John Pizzarelli and Jessica Molaskey Set for Cafe Carlyle, Beginning Tonight, 10/30

The Carlyle, A Rosewood Hotel welcomes back the acclaimed husband-and-wife team John Pizzarelli & Jessica Molaskey to the legendary Café Carlyle. Mr. Pizzarelli and Ms. Molaskey will play a month-long engagement from tonight, October 30 to November 24th.

In their newest show, This Must Be The Place?, Mr. Pizzarelli and Ms. Molaskey explore the idea of “home” and all that it entails with their expert musicianship and singular wit. Delivering another painstakingly crafted set-list, including Joni Mitchell’s “Free Man in Paris” and “Marcie”, Tom Petty’s “Free Falling”, Sondheim’s “Running Away (No More)”, and James Taylor’s “It’s Enough To Be On Your Way,” all focused on this most universal of themes, audiences will be left reflecting on the meaning of “home” and what it feels like to search for it, find it, lose it, and run away from it. 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: This Must Be The Place? will play Tuesdays through Saturdays at 8:45PM with additional shows on Saturdays at 10:45PM. There is a $90 music charge ($50 bar seating, $135 premium seating) Tuesday through Thursday and a $100 cover charge ($50 bar seating, $150 premium seating) for shows on Friday and Saturday. Every Monday night at 8:45PM (September 10 through December 17), Woody Allen appears with thE Eddy Davis New Orleans Jazz Band. There is a $135 music charge ($95 bar seating; $185 premium seating). For additional information, visit www.thecarlyle.com.

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. 

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 2010 release, Rockin' in Rhythm: A Tribute to Duke Ellington (Telarc), 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. 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, visit www.jessicamolaskey.com.