Photo Flash: Steve Ross Brings Cole Porter To Birdland!

Pianist/singer Steve Ross recently brought his new concert, "He's the Top: Cole Porter Songs from List to Lust" to the Birdland stage, located in the heart of Manhattan's Theater District.

Cole Porter, a master of American music with nearly 40 stage and film musical songs to his credit, wrote lyrics that reflect the many complexities of love. With songs like "Night and Day," "Let's Do It," and "So In Love," his lyrics ran the spectrum from witty to risqué, but always with an elegant expression uniquely his own. Steve Ross explored this sometimes-conflicting collection and shared songs that generations of lovebirds have danced to. Steve's special guest was singer Karen Murphy.

Steve Ross has been a fixture of the cabaret community in Manhattan for over forty years. He was born "forty-five minutes from Broadway" in New Rochelle, NY, and was raised in Washington, DC with an opera-loving father and a mother who played on the piano the songs of Gershwin, Porter and Irving Berlin. His first major job in New York was as a successful singer/pianist at the now famous piano bar Ted Hook's Backstage. In 1981 he re-opened the legendary Oak Room at Manhattan's famed Hotel Algonquin where he held forth off and on for more than 15 years. He has appeared on Broadway in Noel Coward's Present Laughter and off-Broadway in his tribute to Fred Astaire entitled I Won't Dance. Internationally, he has performed in London, Paris, Tokyo, Sao Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, Melbourne and Sydney as well as cabarets and theatres across America and on the high seas. He's hosted programs on the BBC and New York Public Radio and was on the Concerts and Lectures roster at the Metropolitan Museum of Art for eight years.

Photo Credit: Kevin Alvey