A MAC and Bistro Award winning vocalist, who was also the Ringmaster for Ringling Brothers Circus for 12 years, Eric Michael Gillett truly believes in The Big Delivery. The word “vocalist” is really inadequate to evoke the acute empathy with which this rich trained baritone performs a song. Stephen Holden of The New York Times calls Eric Michael, “An idiosyncratic, fearlessly emotive baritone…whose lack of conventional defenses allow him to bare a vulnerability that most male singers prefer to conceal.”
Eric Michael has been seen on Broadway in the original casts of Kiss Me, Kate, Sweet Smell of Success, and The Frogs. He’s starred in the NY City Opera productions of Cinderella, The Pirates of Penzance and Candide. Regional credits include lead roles in Carnival, Sleuth, and Evita. Eric Michael has also brought his great gifts to the country’s most famous concert halls and cabarets - from Rose Hall at Lincoln Center, Carnegie Hall’s Weill Recital Hall, NJ PAC and Washington Center for the Performing Arts to Feinsteins at the Regency, the Metropolitan Room, Town Hall and Zankel Hall. National TV audiences have seen him on Law & Order, Ed, Law & Order: SVU; movie-goers have enjoyed him in Maid in Manhattan, My Brother and The Producers.
BiCoastal Productions is fortunate to offer three of Eric Michael’s most thrilling cabaret shows.
Cast of Thousands
From Stephen Holden’s rave review in The New York Times: “A cowboy, a housewife, a retired widower, 1940s movie stars & kids of all ages: these are among the host of characters who people “Cast of Thousands: Gillett Sings Carnelia,” a one-man musical at the Laurie Beechman Theatre. Its variety of humanity brings to mind the world of Lily Tomlin.” This extraordinary cabaret-theatre piece, based on the creative story songs of Broadway and cabaret composer Craig Carnelia, showcases Eric Michael in a powerful performance that offers intricate and moving song portraits of contemporary life -- a rich tapestry of song as Eric Michael enacts in song the lives of the thousands of people with whom we interact every day but may never come to know. The show features songs from the acclaimed scores of Is There Life After High School?, Working, and Three Postcards as well as contemporary classics ("Flight," "Life on Earth") and new material from Actor, Lawyer, Indian Chief. The show is, very simply, a stunning piece of work.
Widescreen: Songs From and About the Movies
In WIDESCREEN, Eric Michael celebrates the Academy Awards and the music of the movies. The show is
for anyone who has ever stumbled into a darkened movie house to escape the tumult of everyday life. WIDESCREEN uses the silver screen as a jumping off point, borrowing songs written specifically for motion pictures ("What Are You Doing the Rest of Your Life?," "Theme from Valley of the Dolls," "Moon River", “Time after Time”) and marrying them to music from theatre ("If the World Were Like the Movies", “At The Rialto”) and contemporary pop ("Widescreen," "Errol Flynn") to explore the world of the movies & the fantasies, illusions & lies that fill our lives.
Hooray for Love: Gillett Sings Arlen
This show marks Eric Michael’s first solo tribute to a composer from the Great American Songbook: Harold Arlen, the legendary songwriter most famous for the music from the movie classic, The Wizard of Oz. Songs such as Over the Rainbow, Get Happy, Come Rain or Come Shine, It's Only a Paper Moon, and That Old Black Magic are just some of the standards that live on today and have distinguished Harold Arlen as one of the Great American Composers of the 20th Century. In HOORAY FOR LOVE, Eric Michael mixes stories and anecdotes connected with Arlen’s life along with personal reminiscences of his own years growing up listening to this treasure trove of remarkable songs. Says Karen Akers, international cabaret star… “…his Arlen show offers fresh and absolutely gorgeous versions of time-honored classics. This is a match made in music heaven – not to be missed.”
Eric Michael Gillett
A MAC and Bistro Award winning vocalist, who was also the Ringmaster for Ringling Brothers Circus for 12 years, Eric Michael Gillett truly believes in The Big Delivery. The word “vocalist” is really inadequate to evoke the acute empathy with which this rich trained baritone performs a song. Stephen Holden of The New York Times calls Eric Michael, “An idiosyncratic, fearlessly emotive baritone…whose lack of conventional defenses allow him to bare a vulnerability that most male singers prefer to conceal.”