Ariana Grande and Broadway star Shoshana Bean (Hairspray) will join composer Jason Robert Brown (The Last Five Years, 13) for a special virtual concert to benefit the staff and musicians from famed Manhattan venue SubCulture. The intimate theater is currently shut down due to the coronavirus pandemic.
The show will take place on Monday April 27th at 8 p.m. EST, livestreaming via both SubCulture’s Facebook page and Brown’s Vimeo channel. A page for donations to benefit the venue’s staff is already live. “What I have missed and mourned the most over these last extraordinary weeks has been my ability to connect with music — to play and sing with other musicians, and to feel the audience responding,” Brown said in a statement.
Brown’s virtual show will take the place of his monthly Artist-in-Residency appearance at SubCulture. “Every month for the past five years, I’ve been able to do just that at SubCulture, working with the best musicians and singers I know to make music together for a smart, involved and joyful audience in a place that’s come to feel like a second home,” he said.
Grande previously worked with Brown on 13, her Broadway debut. “I had to figure out some way to let these notes and words in my head come out and be shared with my collaborators and my audience, and so, here we are,” Brown said. “All of us in our homes, making music however and whenever we can, with an amazing team to help pull it all together, and two of the greatest singers on the planet Earth: the patron saint of the SubCulture Residency, Shoshana Bean, and Grammy-winner, icon and total theater nerd Ariana Grande. We’ve put together a show about what we’ve lost, what we’ve discovered and what we’re grateful for, and I can’t wait to share it with you.”