ALL PERFORMANCES

The closing weekend of the “Plovdiv 2019 European Capital of Culture” year included a “Piano Matinee” program on January 11 organized by Romeo Smilkov, an inspiring concert pianist and teacher. Musicians from Bulgaria, China and the United States played pieces by Chopin, Liszt, Rachmaninoff, and Bulgarian composers Nikolay Stoykov, Ivan Spassov, and Pancho Vladigerov. I played Vladigerov’s elegant and passionate “Improvisation”. Our music filled the concert hall of the beautiful historic Bulgarian Revival style Balabanov House in Plovdiv’s Old Town.

The Koleda (Christmas) concert at Plovdiv Academy of Music, Dance and Fine Arts on December 18 featured the Academy Folk Orchestra, great soloists, and a special presentation of Milcho Vasilev’s “Concertino” for piano and orchestra. This was my debut performance with a Bulgarian orchestra, with more than two dozen excellent musicians and conductor Vladimir Vladimirov. Thank you all!

My first concert at Plovdiv Academy of Music, Dance and Fine Arts in Bulgaria on December 5. I played a beautiful composition by Dimitar Nenov titled “Meditation” and four of the very modern 24 bagatelles for piano by Ivan Spassov. Half a dozen pianists from Bulgaria, China and the United States presented an hour of powerful piano music from the 20^th and 21^st centuries.

My solo concert of original compositions, arrangements and improvisations of Bulgarian traditional folk melodies, and favorite classical and film music selections. “Music without Borders” is an increasingly popular concept in live performances around the world. It is one of the easiest ways to promote mutual understanding and cultural exchange and a creative foundation for peace.

This end of summer epic celebration with dozens of performers and hundreds of people celebrating life and community together is a unique event. It has been my pleasure to produce this free concert every year since 1994. From the energetic opening drumming to the final anthem, we all have a great time.

Laura Cappello is well known for her popular performances as Patsy Cline in productions since 2002. Cape Cod Times hails Cappello’s “sweet and sometimes husky alto, and spot-on period stylings” and the ease in which she “mixes torch song with poignancy and honky tonk”. I was the music director and concert pianist for the 2018 Provincetown Theater production Always… Patsy Cline starring Cappello. We created this concert to celebrate old and new songs.

It’s Carnival time in Provincetown! The 2019 “Enchanted Forest” theme is the inspiration for the mid-August Broadway concert of singing divas and divos delivering grand performances from musicals celebrating all things festive and fun and… enchanted.

A favorite of the Broadway ensemble singers and audience, this special theme features men singing songs originally performed by women, and women belting out tunes originally performed by men. The concert runs the gamut from wild humor to sweet poignancy and is a hugely popular event.

I played synthesizer keyboard with the excellent musicians of the Cape Symphony conducted by the phenomenal Jung-Ho Pak at a “live to film” performance of John Williams’ iconic score for “Jaws” on August 9 at the Beach Road Weekend festival on Martha’s Vineyard, where much of the classic film was shot. To see the movie outdoors on a huge screen while hearing a symphony orchestra pound through the unforgettable “Jaws” theme and the richly complex score is an awesome experience.

Legendary composer and lyricist Stephen Sondheim has written two dozen musicals during half a century of creativity. He has an Academy Award, 8 Tony Awards, 8 Grammy Awards, a Pulitzer Prize and more. Sondheim is the Great Music on Sundays @5 Broadway ensemble’s favorite musical theater composer/lyricist. The Sondheim concert is always spectacular and filled with well-known and obscure gems.

Accomplished musicians play beautiful, rhythmic melodies from their home countries and the rich cultural heritage of the Balkans. Petar Dimitrov is a graduate of the National Music School “Filip Kutev” in Kotel. Elena Mancheva is a graduate of the Academy of Music, Dance and Fine Arts in Plovdiv. Zoran Matich plays music in Serbia, the United States, England, Italy and China.

A powerful and joyous concert that focuses on families and friends and the homes we create in our hearts and in our world. The music includes Broadway, classical, film, popular and international songs that bring us all closer to home.

A piano duo for more than a decade, John Thomas & Paul Bisaccia perform themes from classic cinema by composers Elmer Bernstein, Philip Glass, Bernard Herrmann, Dario Marianelli, Ennio Morricone, Nino Rota, John Williams and others. The concert features a simultaneous live widescreen projection of the pianists’ hands on the Steinway grand piano.

“[H]igh praise must be reserved for music director John Thomas, who does more with three musicians than might seem possible. His interpretation of Sondheim’s sophisticated motifs is graceful and emotional and jarring when it needs to be. The choral moments in ‘Sweeney Todd’ will reach down to your bones.” – Provincetown Banner
“[T]he company finds all the emotion lurking in the corners of this dark tale, from gut-wrenching grief to the soaring joy of young love.” – Cape Cod Times
“John Thomas and the band are impeccable.” – ptownie.com

Johnny & The Washashores (John Thomas, Mark van Bork, Trevor Pearson, Joe Hoyt & special guest Ken Field) take the beach on July 7 for a summer party like no other. From New Orleans to Bulgaria and back again, the band gets everyone dancing, and occasionally limboing too.

Combining two perennial favorite Broadway concert themes – musicals with an American ambience and those with an international setting – this event takes Broadway to a global level in a cultural extravaganza that includes history, politics, peace, war, love, loss, community, migration, home… all the great themes of musical theater presented by wonderful singers.

Johnny & The Washashores makes a musical gumbo mix of New Orleans, the Caribbean and the Balkans, with healthy dollops of funk, rhythm and blues to serve up performances that get audiences rockin’ and rollin’. Jump in the line! Hey pocky way!

A dozen singers perform great songs from stage musicals that became movie musicals, as well as cinematic musicals that reverse migrated to Broadway. The Great Music on Sundays @5 Broadway concerts are wildly popular audience favorites. Curtain up!

The WorldFest concert is a highlight of the beginning of the summer season in Provincetown where workers from dozens of countries are the indispensible foundation of the tourism economy. The 2019 WorldFest concert includes rock, rap, ballads, folklore and classical music performed by people from Bulgaria, Jamaica, Lithuania, Portugal, Serbia and Thailand.

A musical voyage through the Balkans. Genuine folk music with a modern twist. Beautiful and rhythmic melodies from Bulgaria, Serbia and Macedonia.

Mozelle is one of Cape Cod’s most mesmerizing vocalists. Her interpretations of classic songs, especially the music made famous by Billie Holiday, are unique and powerful. It is a delight to make music with Mozelle.

Laura Cappello and John Thomas perform jaunty, fun and memorable melodies from yesterday and today, including songs made famous by Patsy Cline and other vocalists. This is the inaugural event in the “Tin Pan Artist Jam” winter performance series in Provincetown on Thursday evenings with music, art, food, drink and conviviality.

Jay Baer writes delightfully fresh and witty lyrics for famous Broadway songs to celebrate an unusual and unique community at the tip of Cape Cod. The concert, first presented in 2018 at the Great Music on Sundays @5 series in Provincetown, makes its Boston debut at Club Café.

“[Laura] Cappello has been beautifully portraying the groundbreaking country singer to rave reviews for 16 years in a half-dozen extended runs…. In this jukebox musical, you couldn’t stop your feet from tapping if you tried…. Terrifically backing the music and action, and becoming characters themselves at certain points, are the musicians in the Bodacious Bobcats band: music director John Thomas on piano….” – Cape Cod Times

Jay Baer, who wrote musical parodies in high school, college and medical school, has created a “Forbidden Provincetown” style musical revue for the new century. The tunes are familiar, the lyrics delightfully fresh, funny and full of Provincetown’s notable quirks while still being a musical love letter to a unique community. Several songs premiered at the sold-out February 2018 Boston Gay Men’s Chorus production There’s No Place Like Home: A Wicked Good Cabaret. This concert is the first full performance of Baer’s wonderfully witty observations about our town at land’s end.

This concert is sponsored by Karen Johnston.

Three accomplished musicians play beautiful, rhythmic melodies from their home countries of Bulgaria and Serbia and the rich cultural heritage of the Balkans. Petar is a graduate of the National Music School “Filip Kutev” in Kotel. Elena is a graduate of the Academy of Music, Dance, and Fine Arts in Plovdiv. Zoran plays music in the United States, England, Italy and China. John has traveled to Bulgaria. This concert celebrates the culture of a significant population that contributes to the international essence of Cape Cod.

For 25 years on the Friday after Labor Day the annual Celebration of Life free community concert has filled the UU Meeting House sanctuary with dozens of performers and hundreds of people who love Provincetown’s diverse and thriving community. The festivities continue with this concert of Broadway songs about life and living in the moment.

On every Friday after Labor Day since 1994, the historic and elegant sanctuary of Provincetown’s Unitarian Universalist Meeting House has been the setting for an event filled with music, celebration, life, memory and joy. The annual Celebration of Life is Provincetown’s longest running free music festival. Hundreds of performers have shared their talents throughout the years. Thousands have celebrated life together.

It is a great honor to have my performance debut in Bulgaria as part of the Pearl Festival in Primorsko on the Black Sea. The concert on September 2 features my piano interpretations and arrangements of traditional folk melodies mixed with American and other music. The concert also features some of my original music inspired by nature on Cape Cod.

The internationally produced author and director of musicals for the stage will host a concert featuring his lyrics from Side Show (for which he received two Tony Award nominations), Elegies for Angels, Punks and Raging Queens, Lucky Duck, Unexpected Joy (which recently premiered off-Broadway) and other musicals. Bill will share delightful insights into the creative process of writing musicals.

First presented in Provincetown in the summer of 2017 as part of the “Great Music on Sundays @5” concert series, “So Mighty Was the Dream” has its New York City premiere performance on April 7, 2018. This concert celebrates the immigrant experience and the countless journeys of millions from homelands of origin to the United States of America with the hopes that future generations would have better lives. We all have it in our hearts to celebrate each other and to honor our own immigrant ancestors who came here just as our new friends are arriving from distant shores today.

The 20th exciting season of 18 weekly Great Music on Sundays @5 concerts from June 10 to October 7 presents a grand melodic buffet: Broadway, Balkan, Baroque, Choral, Chamber, Piano, Organ… music of our world. I am the producer of the series, and I perform in the majority of the concerts as pianist, singer and/or composer.

WorldFest was created in 2011 to welcome, support, celebrate, integrate and enhance the visibility of Provincetown’s international seasonal and year-round student/worker population. The annual concert features musicians from around the world who share their music and culture. This event is created and hosted by dozens of volunteers and organizations. I am the producer and co-founder.

A delightful summer residency of performances with Brian Calhoon on marimba and vocals and special guests each week. Repertoire that includes Broadway, Gershwin, Bartok, New Orleans, Disney musicals, Bulgarian melodies, and Argentinean tango!

Bisaccia and Thomas have presented piano duo concerts for more than a decade. This performance is a unique event combining the visual and the aural with music by Gershwin, Glass, Ravel, Rachmaninoff, selections from Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition, and original compositions by John Thomas, all performed during the simultaneous display of stunning paintings by Joe Diggs, Robert Henry, Anne MacAdam and Paul Resika.

This concert is presented with the participation of Berta Walker Gallery as a season sponsor.

“It’s a treat to experience Thomas and Bisaccia in live performance, seated on a single bench, four hands flashing across a Steinway grand at breakneck speed.” – Susan Rand Brown, The Provincetown Banner

A celebration of the inspiration of visual art in great musicals including selections from Stephen Sondheim’s Sunday in the Park with George featuring Christopher Sidoli and Trish LaRose, all performed during the simultaneous display of evocative paintings by Salvatore Del Deo, Robert Henry, Sky Power and Peter Watts.

This concert is presented with the participation of Berta Walker Gallery as a season sponsor.

“The art of making art is putting it together.” – Stephen Sondheim, Sunday in the Park with George

I have been the keyboard artist (piano and synthesizer) for more than a decade of Outer Cape Chorale performances with founder Jon Arterton and current artistic director Allison Beavan. The Chorale of more than 100 singers has performed Bach, Bernstein, Brahms, Ellington, Rutter, Sondheim and more, and the Chamber Singers has sung my original anthem “I Hear America Singing!” (words by Walt Whitman).

Hundreds of musicians and poets and actors have entertained and delighted thousands of people for more than two decades. As a perennial “featured performer” in December, I have the opportunity to present an eclectic show embracing music from Broadway, the blues, New Orleans, Randy Newman, my own compositions, and songs in Spanish and Bulgarian.

Paul Bisaccia and I have presented piano duo concerts for more than a decade. An exciting part of our performances includes an 80-inch screen for the audience to watch the dazzling dance of 20 fingers on the 88 keys of the grand piano. In 2017 we presented the U.S. premiere of Mexican composer Ramsés Peña’s brilliant and rollicking Samba Loca.

In 2017, the 12th annual Provincetown Tennessee Williams Theater Festival, curated by David Kaplan, paired Williams with William Shakespeare. I was the music director for Ballads & Beer, two evenings of musical stories of love and heartbreak, murder and triumph, families and loneliness, disasters and hope, liberty and death. More than a dozen singers from Cape Cod and Festival performers delivered exciting versions of popular ballads, blues and boogie woogie classics stretching from our era to old English bawdy tavern nights.

It is a pleasure for me to learn and perform music from Bulgaria, Serbia, Macedonia, Bosnia and the Romani people. Elena Mancheva, Zoran Matich, Petar Dimitrov and Goran Daskalov are among my teachers of these uniquely rhythmic and melodic traditions. When we make music together, the addition of my piano playing (with its own chordal and percussive capabilities) adds another layer to the traditional instrumentation, creating a cultural blend that brings something new to the senses.

The Great Music on Sundays @5 “Broadway” concerts, each with a special theme, are a popular part of Provincetown’s summer music events. Many of Broadway’s greatest composers and lyricists have been immigrants or children of immigrants. Our “Immigrants on Broadway” concert celebrated their creativity and theater productions that honor the diverse millions from abroad who contribute to our collective culture and humanity.

The annual Celebration of Life free community concert is an annual tradition, held the Friday after Labor Day, celebrating community and caring. Each year the Unitarian Universalist Meeting House sanctuary is filled with hundreds of people, prayer ribbons rising into the air, driving percussion rhythms, magnificent grand piano performances, dozens of unique and wonderful performers, joy, happiness, love and life.

Cabaret diva Sharon McNight is a consummate performer who collects and presents an amazing array of songs. Her comic sensibility is perfection, her emotional range is phenomenal, her attention to detail is like no other, and she is just a heck of a lot of fun. Sharon is a Tony Award nominee and recipient of the Theatre World Award for “Outstanding Broadway Debut”. I have played piano for her Provincetown performances since 2013.

I have enjoyed making music with Jon Arterton and James Mack for many years. They combine their passion for social justice with their careful selection of great music from many genres to present songs of hope and love that, combined with their humor and delightful demeanors, always lifts up the audience to a higher place.

Brian Calhoon is making musical waves in Boston and elsewhere with performances of his Marimba Cabaret, bringing together virtuoso musicianship and an affection for storytelling, musical theater, pop songs and fiery classical compositions. Brian and I had a great time presenting Marimba Cabaret in Provincetown. We performed dance-inspired music by Hungary’s Bela Bartók and Argentina’s Astor Piazzolla, music from American composers George Gershwin, Leonard Bernstein, and William Finn, Professor Longhair’s “Big Chief”, and more.

Richard Dowling, one of the world’s best interpreters of Scott Joplin’s music, also enjoys the challenges and joys of performing delightful and complicated piano duo music. Our “Four Piano Hands Around the World!” concert featured many of our own arrangements of wild dances and rags by Gottschalk, Grieg and Lecuona and concluded with George Gershwin’s epic and rarely performed “Cuban Overture”.

“So Mighty Was the Dream” is a celebration of the immigrant experience and the countless journeys of millions from homelands of origin to the United States of America with the hopes that future generations would have better lives. Christopher Sidoli and I conceived this concert together as a creative result of our mutual passion for the beauty of diverse cultures and our concerns about present-day social currents regarding immigrants.

WorldFest was created in 2011 to welcome, support, celebrate, integrate and enhance the visibility of Provincetown’s international seasonal and year-round student/worker population. The annual concert features musicians from around the world who share their music and culture. This event is created and hosted by dozens of volunteers and organizations. I am the producer and co-founder.

Each season of 18 weekly Great Music on Sundays @5 concerts presents a grand melodic buffet: Broadway, Balkan, Baroque, Choral, Chamber, Piano, Organ… music of our world. The Broadway concerts have featured dozens of singing divas and divos and are an audience favorite. I am the producer of the series, and I perform in the majority of the concerts as pianist, singer and/or composer.

“Provincetown Road Trip!” featured music associated with Provincetown and Cape Cod, road tunes, songs about famous world cities, music composed by immigrants and their children who came to the United States of America, film themes evoking the epic movie tradition, New Orleans jazz, Bulgarian folk melodies… and great food prepared by wonderful people from St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church on a delightful Sunday afternoon.

This dark gothic chamber musical about the tormented life of Edgar Allan Poe, surrounded by the mothers, lovers, wives and muses who inspired his stories and poetry, was blessed with a talented cast and a visionary director. I reduced the instrumental score to piano and harp, which created an ethereal soundscape. “The music, played nearly continuously by pianist-music director John Thomas, is a treat for both music lovers and Poe fans.” – Provincetown Banner

I was the musical director for Provincetown Tennessee Williams Theater Festival’s two-night musical event Saloon Songs. The 2016 Festival featured Eugene O’Neill’s and William’s plays. We created an imaginary bar in a New York City downtown Irish neighborhood in 1929, a place O’Neill may have frequented, and local singers and Festival performers presented ballads, ditties, Tin Pan Alley tunes, and popular Broadway songs of the day.

I played piano for Courtney Act’s summer season musical homage to the pop music of her home country of Australia. I enjoyed Courtney’s master course on the music from down under (and New Zealand) and her whacky and innocently raunchy humor, amazing split-second improvisational abilities, comic timing and soaring voice.

I created Johnny & The Washashores as a music group featuring American rhythm and blues and music of the cultures that make Provincetown such a unique community: Balkan, Caribbean and Latin music with a dollop (or two) of New Orleans funk. In addition to the standard bar band instruments, we have included an accordion, a tuba, a gaida (Bulgarian bagpipe) and a boom-bah (a Pennsylvania Dutch percussion pogo stick… and lots of languages.

Richard Dowling and I made our piano duo debut in this concert celebrating American independence with a full program pianistic pyrotechnics and musical fireworks on the ivories… marches, jazz, parlor music, ragtime, Latin dances, boogie woogie, and the thunderously wild Gottschalk arrangement of Rossini’s “William Tell Overture”, which used every key on the 88-note Steinway grand piano multiple times.

Allison Mickelson is a beloved singer and storyteller whose energy and passion filled Tin Pan Alley every night we performed together in the 2016 summer season. Together we soared into improvisational in-the-moment musical heights filled with joy and surprise.

Christopher Sidoli and I have performed music together dozens of times in many settings: concert halls, churches, piano bars, parties, outdoor festivals. We have collected hundreds of songs, recorded an album and curated performances based on different themes. We were the Sunday night feature for three summer seasons at Tin Pan Alley. Making music with Christopher is a delight. His tenor voice ranges from tender ballad to soaring opera.

Paul Bisaccia and I have presented piano duo music on Cape Cod, Hartford CT and at this event in Shrewsbury MA, produced by Malcolm Halliday who is a fine pianist, organist and composer now based in San Miguel de Allende, Gto., MX. We had an enjoyable evening performing music from our recording of exciting and epic American music from the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries.

Mauro Ledesma and I have presented lively and energetic performances of piano duo music of the Americas (from north to south) since 2015 in his beautiful hometown of San Miguel de Allende, Gto., MX. I was honored to perform this concert with Mauro in the historic Teatro Ángela Peralta where compositions by composers from Canada, the United States, Mexico and Cuba filled the concert hall. I also performed some of my original piano music.