WPPAC to Hold Symposium Featuring Tom Kitt, 11/7

At 7pm on November 7, Pulitzer Prize and Tony Award-winning composer, Tom Kitt (Next to Normal) will kick off White Plains The White Plains Performing Arts Center (WPPAC) is proud to announce the first Conservations @ 7 - an evening in conversation with Tony Award® Winner and Pulitzer Prize winning composer of Broadway's Next to Normal Tom Kitt with special guest Jenn Colella on Sunday night, November 7 at 7:00 pm.  Admission is $15. A $50 ticket is also available which includes a post-talk "Meet & Greet" reception with the guests. 

The evening will be hosted by Joel Fram, Music Supervisor of Wicked London. Conversations @ 7 are intimate evenings with luminaries of the theatre who will talk and answer questions about their craft and their lives in the theatre. 

The WPPAC is located on the third level of the City Center complex on Mamaroneck Avenue in downtown White Plains.  To purchase tickets, call Ticket Fusion at 877-548-3237, visit the theatre box office or purchase the tickets online at www.wppac.com. 

TOM KITT (Composer) received the 2010 Pulitzer Prize for Drama, as well as two Tony Awards® for Best Score and Best Orchestrations (with Michael Starobin) for next to normal.  His music for next to normal also received the 2009 Frederick Loewe Award for dramatic composition and an Outer Critics Circle Award for Outstanding Score.  Tom is responsible for the music supervision, arrangements and orchestrations for Green Day's American Idiot on Broadway and was also the string arranger on their most recent album 21st Century Breakdown.  Tom is also the composer of High Fidelity (Broadway), The Winter's Tale (The Public's NYSF), From Up Here (Manhattan Theatre Club) and The Retributionists (Playrights Horizons).  As a musical director, conductor, arranger, and orchestrator for Broadway, Off-Broadway and beyond, his credits include 13, Debbie Does Dallas, Everyday Rapture, Hair, Laugh Whore and Urban Cowboy.  He is the proud leader of the Tom Kitt Band, whose songs have been featured in film and TV.

JENN COLELLA, has been a familiar face in the New York theatre scene since coming here to star as Sissy in Broadway's Urban Cowboy, for which she received an Outer Critic's Circle Award Nomination. Since then she has appeared in Broadway's High Fidelity, starred in the world premiere of The Times They Are A-Changin' at the Old Globe Theatre, and recently performed in Beautiful Girls, a musical tribute honoring Stephen Sondheim at the World Festival of Theatre in Colorado Springs.

Written by Lonny Price specifically for the actresses, Beautiful Girls also starred Marin Mazzie, Donna McKechnie, Zoe Caldwell, and Pattie Lupone. Mr. Sondheim loved the piece and has already set in motion plans to do a national tour. Off-Broadway credits include Don't Quit Your Night Job (Ha! Comedy Club), Slut (The Actor's Theatre), and The Great American Trailer Park Musical (NYMF). Jenn appeared on the Oxygen Network as the Co-host of "Can You Tell?" and recently shot an episode of ABC's "The Cashmere Mafia", (guest star). Film credits include Lay It Down for Good (lead) and Uncertainty (playing opposite Manoel Felciano, Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Lynn Collins). Before journeying to NYC in 2003, Jenn was a stand-up comedienne at the world famous Laugh Factory and at the Comedy Store in Los Angeles. 

Jenn proudly holds a Master of Fine Arts in Acting from the University of California, Irvine. JOEL FRAM has worked extensively in New York and London, conducting the Broadway productions of Wicked, Sweet Smell of Success, The Music Man, James Joyce's The Dead, Jumpers, and Cats; the West End company of Wicked; and Forbidden Broadway at the Menier Chocolate Factory.  He most recently music directed I Do! I Do! at the Westport Playhouse, conducted Candide for Seattle's city-wide Bernstein festival, and created musical arrangements for the ballet Pictures from an Exhibition at both the Young Vic and Sadler's Wells Theatre in London.  U.S. national tours and regional credits include Falsettos, the American premiere of Alan Ayckbourne's Dreams from a Summer House, and the world premiere of two Andrew Lippa musicals, The Little Princess and john & jen.  At New York's Symphony Space, he created the award-winning "New Voices" concert series and, for Stephen Sondheim's 75th birthday, co-produced and curated the 12-hour marathon "Wall to Wall Stephen Sondheim". 

Mr. Fram has music directed two cast albums (john & jen, A...My Name is Alice), played with the New York Pops and Boston Pops orchestras, restored several lost musicals for the acclaimed Encores! series, served on the musical theatre faculty of Yale and New York University, and is currently an Associate Music Supervisor for the Melbourne, Stuttgart and Tokyo productions of Wicked.  The White Plains Performing Arts Center, a 501(c) 3 not-for-profit organization, based in downtown White Plains, is dedicated to the presentation and production of a full spectrum of performing arts events for the City of White Plains and its surrounding communities.   

 Photo Credit: Walter McBride/WM Photos