New Paltz Music Theatre Singing Ensemble performs Tony Award-winning musicals

NEW PALTZ – The Music Theatre Singing Ensemble, conducted by Stephen Kitsakos, will present their Winter 2010 concert on Friday, December 10 at 7:00 p.m. in McKenna Theatre on the campus of the State University of New York at New Paltz. Sponsored by the college’s Department of Theatre Arts the concert is free and open to all.

With 75-voices strong, the sizable ensemble shines with powerful vocal performances from contemporary blockbuster musicals that were winners of the Tony Award for Best Musical. The exciting program features music from such shows as Les Miserables, The Phantom of the Opera, Rent, A Chorus Line, Titanic, Hairspray, Sweeney Todd, Billy Elliot and many more.

The Music Theatre Singing Ensemble is comprised of New Paltz community members, faculty, staff and students who meet weekly to learn and sing through the repertoire of songs from the musical theatre including such composers and lyricists as Leonard Bernstein, Stephen Sondheim, George & Ira Gershwin, Kander & Ebb, Rodgers & Hammerstein, Andrew Lloyd Webber, Maury Yeston and many others. The selections come directly from the original Broadway conductor scores or arrangements from four to eight-part harmony created by faculty and/or theatre students.

Stephen Kitsakos has been involved in a variety of roles in the professional and academic theatre for the past 30 years. A permanent member of the BMI Musical Theatre Workshop and a graduate of New York University, he received training as a theatre composer and lyricist. A writer member of ASCAP, he has received commissions from the BMI Foundation, Catskill Watershed Corp, Episcopal Diocese of NY, Fourth Wall Musical Theatre and was the recently commissioned librettist for the UConn/2007 Sackler Prize in Opera winner, Sheila Silver. He has worked as a music director, conductor and vocal coach for a string of musicals from Annie Get Your Gun to Zorba. At the State University of New York at New Paltz he conducts the large show choir, “Music Theatre Singing Ensemble”. He also works closely with theatre arts alumni particularly with The Clockwork Theatre Company–resident at Theatre Row in NYC – where he is serving his fifth year as their Board President.

For additional information about arts events at the State University of New York at New Paltz visit www.newpaltz.edu/fpa or call (845) 257-3860.