Life's a Dance
CHANGE PARTNERS: Life's a Dance
(trio or piano accompaniment)
"Craig Rubano has had all the makings of a top-flight cabaret entertainer for some time...it's always impressive when a performer slips the room on like a glove. Rubano made it a perfect fit...beaming with good cheer and hearty confidence. Change Partners is a worthy follow-up to his superb Finishing the Act set."
– David Finkle, Back Stage Life's a Dance in this romantic and witty celebration of one of life's deepest and scariest pleasures: contact with another person!
Craig Rubano sweeps the audience off its feet and across a dance floor of love songs by some of the most enduring songwriting partnerships of the last century:
Howard Dietz & Arthur Schwartz
Irving Berlin
Jimmy Van Heusen & Sammy Cahn
Harold Arlen & E.Y. "Yip" Harburg
Jerry Herman
Andrew Lloyd Webber & Don Black
Lew Brown & Ray Henderson
Noël Coward
Gerry Goffin & Carole King...
Change Partners capped the Mabel Mercer Foundation's 2003 New York City Cabaret Convention at The Town Hall and the Algonquin Hotel's Oak Room.
BOOKINGS: ArthurShafman.com EventManagementGroup.com
REFERENCE: MabelMercer.org
SHOW PROMOTION: Change Partners Promotion
Act One Finales from Broadway
FINISHING THE ACT: Act One Finales from Broadway
(Orchestra, 5-piece band, trio or piano accompaniment)
"An exceptionally well-conceived cabaret show. Fresh, personal approaches to some of the most daunting first-act closing numbers in Broadway theatrical history."
– Stephen Holden, New York Times "Sunday" from Sunday in the Park with George
"Sexually Free" from I Love My Wife
"Anything Goes" from Anything Goes
"There's Always One You Can't Forget" from Dance a Little Closer
"Climb Ev'ry Mountain" from The Sound of Music
"Welcome to the Theater" from Applause
BOOKINGS: ArthurShafman.com EventManagementGroup.com
REFERENCE: MabelMercer.org
Harold Arlen in the Thirties
STEPPING INTO LOVE: Arlen in the Thirties
(Piano or trio accompaniment)
From "Get Happy" to The Wizard of Oz, Craig Rubano pays tribute to Harold Arlen in anticipation of the composer's centennial in 2005
With the cooperation of Arlen's biographer, Rubano unearths material (some unpublished) that fleshes out the smoky, dizzy, druggy, rocky, dance-crazed, grand decade of extremes when Arlen and America hit their stride...
It's the story of Prohibition, the Cotton Club and the Dust Bowl; of FDR, Cab Calloway and Bert Lahr; of lyricists Ted Koehler, Jack Yellen and E. Y. "Yip" Harburg; of Anya Taranda, the love of Arlen's life; of the Hollywood Movie Musical and of Broadway.
"Get Happy"
"Let's Fall in Love"
"As Long as I Live"
"Ill Wind"
"Last Night When We Were Young"
"I Love a Parade"
"Down with Love"
"The Wizard of Oz"
