Ben West News

Imagining the Indian: The Fight Against Native American Mascoting will make its world premiere at California’s American Indian & Indigenous Film Festival. The festival highlights the best of current films from American Indian filmmakers, producers, directors, and actors working through Indian Country. Watch the new trailer now!

High Valley is back with brand new music with  “Whatever It Takes,” (Jon Nite, Ben Stennis, Brad Rempel) and “Never Not,” (Ben West, Matt Willis, Brad Rempel) are brimming with the group’s signature sound of positive-minded, bluegrass-tinted country. Pre-save the new singles now!

Last month, Monroe announced the album the album with the first single 'Drive,' which was covered by Pitchfork, People, Stereogum, and Rolling Stone, who said, 'The album’s lead single 'Drive' picks up where Sparrow left off and goes further, highlighting Monroe’s genre-hopping balladry with a trip-hop breakbeat.'

Multiple-GRAMMY® Award-winning singer/songwriter Rob Thomas has teamed up with country singer-songwriter Abby Anderson for a rendition of the Dolly Parton & Kenny Rogers holiday classic “I Believe In Santa Claus” – available now via Emblem/Atlantic Records.

Glimmerglass Film Days begins this Thursday, November 5 with the Opening Film The Seer and the Unseen (Sara Dosa, 2019, Iceland, 82 min). 

Glimmerglass Film Days will present a virtual film festival, complete with filmmaker interviews and panels, November 5-11. 

​​​​​​​GRAMMY-winning global superstar Kelly Clarkson has shared the dancefloor-ready Eden Prince Remix of her brand new single 'I Dare You'- available now via Atlantic Records.

GRAMMY-winning global superstar Kelly Clarkson has unveiled her brand new single “I Dare You” – available now via Atlantic Records.

As PLATINUM-selling duo Maddie & Tae are “riding a gust of momentum” (PEOPLE) following an explosive 2019 unveiling new music that is “drenched in raw, vulnerable emotion” (American Songwriter), the pair continues to fill-in pages of their expansive journey, revealing details today of their highly-anticipated full-length sophomore album The Way It Feels (Mercury Nashville), set to be released on April 10. Produced by Jimmy Robbins and Derek Wells, the album is available for pre-save NOW.  

UnsungMusicalsCo. (Ben West, Artistic Director) closes out its 2019 season with a benefit concert of The Passing Show of 2019, a new musical revue celebrating and satirizing the social and cultural happenings of the past year featuring sketches and songs written by college students and emerging writers. The one-night-only event will be presented on Monday, December 16, 2019 at 7:00 p.m. at The Irene Diamond Stage at the Pershing Square Signature Center (480 West 42nd Street).

UnsungMusicalsCo. heads to Washington, D.C. where Show Time! creator Ben West will give a two-part lecture series for The Library of Congress entitled Diversity and the Birth of Broadway.

UnsungMusicalsCo. (Ben West, Artistic Director) presents the new documentary musical 45 Minutes from Coontown, created, written and performed by Ben West, the founder of UMC and a 2017 recipient of Lincoln Center's Martin E. Segal Award, with musical continuity and arrangements by Fran Minarik, and direction and musical staging by Parker Esse. 45 Minutes from Coontown is a celebration of black musical theatre, tracing its history from the late-1800s through 1999, and featuring more than 30 songs almost exclusively by black writers. Developed over more than four years, with more than 20 archives in more than 10 states, 45 Minutes from Coontown documents the story of an art form that grew amidst a nation's racial prejudice, and the many African-American authors who not only furthered the form itself but were also instrumental in the development of the American popular song.

UnsungMusicalsCo. (Ben West, Artistic Director) presents the new documentary musical 45 Minutes from Coontown, created, written and performed by Ben West, the founder of UMC and a 2017 recipient of Lincoln Center's Martin E. Segal Award, with musical continuity and arrangements by Fran Minarik, and direction and musical staging by Parker Esse.

UnsungMusicalsCo. presents the new documentary musical 45 Minutes from Coontown, created, written and performed by Ben West, the founder of UMC and a 2017 recipient of Lincoln Center's Martin E. Segal Award, with musical continuity and arrangements by Fran Minarik, and direction and musical staging by Parker Esse. 

UnsungMusicalsCo. (Ben West, Artistic Director) presents the new documentary musical 45 Minutes from Coontown, created, written and performed by Ben West, the founder of UMC and a 2017 recipient of Lincoln Center's Martin E. Segal Award, with musical continuity and arrangements by Fran Minarik, direction and musical staging by Parker Esse, and music direction by Dionne McClain-Freeney. 

UnsungMusicalsCo. (Ben West, Artistic Director) has announced, today, its Fall 2019 Calendar of Events scheduled at various mid-Atlantic locations. First up is the new documentary musical 45 Minutes from Coontown, which traces the history of black musical theatre and is the second installment in The Show Time! Trilogy; the season continues with Sex, Satire, and Song, an exhibit curated for Yale University; Diversity and the Birth of Broadway, a two-part lecture series for the Library of Congress; and concludes with the new musical revue *The Passing Show of 2019. UMC's 2019 season launched in March with the UMC Writers Lab*.

Multi-platinum entertainer Sara Evans is offering a vulnerable, acoustic performance for her haunting hit, “All The Love You Left Me.” Following her headlining run on CMT's Next Women of Country Tour earlier this year, the “artist in full musical flight” (Associated Press) visited CMT's 330 Studios in Nashville to film a live performance music video with her band, including siblings Matt Evans and Lesley Evans Lyons and son, Avery. The clip will debut Monday, October 22 as part of digital music series “CMT Next Women of Country Live 2018 at CMT.com. In addition, an acoustic version of the song is available now HERE.

Show Time! The First 100 Years of the American Musical is created, written, and performed by Ben West, a 2017 recipient of Lincoln Center's Martin E. Segal Award. Developed over the past four years from more than twenty archives in more than ten states, Show Time! features over two dozen songs in an electrifying live-action documentary, weaving music and performance through a narrative of world, cultural, and theatre history, telling the remarkable story of this uniquely American art form, charting its evolution from the mid-1800s through 1999. Show Time! will cover seven eras of the American musical: Cosmic Collisions (1866-1899), Birth of an Art Form (1900-1924), Rise of the Golden Age (1925-1930), Golden Age, Part One (1931-1950), Golden Age, Part Two (1951-1970), Fall of the Golden Age (1971-1980) and Growing Pains, or Identity Crisis (1981-1999).

UnsungMusicals Co. announced today its plans for the 2018 season.

The York Theatre Company has announced the line-up for its 49th anniversary season at The York Theatre at Saint Peter's.