You, yes, you the audience, will be in the driver’s seat and stir the show. on request performances by Jon Cober and Frank Shiner.
Jon Cobert is a successful composer and producer, but his skills as a musician launched his career—recording and performing with John Lennon, Tom Chapin, Loudon Wainwright III, John Denver, Laura Branigan, Henry Gross, Phyllis Hyman, and many other outstanding artists. If you’ve heard John Lennon’s recording of Stand By Me or ESPN’s Baseball Tonight Theme—or hundreds of other well-known recordings, TV ads and radio jingles—then you know Jon’s work as musician, composer and producer.
Jon is best known as a pianist, but he also plays organ, synthesizer, accordion, guitar, bass, and drums, sings lead and backup, and has a state-of-the-art studio where he’s earned five Grammy nominations.
When he’s not in the studio or on tour you can often find Jon doing what he loves, playing keyboards and singing in clubs around the New York area. Whether he’s working with world-famous artists, recording a jingle that will be heard by millions on TV, or rocking live in a friendly club—Jon makes music!
Frank Shiner’s own story as a performer (and in recent years as a recording artist) is atypical: after nearly two decades away from working as an entertainer – “I paid my dues, I fulfilled responsibility as a father, husband, a friend, as a business person and put everything on back burner” – Frank returned to singing following his wife Suzanne’s battle with cancer in 2009. A year later, she encouraged him to sing one night at a local open mic night and the audience reaction – along with that of the bandleader who followed Frank out to the parking lot to almost beg him to become a vocalist with his orchestra – led Shiner back to performing on a regular basis.
Born in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, growing up in Mountain Top (and from the age of ten, working side-by-side with his late father Francis in the family-owned bakery), Frank’s love for music and theatre first found expression when he was cast in the role of Henry Higgins in My Fair Lady, “I finally felt at home when I stood on that stage and heard the audience reaction and felt that energy, I said, ‘ok this is what I want to do.’” In college, Frank briefly began studying law before switching to acting, training in classics by Shakespeare and Moliere and moving to New York, where he would go on to appear in over sixty theatre and television productions and meet “the love of my life” Suzanne, who he married within two years after arriving in New York.
