Birdland is proud to present Broadway and concert star Karen Mason in SPF! (Songs, Patter and Fun) on Monday, July 14 at 7pm!

     SPF! is the music of adventure, summer, and travel, as only Karen Mason can deliver! Sassy, brassy, and tinged with confessional monologues, your summer will never be the same. Included in the show will be “Come Away With Me,” “When In Rome,” “Downtown”/”I Know A Place,” “59th Street Bridge Song,” and more.  Direction by Barry Kleinbort, music direction by Christopher Denny, with Tom Hubbard on bass.

Karen Mason played Mrs. Marsh on Ryan Murphy’s “Halston” on Netflix.

She was seen as Madame Giry in the North American Premier of Love Never Dies (Andrew Lloyd Webber’s sequel to The Phantom of the Opera). On Broadway, she starred as The Queen of Hearts in Wonderland, originated the role of Tanya in Mamma Mia! (2002 Drama Desk nomination as Best Actress), portrayed the iconic Norma Desmond in Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Sunset Boulevard on Broadway and in Los Angel, Velma von Tussel in the Broadway company of Hairspray), and “Monotony” singer and Mazeppa in Jerome Robbins’ Broadway. She is a 14-time MAC Award winner, was the recipient of the 2019 MAC Lifetime Achievement Award, and 3 Bistro Awards. Her nine albums include her most recent award winning album, Karen Mason And All That Jazz. 

Barry Kleinbort has earned the prestigious Edward Kleban Foundation Award for Lyric Writing, two Gilman-Gonzalez Musical Theatre Awards, the Second Stage Musicals Writers Award, the Jamie deRoy ASCAP award, two Back Stage Bistro awards and ten MAC awards for his directorial and songwriting efforts. Among his many projects, he wrote the book and lyrics for the musical Was (music by Joseph Thalken) which was the inaugural production of the American Musical Theater Project in Chicago and is now being readied for Off-Broadway. He provided scripts for eight PBS TV specials and was artistic consultant for Cathouse: The Musical for HBO. His newest musical 13 Things about Ed Carpolotti, starring Penny Fuller, had a successful Off Broadway run. 

     Christopher Denny has served as musical director, arranger and pianist for such theater, cabaret and opera luminaries as Julie Wilson, Brent Barrett, David Campbell, Lauren Bacall, Dorothy Loudon, Judy Kaye, Steven Brinberg and Rodney Gilfry, earning two Back Stage Bistro Awards and four Manhattan Association of Cabarets and Clubs (MAC) Awards for Outstanding Musical Direction. His duties have taken him to virtually all of the major rooms in New York and throughout the country, notably including Carnegie Hall, where he performed with Skitch Henderson and the New York Pops, and the Opera Liceu in Barcelona, as well as to Australia and London’s West End.