Wopat Returns to Birdland in 'Consider it Swung' 5/31

Jim Caruso announced the return of Tom Wopat to the Birdland stage on Monday, May 31 at 7pm.  This concert is part of the Broadway at Birdland series, which highlights performers and composers from the Great White Way.
 
The concert will be a celebration of Wopat’s newest recording, called “Consider It Swung.”  Included on the cd and in the concert will be mini big band performances of “That’s Life,” “But Not For Me,” “42nd Street” and “Fifty Checks,” from the new Marc Shaiman/Scott Wittman musical Catch Me If You Can.  The musical director is Tedd Firth, with arrangements by David Finck.
 
Best known for his starring role as Luke Duke in the long-running popular TV Series “Dukes of Hazzard,” Tony-nominated singer and actor Tom Wopat has maintained a thriving career in show biz ever since, appearing everywhere from Broadway and Cabaret Stages, to the screen, to his own swinging albums.  Wopat celebrated the 100th birthday of composer Harold Arlen with the February 2005 release of “Dissertation on the State of Bliss,” a collection of Arlen favorites and rarities, followed by the release of a collection of music entitled “Consider it Swung,” which features such great songs as "But Not For Me," "Deacon Blues," "That's Life," "2 Grey Rooms," and many others.  Meanwhile, Wopat appeared as the lead in Chicago, and returned to Broadway in March for his first dramatic role, starring alongside Alan Alda, Jeffrey Tambor and Liev Schreiber in David Mamet's Glengarry Glen Ross.  Wopat has received Tony nominations for several of his stage roles, including Frank Butler opposite Bernadette Peters in Annie Get Your Gun.  Tom brings his cabaret act back to the Birdland stage for the first time in five years!  In a New York Times review of his act, Stephen Holden said, "...he applies his virile baritone to popular standards with a quiet, open-hearted deliberation.  On the cabaret stage, Mr. Wopat conveys the same laid-back, utterly unaffected naturalness that makes his album so appealing... [Wopat] clearly knows whereof he sings."