Broadway will soon come to life in a Broadway Medley Benefit concert to take place at the Herbert and Nicole Wertheim Performing Center on November 23, 2013 at 7:30p.m. Davis Gaines, the longest running Phantom in the history of The Phantom of the Opera, will co-star the show alongside Joy Abbott, the celebrated songstress and wife of the late, legendary George Abbott. The pair will perform Broadway favorites to raise money for the newly formed musical theatre program at FIU.
Davis Gaines is best known for his role in Andrew Lloyd Webber’s The Phantom of the Opera in which he appeared over 2,000 times during his run on Broadway. He has also appeared in three PBS Great Performances broadcasts (Emmy Award-winning Sweeney Todd with the San Francisco Symphony, Broadway Originals with the Boston Pops and Jerry Herman’s Broadway at the Bowl), as well as the televised specials of the 1994 Kennedy Center Honors and the opening ceremony of the 1998 Goodwill Games. Additionally, Gaines has sung for five U.S. Presidents, and with every major symphony orchestra in North America, including the New York Pops at Carnegie Hall and the Hollywood Bowl Orchestra at the Hollywood Bowl.
Joy Abbott is a patron of the American Theater Wing and The Society of Stage Directors and Choreographers, who regularly sponsors the annual “Mr. Abbott Award.” Her husband George Abbott was a Pulitzer-prize winning writer, theatre producer, director and film director whose career spanned seven decades, thus earning him the title “Mr. Broadway.” Some of his hits included The Pajama Game and Damn Yankees. Mrs. Abbott has since chaired the Theater Hall of Fame for eight years, and has written and directed several celebrity AIDS benefit events and other philanthropic theater galas. She directed for SUMMER SHORTS. MR. ABBOTT, A BROADWAY LEGACY, which she co-created for Florida Stage, and which was nominated for a Carbonell award.
All funds raised from the Broadway Medley Benefit will allow the FIU School of Music, in tandem with the FIU Department of Theatre, to better establish a musical theatrical program headed by the Vocal Studies Division. Students who graduate from the program will do so with working knowledge of staging, lighting, production, performance and other aspects of professional musical theatre.
The evening will begin with a cocktail reception and a musical performance by the FIU Opera Theater Workshop in the Rotunda of Wertheim Performing Arts Center.
Tickets for the benefit concert are $25 for the general public and $20 for the FIU faculty, staff and students.
To purchase tickets, click here.
