University of Florida Performing Arts

Sponsored by WGFL CBS4

There will be a pre-performance discussion at 6:45 p.m.

To read the program, click here.

Marvin Hamlisch’s Web Site

Joel Grey Performing Wilkommen from Cabaret on You Tube

Legendary artists and former child performers Marvin Hamlisch and Joel Grey team up for this one-of-a-kind concert experience. 

Born in New York to a musical family, Marvin Hamlisch was something of a child prodigy.  He began to mimic songs he heard on the piano at age five, and just before his seventh birthday, he became the youngest person ever to be admitted to the Juilliard School.  It looked liked he was destined to become a concert pianist, but his anxiety about performing led him away from that career and towards a career as a composer.

While Hamlisch had some early successes in the 1960s composing pop songs and music for several Woody Allen movies, his best-known work is his adaptation of Scott Joplin’s The Entertainer for the 1973 movie The Sting, which starred Robert Redford and Paul Newman.  That same year, Hamlisch was the first person to win three Academy Awards® in a single evening when he won for his work on The Sting, and for his original compositions for another Redford film, The Way We Were.  He has also composed music for the films The Spy Who Loved Me; Same Time, Next Year; Chapter Two, Starting Over and Ordinary People.

On Broadway, Hamlisch has composed music for The Goodbye Girl, They’re Playing our Song and the Pulitzer Prize-winning A Chorus Line.  He composed music for the television series Brooklyn Bridge and for a Barbra Streisand special, which garnered him an Emmy®.  In the awards arena, Hamlisch is one of handful of people who have won all four major U.S. performing awards, including a Tony Award®, a Grammy®, an Emmy® and an Academy Award®.

Legendary entertainer Joel Grey was born Joel Katz in Cleveland, Ohio.  He is the son of nightclub entertainer and comedian Mickey Katz, a one-time member of the Spike Jones Orchestra.  While he made his stage debut at the age on nine in a Cleveland Playhouse production of On Borrowed Time, he career wasn’t officially launched until the 1950s. After Eddie Cantor discovered him in one of his father’s revues, he appeared on The Colgate Comedy Hour, and in various nightclubs from Las Vegas to London.   He spent much of the 1950s performing in television stage plays and replacing other, better known actors on Broadway in shows such as Come Blow Your Horn, Stop the World I Want to Get Off and Half a Sixpense. 

At the age of 34, Grey’s career was at a crossroads.  “Things were not going as I’d hoped and I was seriously thinking about quitting the business,” he says.  Fortunately, theatrical producer Hal Prince called and offered him the role of a lifetime - the Master of Ceremonies in Cabaret.  It was the first time Grey did not have to audition for a role.  Grey appeared in both the stage and film versions of Cabaret.  He won a Tony Award® for his stage role and an Academy Award® for his film role, becoming one of a select few who have won both awards for the same role.  He later reprised the role for the 1987 Broadway revival.

Following Cabaret, Grey appeared in the Broadway production of George M! as the inimitable George M. Cohen, for which he received a Tony Award® nomination.  He was nominated again in 1975 for his role in Goodtime Charley and again in 1979 for The Grand Tour.  Other Broadway roles include Amos Hart in the 1996 revival of Chicago, and, most recently, the role of The Wizard in Wicked.

In addition to his work onstage, Grey has had recurring roles on television in the series Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Oz and Alias.  He has made guest appearances on The Muppet Show; It’s Like, You Know, which featured his daughter, Dirty Dancing star Jennifer Grey; and the ABC series Brothers & Sisters.  His film work includes roles in Remo Williams: The Adventure Begins and Dancer in the Dark which featured singer Björk.