Rochelle Seldin
John Thomas

Well-known New York Broadway performer and cabaret artist Rochelle Seldin has teamed up with composer-pianist John Thomas to present "One Enchanted Evening: Songs of Friends Old & New" on Saturday, August 5 at 8 pm at the Schoolhouse Center, 494 Commercial Street, Provincetown.

Tickets are $15.00 and reservations can be made at (508) 487.4800.

Seldin and Thomas will perform music from the cream of the crop of the new cabaret composers, including John Bucchino and David Friedman. Seldin also will present one of her signature songs, Wayne Abravanel's brilliant parody "Dear Mr. Sondheim".

A significant portion of their concert will showcase the creative work of composer Richard Rodgers and lyricist Oscar Hammerstein II. Seldin and Thomas have created new approaches to this music by focusing on themes in place of plot, and the result is illuminating, entertaining, and provocative.

Rochelle Seldin grew up singing and began actively auditioning in New York City at the age of eighteen. She was seen on Broadway in "They're Playing Our Song" with Lucie Arnaz and regionally with Ms. Arnaz in "Annie Get Your Gun"; with Lauren Bacall in "Wonderful Town"; and with Allan Jones and Jack Gilford in "The Student Prince".

Seldin began performing at the old Duplex in Greenwich Village in 1979 where she met her longtime performance partner, Karen Miller. Together they created the most successful sing-a-long event in New York, first at the Duplex and subsequently at Eighty-Eights, a premier cabaret piano bar that they created with Erv Raible in 1988.

Seldin received the 1987 Backstage Bistro award for outstanding piano bar entertainer and a 1988 Bistro for outstanding female vocalist. She recently received her third Bistro award to honor her nurturing of new talent during the Eighty-Eights years. Seldin currently lives in New York City and Provincetown, where she and her partner own and operate the popular Snack Attack. Seldin also performs in the Great Music on Sundays at Five performance series at the Universalist Meeting House in Provincetown.

John Thomas is a well-known Cape Cod composer, pianist, writer, actor, producer of performance events, and cultural activist. His works include "Vigil Cantata" (performed at the 1994-98 annual International AIDS Candlelight Memorial and Mobilization event); "Spontaneous Me: A Night with Walt Whitman"; and an extended opus under the title "The Provincelands", some of which he composed at the Margo-Gelb dune shack as part of the Outer Cape Artists in Residency Consortium.

Thomas's new musical, "Walt & Oscar's Wilde Weekend", was produced by the second annual Provincetown Poetry Festival last April. Thomas's collaborative work with Abe Rybeck in the klezmer musical "Pure PolyESTHER: a biblical burlesque" won the recognition of the Boston Globe as one of the top ten best small theater events of 1999. In Boston, Thomas has performed at Club Cabaret, Napoleon Club, Gloucester Stage Company, Symphony Hall, The Theater Offensive's Out on the Edge Theater Festival, and the Cambridge River Festival.

The Schoolhouse Center is open daily from 11-10 and always by appointment. For more information or an interview with the artists please call (508) 487.4800 X 105