A Tribute to the Cabaret Process: Honoring Lina Koutrakos
What makes Cabaret different from any other genre of music? Find out Tuesday, December 8 at 9:00 pm, as part of Urban Stages Winter Rhythms. Hear several of the singers who work with Lina Koutrakos share their process and stories about how Lina helped them “find” a song. We honor the teacher by honoring the process! Musical Director: Gregory Toroian. Bass: Skip Ward. Drums: David Silliman. Featuring: Margaret Curry, Mary Sue Daniels, Terri Dannenberg, Sean Harkness, Wendy Luck, Susan Mack, Jamie Salzano, Carol Savvas, Marcus Simeone, Deborah Stone, Ann Talman, Elvira Totora and Lina will also sing with a guest appearance by Clearly Now. A Matsuki Production.
Lina Koutrakos is an award-winning singer/songwriter/teacher/director based in New York City. As a singer, she has repeatedly received rave reviews from The New York Times to Billboard Magazine in both rock and roll and cabaret and has been awarded Cabaret’s most prestigious awards for “Best Female Vocalist” and “Entertainer of the Year,” multiple times. For three decades Koutrakos has been a New York City musical fixture – as both soloist and as a director and performance coach. Her directorial nods include being a 4-time winner for “Best Director” from the MAC Association as well as a lifetime Backstage Bistro Award-Winner for “Best Director.”. Koutrakos was on staff as a Master Teacher for years at both the Eugene O’Neill Cabaret Symposium and The Yale Cabaret Conference. She was the first Master Teacher with The St. Louis Cabaret Conference and co-founded NYC’s Summer in the City yearly workshop on weekends. She has since gone on to start her own performance workshop “Performance Connection,” which umbrellas many ongoing and specialty workshops and seminars both online and in person. The Advance Performance Workshop in NYC has produced many award-winning performers and shows over the last 2 decades. Her singing and being the founder of the Midwest Cabaret Conference in Chicago for 10 years won her the “Gold Coast” Award with the Chicago Cabaret Professionals in 2019. She spearheads an annual Advanced Performance Workshop on the island of Mykonos. Due to her performance workshops with full bands to one-on-one clients across the U.S. to her own award-winning original material and one woman shows, Koutrakos has been called a “Walking Master Class” by Billboard Magazine. Website: linasings.com
The award-winning Urban Stages Winter Rhythms music festival returns with “A Tribute To,” shows saluting beloved artists, genres, and more, December 2 -19. All proceeds support Urban Stages’ Outreach Program, bringing more than 1,000 free, multilingual performances, workshops, and programs to libraries across all five boroughs of New York City. For a complete schedule and tickets: https://www.urbanstages.org/