To kick off the second evening in the George Fulginiti Series: Cabaret, Cocktails, and Conversation, Alliance for New Music-Theatre welcomes back DC’s own Josh Cleveland, who is completing his final year in the prestigious Broadcast Music Inc. (BMI) program in NYC for professional creatives. With a hat tip to writer Ernest Hemingway, he’s titling the evening One True Sentence.
About the program Josh has created for this event, he writes, “We live in a moment in which many people’s sense of a shared reality is declining. We not only disagree; we disagree about the underlying facts of our world and our experience. It’s all too tempting to try to hurl facts at those who would bury themselves in their conspiracy theories or, failing this, to retreat to our own echo chambers. Instead, why not take a page out of the novelist’s playbook and counter misinformation with storytelling and with stories that are grounded in our own realities and that ring true at a human, emotional level?”
Join Josh on Tuesday, October 7, for one evening only of classic cabaret selections that illuminate versions of his own story as a young songwriter and educator, as well as original compositions, including musical adaptations of The Great Gatsby and Despicable Me. We can’t promise he’ll heal our nation’s fractious discourse in one night of musical storytelling, but, while enjoying a specialty cocktail designed for the occasion, we can open our ears, share laughs, and find at least one or two true sentences along the way.
Josh is a composer, songwriter, librettist, music director, pianist, classroom educator, and former international aid worker with cross-cultural experience. Josh was a participant in Alliance for New Music-Theatre’s inaugural Composer Librettist Studio, an intensive two-plus-week program for professionals held in 2023 and hosted by the Music Department of UDC. He represents just the kind of crossover artist Alliance for New Music-Theatre delights in supporting. This is why we are so excited to have Josh open our second season.
Alliance for New Music-Theatre’s cabaret evenings feature some familiar tunes but capitalize on and promote original cabaret compositions, encouraging artists who bend and push boundaries and always speak to our current times. We come together for an intimate experience with artists who have something to say and engage in lively conversation with the artists following every performance. You can always count on being part of a birthing process that is the magic of music-theatre, taking a “glimpse of the back of the tapestry.”
The Arts Club of Washington venue is intimate, perfect for an optimal cabaret experience. Also thrown into the price of a ticket, the Arts Club will provide a small bites buffet and a signature cocktail created for this performance. Following the show, you will meet the artist and enjoy other fine company. For each performance, the bar opens at 6:30 pm, and the show starts at 7:00 pm.
The George Fulginiti Cabaret Series continues throughout the season with performances by local and international stars:
Tuesday, December 2, 2025: Melisa Bonetti – “Carmen Meets Lola”
Tuesday, February 3, 2026: Javier Arrey – “Music Without Borders”
Tuesday, April 7, 2026: Oren Levine & Aaron Myers – “A Jazzy Something”
Tuesday, June 2, 2026: Alan Naylor – “Songs We Need Now”
Tickets to this and the entire season of cabarets are available through Alliance for New Music-Theatre at newmusictheatre.org. Individual tickets sell for $65, while a subscription for the series is available at a discounted rate of $275 for all five performances.
The George Fulginiti Cabaret Series honors Founding Member of Alliance for New Music-Theatre George Fulginiti-Shakar, who was for many years a local star in the DC theater orbit, serving as music director of many productions at Arena Stage, Ford’s Theatre, Shakespeare Theatre, and Studio Theatre as well as serving as Founder/Director of the DC Cabaret Network and many of Alliance for New Music-Theatre’s own productions.
What can you expect from the series and New Music-Theatre’s exploratory foray into this genre? We want you to assist us as we weigh in on the question “What is cabaret?” And more particularly, “What makes for an optimal cabaret experience?” We may feature, in the process, culturally international sounds and interpretations and even cross-disciplinary approaches. All bets are on that there will be transgressive themes, adult beverages, and a whole lot of fun when the artists invited in break the fourth wall and make their personal statements in this form. You won’t want to miss up-to-date original cabaret songs, some newly minted for our series, and addressing peculiarly DC themes.
The series opened in June 2024 with a collaborative performance by Alan Naylor and Daniel J. Smith, followed by a tribute to Roberta Flack performed by Roz White this past December and Greg Watkins interpreting all the lush romance of Nat King Cole for Valentine’s Day.
Alliance for New Music-Theatre was founded in 1994 as a group of composers, librettists, and performers united to explore new collaborations and directions possible for music-theatre. Now a cornerstone of the DC theater scene, New Music-Theatre is known for developing new works across the spectrum of music-theatre: opera, musicals, drama with music, jazz, cabaret, dance-theater, or even hybrids such as mixed media performance art. Celebrated for the eclectic nature of our work and the different forms and musical languages we employ, New Music-Theatre specializes in cross-cultural and cross-disciplinary opportunities in order to explore new voices, vocal techniques, and unfamiliar instrumentation to tell under-celebrated stories. Learn more at newmusictheatre.org
Arts Club of Washington has promoted and celebrated the visual, performing, and literary arts in the nation’s capital. Gatherings for members, exhibits and performances for the public, and a range of private events are held in the club’s historic I Street mansion, which was formerly the home of President James Monroe. Arts Club members come from a wide range of artistic disciplines and professional backgrounds, joined by their shared enjoyment and appreciation of the arts. Read more here: artsclubofwashington.org.
Josh Cleveland is a New York City-based songwriter, educator, music director, and pianist, and a composer in the BMI Lehman Engel musical theater songwriting workshop. He wrote music and lyrics for an adaptation of The Great Gatsby, which premiered in the DC area in August 2024. He’s also a proud alumnus of the Alliance for New Music-Theatre’s 2023 Composer-Librettist Studio, where this collaboration took shape. Josh was recognized as a 2023-2024 musical theaer finalist by the Marvin Hamlisch International Music Awards. He serves as a collaborative pianist at NYU and at youth theater groups including Kidz Theater (NYC) and the Young Artists of America (DC area).