Craig Rubano is not your typical Broadway and cabaret star. Before taking the stage on Broadway in “Les Misérables” in 1987, he was an Ivy League scholar at Yale and Columbia, and after 9/11 he left the theater for Princeton Theological Seminary, where he earned multiple degrees. Today, he is a solo minister at the Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Monmouth County, N.J.
He is also back in the limelight with “Take the Moment,” the next offering in LTV Studios’ Hamptons Summer Songbook by the Sea series, which will happen on Saturday evening at 7:30.
The program, directed by Jeff Harnar with music direction by Beth Ertz, is a collection of songs focused on the choices we make during moments that matter. It includes music by Cole Porter, Richard Rodgers, Stephen Sondheim, Alan and Marilyn Bergman, Jerry Herman, and others.
The music is interspersed with Mr. Rubano’s account of the thresholds of change in his life, drawing upon his career as an actor, cabaret artist, pastoral theologian, scholar, and minister.
In addition to his many theater credits, Mr. Rubano joined the Philip Glass Ensemble in Greece for “Monsters of Grace,” Mr. Glass’s 3-D opera collaboration with Robert Wilson; he soloed at the Brooklyn Academy of Music’s tribute to Sondheim, and he joined Bernadette Peters for her Carnegie Hall debut.
Of his cabaret show “Finishing the Act: Act I Finales From Broadway,” Stephen Holden of The New York Times wrote: “an exceptionally well-conceived cabaret show” in which “he finds fresh, personal approaches to some of the most daunting first-act closing numbers in Broadway musical history.”
Tickets are $60, $65 at the door, $100 for cafe table seating with a drink.
The McIver Jazz Piano Series, presented in partnership with Hamptons JazzFest, will return to LTV with two performances, one by Bill McConnell on Monday at 6 p.m., and one by the Mike Rodriguez Quintet next Thursday at 7:30.
A jazz pianist, composer, and bandleader, Mr. O’Connell is known for fusing modern jazz with Afro-Caribbean rhythms. He emerged in the 1970s as a pianist and arranger for Mongo Santamaria, the Latin jazz icon, and has since collaborated with Dave Valentin, Gato Barbieri, and Jerry Gonzalez. As a composer, his works have been celebrated for their rhythmic vitality and harmonic sophistication.
Tickets are $15 in advance, $20 at the door, $35 for table seating and a drink.
Mr. Rodriguez is a Grammy-nominated trumpeter and flugelhornist who has collaborated with Quincy Jones, Wynton Marsalis, Chick Corea, Eddie Palmieri, and Gonzalo Rubalcaba.
He has released his own albums as a bandleader, including “Reverence” and “Pathways.” Of the former, Tony Hall of Jazzwise wrote, “It’s excellent. Rodriguez loves to swing but is also extremely conscious of the importance of melody, which plays a major role in every one of the seven titles.”
Tickets are $30 in advance, $35 at the door, $60 for table seating with a drink.
