Bay Area Cabaret Features Anika Noni Rose, 2/20

Bay Area Cabaret continues its landmark season at the historic Venetian Room with "Vintage Rose," the West Coast solo concert debut of Tony Award winner and A.C.T. alumna Anika Noni Rose.  Direct from the Lincoln Center, where she will appear early in February as a part of its acclaimed American Songbook series, this intimate evening will feature songs made famous by Blossom Dearie, Lena Horne, and other legendary artists.  "Vintage Rose" plays one night only: 7pm Sunday, February 20, 2011 at the Venetian Room of the Fairmont San Francisco (950 Mason Street).  Tickets ($45) are available at www.bayareacabaret.org or by phone at City Box Office (415) 392-4400.  Tickets for the original May 1st date will be honored at this performance.
 
Anika Noni Rose first garnered national attention for her Tony Award-winning portrayal of "Emmie Thibodeaux" in Tony Kushner's Caroline, or Change.  In 2008, Rose performance as "Maggie the Cat" in Deborah Allen's acclaimed production of Cat On A Hot Tin Roof was called "riveting" and "fiercely charged" by The New York Times.  Her leading roles in film include the voice of "Princess Tiana" in Disney's Academy Award nominated The Princess and the Frog, "Yasmine" in Tyler Perry's recent For Colored Girls, and "Lorrell Robinson" in Dreamgirls, for which she received an NAACP Award nomination.  She was also seen in last fall in The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency series as "Mma. Makutsi," which aired both on HBO and BBC and earned the prestigious Peabody Award.
 
Bay Area Cabaret, the local organization devoted to presenting audiences with top performers who expand the definition of cabaret, continues its season at the Fairmont Hotel's historic Venetian Room.  Said Marilyn Levinson, Founding Executive Producer of Bay Area Cabaret, now in its seventh season, "The Venetian Room reigned supreme as America's premier supper club from 1947 to 1989. It was here that Tony Bennett introduced his signature song 'I Left My Heart in San Francisco' and show business legends like Ella Fitzgerald, Marlene Dietrich, Tina Turner, Joel Grey, Bobby Short, James Brown, Vic Damone, Nat 'King' Cole, and many, many other performers held forth for more than four decades. We are thrilled and honored to reopen this historic room as a music venue, where we are presenting this generation's top Broadway, pop and jazz performers." 
 
Bay Area Cabaret was founded by Marilyn Levinson, a fifth generation San Francisco native and niece of James Schwabacher, Jr., founder of San Francisco Opera's 27-year-old Schwabacher Debut Recital Series, MEROLA Opera Program, and co-founder of San Francisco Performances. Bay Area Cabaret (BAC) is a not-for profit, all-volunteer organization, which presents extraordinary performances in a variety of elegant venues in the San Francisco Bay Area.  Through its concert series and wide-ranging outreach activities, BAC aims to expand the definition of cabaret and broaden the audience for intimate entertainment, offering Great American Songbook entries from Harold Arlen and Stephen Sondheim to Jonathan Larson and Stevie Wonder.  Past seasons have featured Sutton Foster, Christine Ebersole, Barbara Cook, television actors Michael Tucker and Jill Eikenberry, jazz diva Nnenna Freelon, Broadway stars Marin Mazzie and Jason Danieley, sopranos Patricia Racette and Karen Slack, and multi-platinum songwriter and jazz vocalist Ann Hampton Callaway.
 
Next in the Bay Area Cabaret series, New York's Café Carlyle comes to San Francisco with John Pizzarelli and Jessica Molaskey 5pm Sunday, March 13 and the season concludes with an evening with Broadway's finest vocalist Lillias White 5pm Saturday, May 14.

Photo Credit: Walter McBride/WM Photos

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