The Metropolitan Room Welcomes Ryan Greer Jazz Group Tonight, 5/18

Jazz vocalist and bandleader, Ryan Greer, returns to the Metropolitan Room for one night only with his trio – Alex Dezenzo on piano, John Feliciano on bass and Miles Moran on drums – tonight, May 18, 2012 at 9:30 p.m.

The Ryan Greer Jazz Group, acclaimed for their reinvention of the Great American Songbook, freshly takes on greats like Hoagy Carmichael and Johnny Green as well as modern legends like MiLes Davis and Herbie Hancock in a premiere set that spans generations of jazz and the popular song. The new arrangements comprise a palette of sounds from classic New Orleans swing to straight-ahead jazz, bossa nova to funk, West Coast cool to bebop.

Ryan Greer is a self-producing artist in New York City whose body of work spans theater, dance and music-all rooted in jazz. Known as an "expert" director-choreographer (The New Yorker), praised for "joyous, jazz-inflected dancing both crisp and sensual" (The Chicago Reader), Ryan finds creative catharsis as a vocalist and bandleader, dedicated to the legacy of the jazz standard. His unique arrangements of classic songbook compositions inventively manipulate tempo and chord progression while honoring the original intention of the legendary tunesmiths and their paramount songs. His vocal style, powerful yet contained, dynamically explores breathy, mellow nuance, taking inspiration from the full jazz lexicon: swing, bop, cool, post-bob and beyond.

The show plays Friday, May 18 at 9:30 p.m., $20 cover at the door (2-drink minimum), at the Metropolitan Room, located at 34 West 22nd Street.

Call 212-206-0440 for more information, and visit www.RyanGreerJazz.com.