Denée Benton and Jordan Donica join The New York Pops at Carnegie Hall for one night on Friday, November 20, at 8 PM, singing their way through a program that runs from Sondheim and Lloyd Webber to Stevie Wonder.
The concert is billed as One Night Only: An Evening with Denée Benton and Jordan Donica and takes place in the Stern Auditorium / Perelman Stage, with the orchestra's music director, Steven Reineke, conducting. Benton and Donica are co-stars on HBO's The Gilded Age, where Benton plays Peggy Scott, but they first shared a stage in New York City Center's 2022 Encores! Into the Woods, as Cinderella and Rapunzel's Prince.
The program Carnegie Hall has published leans on the shows each of them is known for. Benton made her Broadway debut as Natasha in Natasha, Pierre & The Great Comet of 1812 in 2016, a performance that brought her a Tony nomination, and No One Else, the character's big solo, is on the list. Donica's Tony nomination came for Lancelot in Lincoln Center Theater's 2023 Camelot, and that show's If Ever I Would Leave You is there too.
The rest of the theater selections are Don't Rain on My Parade from Funny Girl, Flowers from Hadestown, Race You to the Top of the Morning from The Secret Garden, Written in the Stars from Aida, They Live in You from The Lion King, a suite from Into the Woods, Finishing the Hat from Sunday in the Park with George and The Song of Purple Summer from Spring Awakening, which returns this fall in a new Off-Broadway staging at Studio Seaview. The orchestra also plays a suite from Harry and Rupert Gregson-Williams' score for The Gilded Age, and the evening steps outside the theater for O Holy Night, Esperanza Spalding's Fall In, Stevie Wonder's As and God Only Knows.
Also listed is The Music of the Night from The Phantom of the Opera, and Donica has more claim to it than most. His Broadway debut was as Raoul in that production in 2016, a role he went back to in 2022, and he is now playing the Phantom himself in London, where the musical is marking 40 years at His Majesty's Theatre. His other Broadway credits include Freddy Eynsford-Hill in Lincoln Center Theater's My Fair Lady and Max von Mayerling in the closing company of Sunset Boulevard. Benton's include Eliza Hamilton in Hamilton and Cinderella in the 2022 Broadway run of Into the Woods.
The Pops are back at Carnegie Hall sooner than that, too: The New York Pops: 007: James Bond Forever, with Lena Hall, is on Friday, October 23.
Tickets for the November 20 concert start at $46 ($35 plus an $11 fee) from Carnegie Hall.
