Music at the Mansion

NiCori Studios and Productions in association with Oakeside Bloomfield Cultural Center announces a new installment of the monthly concert series, "Music at the Mansion", on Sunday, January 26, at 3pm.  Performers include Janice Hall, Sean Harkness and Stearns Matthews.  The featured performer in the "Young Musician Moment" will be Mollyjane Boyle.

Janice Hall’s opera career has taken her around the world, and although she continues to perform on opera stages, she is now applying her musical talents to the art of cabaret. She was one of five finalists in the 2010 Metrostar Talent Challenge at the Metropolitan Room in New York, and received a 2011 Bistro Award and the 2012 MAC award for her first solo show, Grand Illusions: The Music of Marlene Dietrich.

Janice’s operatic repertoire has included the title roles of Lucia di Lammermoor, Madama Butterfly, and Salome, as well as multiple roles in the operatic version of Tony Kushner’s play Angels in America. She was Violetta in the New York City Opera’s Emmy-winning PBS telecast of La Traviata. In addition to singing, Janice has also performed with several New York City theater companies, and made her off-Broadway debut in 2012 in My Occasion of Sin at Urban Stages Theater.

Each year, Guitarist Sean Harkness performs in concert halls around the country with other Windham Hill artists such as Liz Story, Will Ackerman, Barbara Higbie, Jim Brickman, Tuck & Patti, David Arkenstone, and Samite.

Mr. Harkness is a first-call guitarist who compliments an exhaustive client list of artists, instrumentalists, Broadway productions, and corporations nationally and internationally.  He is the go-to guitarist for duets and ensemble work with singers from Broadway and television such as Alison Fraser,  Susan Egan and Carole Demas.  Sean can be seen at Iridium Jazz Club on Broadway in Times Square with Terese Genecco and her Little Big Band on the last Tuesday of every month.  Sean has appeared as an artist and sideman extensively in New York’s finest jazz venues including the Blue Note, Smoke, Small’s, the Jazz Standard, Birdland, Iridium, Feinstein’s, Edison Ballroom, Mile’s Café, the Metropolitan Room, St. Nick’s, and Top Of The Rock at Rockefeller Center.  Mr. Harkness also appears regularly in any of New York’s folk and rock singer/songwriter clubs such as the Cutting Room, Joe’s Pub, Bitter End, Mercury Lounge, Rockwood Music Hall, the Living Room, Bowery Poetry Club, P&G, and Shrine.

Stearns Matthews is a three-time MAC Award Nominee for his solo cabaret shows, The Importance of Being STEARNSest (2013, Best Musical Comedy Performer), this will be… (2011, Best Male Vocalist), and I Was Here (2009, Best Male Debut). Stearns holds a B.M. in Music Theater from Westminster Choir College in Princeton, New Jersey under the tutelage of Dr. Christopher Arneson and Nova Thomas. He has performed regionally in musicals with College Light Opera Company, Philadelphia Music Theatre Works, Women’s Theatre Company, and the Philadelphia Fringe Festival. Favorite appearances include Albert Peterson in Bye, Bye, Birdie!, Billy Crocker in Anything Goes, and Man 1 in The World Goes ‘Round.

In addition to his MAC-nominated solo shows, in the summer of 2008, Stearns placed as first runner-up in the Metropolitan Room’s first annual MetroStar Talent Challenge, despite being the youngest contestant to enter. In 2010, Stearns was one of twelve candidates selected to audition for the first annual Noel Coward Cabaret Competition, presented by the Mabel Mercer Foundation and appeared in 2010 and 2013 in the Mabel Mercer Foundation’s Annual Cabaret Convention, held at Jazz at Lincoln Center’s Rose Hall. Stearns also serves on the Board of Directors of the Manhattan Association of Cabarets and Clubs (MAC).

"Music at the Mansion" is a 2013 MAC (Manhattan Association of Cabarets and Clubs) award nominated series showcasing talented performers from NYC and NJ.  The series is hosted by NYC Cabaret singer and Bloomfield resident Corinna Sowers-Adler and will feature Deborah Martin on piano. This program is made possible in part by funds from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts/Department of State, a Partner Agency of the National Endowment for the Arts and administered by the Essex County Division of Cultural and Historic Affairs.  Series hostess, Corinna Sowers-Adler, has been nominated as "Best Host of a Variety Show" and "Best Female Vocalist" for the 2012 Broadway World Cabaret Awards.  Sowers-Adler recently made her Lincoln Center debut in the 24th Annual Mabel Mercer Cabaret Convention.  Corinna also performs her solo cabaret shows Stories, By Request, Songs From the Heart and Let Me Sing and I'm Happy at venues and private parties in New York City and across New Jersey. 

Tickets for "Music at the Mansion" are $10 per person and are available at the door.  Seating begins at 2:30pm.  Light refreshments will be served.  Oakeside Bloomfield Cultural Center is located at 240 Belleville Avenue, Bloomfield, NJ.  For more information, please contact info (at) corinnasings.com or call Oakeside at 973-429-0960.  Making beautiful music in a beautiful place with beautiful people...

View the Music at the Mansion commercial by clicking HERE