling, five-time Grammy nominated entertainer dubbed of "The Ambassador of the Great American Songbook" - is considered one of the premiere interpreters of American Popular Song. His 150 plus shows a year have included Carnegie Hall, the Hollywood Bowl and major concert halls, as well as the White House and Buckingham Palace. More than a mere performer, he is nationally recognized for his commitment to the American popular song, both celebrating its art and preserving its legacy for the next generation.

The Sinatra Project, his latest CD from Concord Records which celebrates the musical sensibilities of "Old Blue Eyes," earned Michael his fifth Grammy Award nomination in 2009. Feinstein is currently preparing a PBS-TV series, "Michael Feinstein's American Popular Song" - to start airing in 2010 - in which Michael discovers treasures of the Great American Songbook around the world. He is designing a new piano for Steinway called "The First Ladies," inspired by the White House piano. Feinstein will also serve as the Artistic director of the Carmel Performing Arts Center, a $160 million three-theatre performing arts center in Carmel, Indiana which will host an annual international Great American Songbook festival, along with diverse live programming and a museum to house his rare memorabilia and manuscripts.

His previous CD from Concord Records is Hopeless Romantics, a songbook of Harry Warren classics recorded with legendary jazz pianist George Shearing. In 2004, Michael completed a national tour with songwriting icon Jimmy Webb based on their CD, Only One Life - The Songs of Jimmy Webb. The disc was named one of "10 Best CDs of the Year" by USA Today. Recently he hosted and produced The Great American Songbook, a PBS Special and DVD set from Warner Brothers that traces the history of popular music in our country and debuted at the Palm Springs Film Festival.

Michael has written the score for two new stage musicals: The Day They Saved Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade and The Gold Room, and he is working with MGM to develop The Thomas Crown Affair into a musical for Broadway. Feinstein's just released The Power Of Two, a new CD with Broadway leading man Cheyenne Jackson, based on their show together at Feinstein's at Loews Regency, which was called "passionate, impeccably harmonized and groundbreaking" by TheNew York Times.

David Hyde Pierce made his professional and Broadway debut in 1982 as the waiter in Christopher Durang's Beyond Therapy, and his other Broadway credits include The Heidi Chronicles, Monty Python's Spamalot, Accent on Youth, and the Kander and Ebb/Rupert Holmes musical Curtains, for which he won the 2007 Tony Award. He created roles in the Off-Broadway and regional productions of Mark O'Donnell's That's it Folks!, Richard Greenberg's The Author's Voice and The Maderati, Harry Kondoleon's Zero Positive, Jules Feiffer's Elliot Loves, and Richard Alfieri's Six Dance Lessons in Six Weeks (with the great Uta Hagen).

In addition to his work in new plays, Mr. Pierce also appeared in Hamlet and Much Ado at the New York Shakespeare Festival, Holiday and Camille at the Long Wharf Theatre, The Seagull, Tartuffe, Cyrano, and Midsummer's Night's Dream at the Guthrie Theatre, and Peter Brook's production of The Cherry Orchard in New York, Moscow, Leningrad, and Tokyo. His film credits include Bright Lights, Big City; Crossing Delancey; Little Man Tate; Sleepless in Seattle; Wolf; Nixon; Isn't She Great; Wet, Hot, American Summer; Full Frontal; Down With Love, the recently completed The Perfect Host, and the animated films A Bug's Life, Osmosis Jones and Treasure Planet. His television credits include a short but happy stint on Norman Lear's political satire The Powers that Be, and a long but happy stint on Frasier, for which he received multiple Emmy and Screen Actors Guild Awards. He recently teamed with Victoria Clark and Rob Fisher in Night and Day: A Cole Porter Evening, which they performed for the Lincoln Center American Songbook Series and at the Ravinia Festival.

Feinstein's At Loews Regency will present Michael Feinstein and David Hyde Pierce with the following schedule: Tuesday and Wednesday at 8:30 PM and Thursday, Friday and Saturday at 8:00 PM and 10:30 PM. All shows have a $95.00 cover with $150.00 premium seats and $250 up-front seats. All shows have a $40.00 food and beverage minimum. Jackets are suggested but not required. The club is located at 540 Park Avenue at 61st Street in New York City. For ticket reservations and club information, call (212) 339-4095 or visit feinsteinsatloewsregency.com and TicketWeb.com.

Photo credit: Ben Strothmann