Bryce Edwards to Present New Edition of THE FRIVOLITY HOUR at Birdland
The performance will take place on Monday, September 14.
Birdland Jazz Club will present the return of crooning troubadour and nouveau vaudevillian Bryce Edwards in “The Frivolity Hour” on Monday, September 14 at 7:00 PM. After several sold-out shows, the venue welcomes him back for an encore performance. Once more, Bryce will share his original brand of hot traditional jazz and early 20th century popular music, playing all the lush serenades and delightful novelties you never knew you wanted to hear. Edwards leads a heavy-hitting team of early jazz specialists, featuring Mike Davis on cornet, Ricky Alexander on clarinet and alto saxophone, Jay Rattman on bass saxophone, and Conal Fowkes on piano. There is a $30-40 music charge.
Bryce Edwards made his Jazz at Lincoln Center debut on opening night of the 35th annual Mabel Mercer Foundation Cabaret Convention in 2024, and returned in 2025 to celebrate composer Cy Coleman. A unique vocalist that takes equal cues from the crooners and soft singers of the late 1920s and early ‘30s and from the bombastic voices of the earlier, acoustic phonograph era, he is also an instrumentalist who plays banjo, ukulele, tenor guitar, and mandolin in the modernistic jazz idiom. Edwards channels his passion into reviving some of that long lost intangible quality of the Jazz Age and igniting interest in an all too often overlooked era of music that, despite being a century old, still bubbles with humor, beauty, and often a defiant youthful energy. He brings his singular verve and sensibility to songs made famous by great artists such as Cliff Edwards, Ted Lewis, Jack Teagarden, Rudy Vallée, and Bing Crosby. Steeped in jazz age novelty, Edwards takes frivolity very seriously, and vows to entertain his audience or die trying.
As a sideman, he appears with various traditional jazz bands such as Drew Nugent and the Midnight Society, Buck and a Quarter, The Uptown Strutters, and the Rivertown Vintage Jazz Band. He is a regular guest on Susie Mosher’s “The Lineup,” has appeared with Vince Giordano and the Nighthawks, and is a fan favorite at Jim Caruso’s “Cast Party.” Edwards writes and records original music and lyrics for the serialized radio dramas “The Town with No Name” and “The Forgotten.” He also provides and performs original songs for Ayun Halliday’s hit variety show, “Necromancers of the Public Domain.” Bryce is a member of The Wayfaring Strangers, a troupe led by Greg Kotis (Urinetown’s librettist and lyricist) that performs improvised bluegrass musicals, and appears regularly at The PIT. He played a young Taylor Mac in the original New York Theatre Workshop reading of The Fre. Catch Bryce in the independent film The Seasons, winner of the Hamilton New York International Film Festival in 2023. Bryce is also an award-winning fine artist and working freelance illustrator. He graduated summa cum laude from Baldwin Wallace University, class of 2021, with a BFA in classical acting and minor in studio art.
Recently, Edwards worked with acclaimed New York cornetist Mike Davis of The New Wonders to revive the music of Cliff Edwards and Red Nichols for a centennial celebration of their collaboration in “Hot Combination,” which played twice at Birdland to full houses.
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