Friday, April 22nd 7:30pm

The music of Laura Nyro has been a touchstone for a generation of artists whose work fills our world, including director Michael Mayer, who fell hard for the singer-songwriter when he first heard her in college. The Tony-award winning director of stage, screen, and opera curates and hosts a National Sawdust+ evening that explores her influence. Mayer will be joined by a handful of his close collaborators: acclaimed composers Jeanine Tesori (Fun Home; Caroline, or Change; Thoroughly Modern Millie) and Stephen Trask (Hedwig and the Angry Inch; film scores such as The Savages and The Station Agent) will draw connections between their music and hers; novelist Michael Cunningham will share a special reading; and Tony-award winning singer Lena Hall (Hedwig and the Angry Inch) will perform a favorite Nyro song, joined by Trask on piano. Singer and poet Carl Hancock Rux, rising 18-year old vocalist Marla Toussaint, violinists Christian Hebel and Daniel Bernard Roumain, and guitarist Daniel Kajeckas join this unusual program devoted to an extraordinary muse.

The NS+ series is supported, in part, by a generous gift from The Kaplen Brothers Fund.

Mayer photo by Brigitte Lacombe.