Bay Area Cabaret Presents ADAM & ANTHONY LIVE, 11/21

Bay Area Cabaret audiences will get a first look at the national tour concert ADAM & ANTHONY LIVE starring Adam Pascal and Anthony Rapp.  After 15 years of friendship and co-starring roles in Jonathan Larsen's Pulitzer Prize-winning musical Rent, these two iconic Broadway stars are coming together to bring fans what they've been waiting for: an up-close-and-personal concert featuring their individual work as well as fan-favorite numbers from the production that rocketed them to international stardom. The concert plays one night only 7pm, Sunday, November 21, 2010 in the Venetian Room of the Fairmont San Francisco. For tickets ($20 students under 21/ $35 subscribers / $40 general) call City Box Office (415) 392-4400 or visit www.bayareacabaret.org.  A limited number of attendees will be treated to a post-show party with the artists.  For reservations ($75) to the post-show party, call Bay Area Cabaret at 415-927-4636.
 
The evening marks the launch of BAC 2.0, Bay Area Cabaret programs aimed at young audiences.  It will feature original material from both artists' solo shows, as well as well-known pop songs, hits from Rent, Spring Awakening, Aida, Cabaret, Chess, and hip, new arrangements of classic standards.  Additionally, Pascal will perform songs from his group Me & Larry, featuring Musical Director Larry Edoff.   Throughout the set, Pascal and Rapp will share stories about their careers, including what it was like working on one of the longest running musicals in Broadway history.  From their auspicious Broadway debut in Rent to their recent starring roles in the national tour of the Tony Award winning hit, Pascal and Rapp have never lost their international fan base.  The Broadway stars will embark on a national concert tour, exclusively through rj productions, after their engagement at the Venetian Room.
 
Adam Pascal
Adam Pascal was born on October 25, 1970, in the Bronx and raised in Syosset, New York. He started singing in various rock bands when he was 12, playing the local New York club scene for many years, and has been singing in bands, as a solo artist, in movies, or on the Broadway stage ever since.
 
In 1995, his band, Mute, recorded a self-titled album that was released in Japan by Zero Corporation. In 1996, Pascal tried out for the then unknown, off-Broadway production of Rent. He landed the role of "Roger Davis." Pascal was nominated for a 1996 Tony Award as Best Actor (Musical), and won Drama League and Obie award for his performance as "Roger." The show went on to become a worldwide success and one of the longest running shows in Broadway history. In 1997 he reprised the role of Roger (the first of several times he would do so) for the West End Premiere of Rent.
 
In 1998, Pascal's career expanded to the big screen in the independent film SLC Punk!  In 2000, Pascal was cast as "Radames" in Elton John and Tim Rice's new Broadway musical Aida, for which he received a Drama League award. He would stay with the production for over 3 years. In May of 2000, his debut solo album, Model Prisoner, was released on Sh-K-Boom Records. Also in 2000, Pascal co-produced the hit off-Broadway play Fully Committed with fellow former Rent cast member, Jesse L. Martin. The show went on to garner many awards and played to sold-out houses in New York City, Chicago, San Francisco, and London.
 
In October 2003, Pascal once again visited the Broadway stage, this time as the final "Emcee" in the Sam Mendes/Rob Marshall production of Cabaret at Studio 54 in the closing cast. Also during that time Pascal was cast along side Jack Black, as "Theo," the lead singer of No Vacancy in 2003's School of Rock. Finally in 2004, Pascal's second CD, Civilian, was released in November, again on Sh-k-boom Records.
 
In 2005, Pascal reprised the role of "Roger" in the movie version of Rent and helped bring a new generation of fans to the Broadway show and its music. Pascal's journey with Rent finally came to conclusion when he reprised the role one last time alongside Anthony Rapp in "Rent The Broadway Tour," which traveled all over the U.S. as well as Japan and South Korea.
 
In 2008, Pascal played the role of "Freddie Trumper" in the Tim Rice/Abba Musical Chess, alongside Josh Groban, and Idina Menzel for two sold out performances at The Royal Albert Hall, in London. The DVD is currently on sale worldwide.  Pascal's latest CD entitled Blinding Light was released in 2008 and he is touring with his band Me & Larry.  Currently, Pascal is developing a musical for Broadway based on the concept album Operation Mindcrime, by the progressive rock band Queensryche.
 
Anthony Rapp
Anthony Rapp has been acting and singing professionally since he was nine years old.
With an extensive list of achievements, Rapp is best known for originating the role of "Mark Cohen" in Jonathan Larson's Tony Award-winning rock opera, Rent, for which he shared an Obie Award with the rest of the cast. He reprised his role in Chris Columbus' film version opposite other members of the original cast. Rapp recently visited the role once more with original cast member Adam Pascal in the Rent tour.  Rapp will next be seen in Don Roos' Love and Other Impossible Pursuits opposite Natalie Portman, Lisa Kudrow, and Scott Cohen.
 
Rapp has an extensive theatre background; his most recent Broadway show was Second Stage Theatre's Some Americans Abroad. Other Broadway credits include the revival of You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown and John Guare's Six Degrees of Separation.  He made his Broadway debut in Precious Sons with Judith Ivey and Ed Harris, for which he received an Outer Critics Circle award and a Drama Desk nomination.
 
Film credits include Adventures in Babysitting, School Ties, Dazed and Confused, Six
Degrees of Separation, Man of the Century, David Searching, Road Trip, and A Beautiful
Mind (SAG Award nomination for Ensemble). He has also appeared in Winter Passing, a film written and directed by his brother, Adam Rapp.
 
A writer as well, Rapp wrote a book entitled Without You: A Memoir of Love, Loss, and the Musical Rent (Simon & Schuster) about his struggle to balance the demands of life in the theatre with his responsibility to his family during his mother's battle with cancer. He recently adapted the book into a one-man show entitled "Without You" which he has performed on stages throughout the country.
 
On television, Rapp has appeared in The Lazarus Man, The X-Files, The Beach Boys:
An American Family, Kidnapped and Law & Order: SVU. In 2000, he released his debut album, Look Around. He has performed his music in clubs and colleges throughout the country.  Rapp is proud to support and continue to help raise funds for Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS and Friends In Deed.
 
This appearance is presented by Bay Area Cabaret, the local organization devoted to presenting audiences with top performers who expand the definition of cabaret.  The organization was invited to reopen the Fairmont Hotel's historic Venetian Room as a showroom, and given exclusive music booking rights to present its musical series in the city's legendary showroom. 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 be reopening this historic room as a music venue, where we will be 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. Bay Area Cabaret 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, the organization 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.