BROADWAY CHEZ NOUS CONCERT SERIES:
Celebrating Broadway’s Leading Ladies
Broadway and Jazzy vocal music Follies, Chicago, Gypsy, A Light in the Piazza, Dear Evan Hansen, Waitress, Bridges of Madison County and more…
AMT Live presents an American cabaret-style concert dedicated to the Leading Ladies of Broadway, featuring West End performers Ria Jones (Sunset Boulevard, Les Misérables) and Ed Zanders (Old Friends, Passion), and Paris-based artist Miranda Crispin (The Last Five Years, Next Thing You Know).
Saturday, April 6, 2024 (20h) at Son de la Terre, Port Montebello 75005 Paris
About the artists…
Ria Jones was born in Swansea, South Wales. At 19 she became the youngest actress ever to play the role of Eva Peron in the musical Evita, followed shortly by her West End debut in the musical Chess, in which she played the roles of both Svetlana and Florence. She then went on to play Grizabella for two years in CATS! (New London Theatre). Her next role was as Fantine in Les Misérables (Palace Theatre, Manchester, National Tour and West End). Then came the role of the narrator in Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat (Hammersmith Apollo and National Tour). She has countless musical credits, including Petra in Stephen Sondheim’s A Little Night Music (Leicester Haymarket Theatre), Norma Desmond in Sunset Boulevard at The London Coliseum and the European and National Tour, Miss Adelaide in Guys & Dolls (Marigny theatre, Paris) Mama Rose in Gypsy at The Royal Exchange Theatre, Manchester and most recently as Mrs Swabb in Alan Bennetts Habeas Corpus at The Menier Chocolate Factory, London.
A celebrated soloist, Ria has performed in prestigious venues worldwide, from France Belgium and Muscat to South Africa, Singapore and Shanghai. She makes regular appearances as a guest soloist in Denmark, singing with all the major orchestras. In 2009, she was a guest soloist for the Danish Royal family (Concert House, Tivoli Gardens, Copenhagen); Soloist with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra for the last twelve years (Royal Albert Hall); Sung, by personal request, for The Duke Of Edinburgh’s Award Scheme (Buckingham Palace); Soloist with The Birmingham Symphony Orchestra and the BBC Welsh Symphony Orchestra; Soloist for the opening of the Welsh assembly Cardiff bay. Guest Soloist in Children Will Listen, celebrating the work of Stephen Sondheim (Theatre Royal, Drury Lane); A Night Under The Stars (with Bryn Tyrfel at his annual festival in North Wales); Mary Magdalene in Jesus Christ Superstar (Barbican Theatre); Eva Peron in Evita – In Concert (Highams Park, Chelmsford); Fantine in Les Misérables – In Concert (Cardiff Castle); the world premiere of The Three Musketeers and Anita in West Side Story (Denmark); ABBAPHONIC – The Concert with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra (Royal Albert Hall and Russia Tour); From Hackney To Hollywood, celebrating the work of Don Black and West End Women – In Concert (UK Tour). Ria also is a regular performer with her one woman cabaret show at The Crazy Coqs, Piccadilly, London.
Ria returns to perform for a second season with AMT Live, after guest hosting the iconic open mic soirée, where she met fellow guest artist, pianist Ed Zanders.
Ed Zanders is a London based composer and musical director who studied classical composition at the Guildhall School of Music & Drama, under Malcolm Singer.
He is currently a deputy keyboard player on Les Misérables (Sondheim) and Operation Mincemeat (Fortune). He played rehearsal piano, and deputised both keyboard chairs, for Stephen Sondheim’s Old Friends (Gielgud) and played keys 1 on the 2022 Taiwan tour of Cats. He orchestrated the 2022 Hope Mill Theatre’s revival of Passion by Stephen Sondheim, starring Ruthie Henshall. The Times said “the scaled-down arrangements for just five musicians are a fine match for such an intimate venue”. In 2023 he re-orchestrated and music directed the first French language production of Pippin in Switzerland.
Ed also improvises, most often with Mischief Theatre in their Olivier award nominated show Mischief Movie Night. He has played with them on tour around the UK and in the West End as well as for their online run Mischief Movie Night In. He wrote the music for Mischief’s Charlie Russell Aims to Please for its sold out run at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival 2022, and his most recent musical, Bluff, written with Matt Cavendish, was recorded with a full cast and orchestra in spring 2021.
He has also worked at various drama schools, including ArtsEd, Italia Conti and most regularly at the Guildford School of Acting, where he wrote music for productions of Treasure Island and Babe.
Passionate about the intersection of music making, community building, cultural exchange and diplomacy, this American-born teaching artist has worked in France, throughout Europe, and in the USA, including at the American Conservatory of Paris, University of Arizona, the Cambridge School of Performing Arts, Conservatoire de Paris, ACM Lausanne, and the Dutch Academy of Performance Arts. She teaches voice in private studios in Paris and Lausanne, and is a level 2 certified teacher for The Singing Athlete, methods based in functional applied neuroscience.
In France, she played leading roles in the French premiers of musicals The Last Five Years, Songs for a New World, Next Thing You Know/Un jour où l’autre, and Crossroads/La croisée des chemins, and has sung in numerous Broadway-style concerts and as a backup singer for rock and country artists, including Devon Graves, Jerrry Bellamy, and Justin Terry.
Miranda was the vocal coach for the Paris production of It’s Only Life, collaborating with Broadway composer John Bucchino for his French debut. She also served as vocal director for Sleepin’ Bee (Théâtre Michel, directed by Franck Harscoüet), Edges by Tony Award Winning artists Pasek & Paul, Into The Woods (Collectif Sondheim), the Disneyland Paris productions Mickey & The Magician and Mickey’s Big Band Christmas, and for the French language debut of Pippin (Théâtre Barnabé, CH). She is currently the music and vocal director for the worldwide launch of the French language version of the Broadway musical Waitress.