Two concerts in Greater Boston - Friday September 26 in Lexington and Sunday September 28 in Cambridge

BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS, UNITED STATES, September 21, 2014 /EINPresswire.com/ -- Benjamin Sears & Bradford Conner celebrate twenty-five years as a song duo with two special performances on September 26 (7:30pm) at Follen Church in Lexington and September 28 (3pm) at Club Cafe's Napoleon Room in Boston. For September 26 tickets visit amclass.org or call 617-254-1125. Tickets are $25 for both shows.

Club Café congratulates Ben & Brad on their anniversary! Before the concert they will extend a 20% discount on their popular Brunch Buffet from 11-3 on Sunday. Brunch Reservations can be made in advance for parties of 6 or more and for cabaret tickets on September 28 visit clubcafe.com.

Sears & Conner gave their first performance together on April 19, 1989 on WGBH-FM’s show Chamber Works, followed two days later by a live performance at Follen Community Church in Lexington. From their first concert Ben & Brad established themselves as leading interpreters of The Great American Songbook, with a specialty in little-known songs by leading songwriters, such as George & Ira Gershwin, Cole Porter, Richard Rodgers & Lorenz Hart, and particularly Irving Berlin.

For these performances Ben & Brad will draw from their extensive repertoire, including songs from their first show, along with additions from across the years. Joining the Gershwins, Berlin, Porter, and Rodgers & Hart, Ben & Brad will sing songs by women songwriters (Kay Swift, Dana Suesse), Arthur Schwartz & Howard Dietz, Jerome Kern, plus songs honoring performers they have been associated with over the years, including Fred Astaire and Bing Crosby. Favorite songs from their twenty-five years together include Alexander’s Ragtime Band (Berlin), Losing My Mind (Stephen Sondheim), Love is Here to Stay (George & Ira Gershwin), Isn’t It Romantic? (Rodgers & Hart, in the original film version from Love Me Tonight), I Love Louisa (Dietz & Schwartz), Fine and Dandy (Swift), Moonlight Becomes You (Johnny Burke and James Van Heusen), along with many of the rarities that are a Ben & Brad hallmark.

Ben & Brad have performed throughout the US and in Europe and with members of American Classics they sang the National Anthem at the second game of Fenway Park’s one hundredth birthday season.

Sears and Conner are noted recording artists with a significant discography which features many previously unrecorded songs by Irving Berlin (over fifty, to date), the Gershwins, and E.Y. Harburg. Their most recent release continues their Berlin series, Reaching for the Moon – Irving Berlin Songs from 1925 to 1935 with award-winning Boston singer/actress Leigh Barrett. They produced and performed on a live CD with American Classics, also released in 2013, It’s Magic – A One Hundredth Birthday Salute to Sammy Cahn.

For American Classics, Ben and Brad have reconstructed a number of early Broadway shows for first revivals, including Irving Berlin shows Watch Your Step, Stop! Look! Listen!, and Yip! Yip! Yaphank!, and the Dietz/Schwartz/Kaufman revue The Band Wagon.

Ben is editor of The Irving Berlin Reader, published by Oxford University Press, has contributed to American National Biography (online) and the new Grove Dictionary of American Music, both for Oxford, and is currently working on a chapter for a book celebrating the seventy-fifth anniversary of the MGM film The Wizard of Oz. Brad is preparing the second edition of Alec Wilder’s classic American Popular Song, also from Oxford.

Sears and Conner are Producing Directors of American Classics and are founding members of the Boston Association of Cabaret Artists (BACA), an organization promoting awareness and performance of cabaret in the Boston area. In 1999 they joined forces with voice and piano duo Valerie Anastasio & Tim Harbold to create and tour a Noël Coward centenary program, Noël and Cole - Together With Music, followed by a second show, Fred & Ethel - Great Songs of Astaire and Merman, which was nominated for a 2001 IRNE award.

For more information about Ben & Brad, see their website www.benandbrad.com and for American Classics visit amclass.org.

Joanne Barrett
JBPR
(617) 834-6021
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