Best of the Versed Strikes Back! - Hamptons Summer Songbook By the Sea at LTV Studios

Steve Ross

Dubbed "Crown Prince of Cabaret" in the New York Times, Steve Ross has earned that title over decades at venerable venues throughout Manhattan, across the country and around the world. 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 reopened the legendary Oak Room at Manhattan’s famed Hotel Algonquin where he held forth for more than 15 years. One of his shows there, Puttin’ on the Ritz – the Songs of Fred Astaire, prompted Stephen Holden in the Times to call Steve “the personification of the bygone dream world that his music summons.” On Broadway he sang and acted in Noël Coward’s Present Laughter, and performed off-Broadway in I Won’t Dance, another tribute to Astaire, as well as Love, Noël: The Letters and Songs of Noël Coward with KT Sullivan. Internationally, he has performed in London, Paris, Tokyo, Sao Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, Melbourne and Sydney. He’s held master classes, hosted broadcasts on the BBC and New York Public Radio and was on the Concerts and Lectures roster at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. His dozen CDs include musical explorations of Stephen Sondheim, Alan Jay Lerner, Cole Porter and, of course, Coward, whose green velvet smoking jacket –or at least one tailored for Noël in London – was gifted to Steve by Britain’s Noël Coward Society.

Karen Murphy

Karen Murphy brings to cabaret “a vision so unique, a performance so original, it can only be described as electrifying.” (Cabaret Scenes). She is ongoing Guest Artist with the Northwoods Symphonic Band on Long Island, this June at the Sands Point Preserve, and has performed in a Fifties-themed pops orchestra concert program coast to coast. At the Don’t Tell Mama showroom in Manhattan, she reprised her role in last summer’s Best of the Versed debut. Karen also brings extensive stage experience, including the role of Madame Armfeldt in the Broadway revival of Stephen Sondheim’s A Little Night Music. She won a 2009 Drama Desk nomination for her acclaimed performance in My Vaudeville Man. Other Broadway productions: 9 to 5 (as Margaret the “Atta Girl” drunk), All Shook Up, 42nd Street, Titanic, A Christmas Carol and King David. Off-Broadway: Zombie Prom (Dramalogue and Encore Awards), Hysterical Blindness, and the Jerry Herman revue Showtune. National Tours: Disney’s Mary Poppins playing the evil Miss Andrew, Les Miserables, The Wizard of Oz,” and White Christmas. She made her debut at NY City Opera in The Most Happy Fella. A favorite experience was personifying Angela Lansbury as Mame in productions of Forbidden Broadway across the U.S. and around the world. Recordings include her one- woman show, Torchgoddess, My Vaudeville Man, 9 to 5, Zombie Prom, and I Won’t Dance.

Maria Abous

Crossover soprano Maria Abous, whose voice “begs for lush orchestration” (Rolling Stone UK), has performed on iconic NYC stages including Birdland (alongside our beloved Steve Ross!), Carnegie Hall, Jazz at Lincoln Center, Baretto, 54 Below and The Triad. Celebrated as “the embodiment of a leading lady,” with her “presence charming, her interpretations sympathetic, and her vocals gorgeous” (Woman Around Town), Maria holds a B.A. in Music from Columbia University and a Master’s in Voice Performance from Longy School of Music of Bard College in Cambridge, Mass. With her latest album Merry Little Christmas, Maria “brings an ethereal twist to holiday classics with the timeless allure of Grace Kelly, the vocal warmth of Frank Sinatra, and a heart all her own. From concert halls to supper clubs, she has carved out her own space as a cross-genre artist” (Daily Front Row). Maria's first album, Crescendo, reimagines classic jazz and theater standards as love songs from mother to child. A mom of two (nearly three!) little ones herself, she is a passionate advocate for the care and support of new mothers.

David Alpern

David Alpern is the son of a “girl singer” on the road around the U.S. and on radio in New York circa 1939 (posthumously posted on SoundCloud). Starting in 1966, Alpern was a reporter, writer and senior editor at Newsweek magazine working mostly in the National Affairs and International sections and coordinating the Newsweek Poll of public opinion at home and abroad. In 1982 he launched Newsweek On Air, an hour-long, weekly, network radio broadcast, later also a podcast, heard across the country and around the world (via Armed Forces Radio). It featured interviews with news-makers, policy experts and top entertainers (including Katharine Hepburn, Katharine Graham, Woodward, Bernstein, Cronkite, Kempton, Hamill, Breslin, Caro, le Carre, Robert McNamara, Ted Sorensen, Nancy Reagan, Nora Ephron, Rosemary Clooney, Barbara Cook). Thirty years later, Alpern took the show independent and non-profit as For Your Ears Only, and the Internet Archive posted past shows back to '82--roughly 10,000 interviews. For three years after that he hosted a weekly podcast for the World Policy Institute, its monthly World Policy Journal and website. Now a full-time resident of Sag Harbor, Alpern, writes book reviews for The East Hampton Star, interviews authors for local libraries and plays what he calls "nearly tennis.”

Donna Rubin

Josh Gladstone