Thursday, May 01, 2003

WILMINGTON, NC – “The Songs of Hollywood,” a musical performance surveying the history of song in film, will be presented at 8 p.m., Sunday, May 18, in UNCW’s Kenan Auditorium. Tickets for this concert, which benefit WHQR public radio, are $15 and are on sale at the Kenan Auditorium Box Office.

Written and narrated by Philip Furia, professor of creative writing at UNCW, “The Songs of Hollywood” will include performances by Stephanie Nakasian, Brad Moranz, Jeffrey Phillips and Sara White along with the Hod O’Brien Quartet, featuring saxophonist Frank Bongiorno, chair of the UNCW Department of Music.

This concert is based upon a work-in-progress by Furia and Laurie Patterson, a lecturer in the UNCW Department of Computer Science. Furia authored biographies on composers Ira Gershwin and Irving Berling. His latest work Skylark: The Life and Times of Johnny Mercer is due out in August. Nakasian, producer and director of “The Songs of Hollywood,” is recognized by The New Biographical Encyclopedia of Jazz as one of the most important jazz singers in the world today. She has performed on television and radio including performances with the Jim Cullum Jazz Band for public radio’s Riverwalk series.

Moranz, a singer and dancer, played Groucho Marx in Tommy Tune’s Broadway production A Day in Hollywood, A Night in the Ukraine and Fred Astaire in the film Radioland Murders. Phillips has starred in Thalian Hall productions of Kiss Me, Kate and Smokey Joe’s Café, and White, a soprano, has performed with the Wilmington Symphony Orchestra. Hod O’Brien, part of New York’s jazz scene since the 1950s, has played in clubs like Birdland with jazz legends such as Chet Baker, Art Farmer and Stan Getz.

The Cape Fear Jazz Society, WHQR, Kenan Auditorium and the UNCW Department of Creative Writing are cosponsoring this benefit performance.

For more information, contact Furia at 910/962-3321. To contact the Kenan Auditorium box office, call 910/962-3500 or 800/732-3643.