Imagine a cold winter night at the Cotton Club: it’s all heat inside with the dashing Duke conducting behind the luminous Ella Fitzgerald, whose voice rides the horns like waves. It’s the stars the audience pays to see, while their beat-keeping band mates skirt the limelight, staying on the side-lines as jazz’s willing workhorses-the side men. In their world, touring fifty weeks a year to burn brass and smoke strings anywhere they could from juke joint dives to the elite night clubs of New York and Chicago, was paradise. Of course, paradise never lasts for long.

Elegiac, heart-wrenching, and funny, Warren Leight’s Tony award-winning (Best Play) hit Side Man is triumphant writing that tightly binds the arc of jazz history to Clifford (named after trumpet great Clifford Brown), the son of a burned-out jazz trumpeter. A memory play that traces Clifford’s father’s career—and, ultimately, its effects on the family—Side Man is a touching, humorous eulogy for the ghosts, some-times living, in the galls of the American family and the spirits that have given their lives for music.

The world of loss in Side Man also laments the dying breed of jazz musicians represented by Gene and his good-ol-days jazz buddies Al and Ziggy, all of them acutely aware they are soon to become the extinct species of the big band.

“As wild and haunting as a good trumpet solo.” -John Lahr, The Wall Street Journal

Screen star Andrew McCarthy (Pretty in Pink. The Joy Luck Club) stars as Clifford, the shell-shocked and sweetly sarcastic son of Gene and Terry , the once happy couple of a trumpet side man and his adoring fan. As Gene grows increasingly detached and jazz music fades in the light of rock’ n ‘ roll, Terry’s loneliness and loss give way to full-blown alcoholism. 1999 Tony winner for Best Featured Actor in a Play, Frank Wood stars as the degenerating genius Gene in this tour-de-force performance that is “subtle, superbly crafted . . . A triumph” (Bergen Record).

Stacked with a stellar cast and power house writing, Side Man is an unforgettable work of theater that pierces emotions and soars through the world of jazz; the play is punctuated with works by Benny Golson, Hoagy Carmichael, Donald Byrd, Clifford Brown, and more. This irresistible combination struck a chord with a irresistible combination struck a chord with audiences in its initial off-Broadway run, and its impact resonated with the Broadway audiences that flocked to the show. Now, the Kennedy Center presents this remark-able work in the Eisenhower Theater November 3-28. Order your tickets now!

Don’t miss the exciting “Spotlight on Theater” discussion featuring cast members of Side Man on November 18.