In 1975, A Chorus Line took Broadway by storm and ran an astonishing 15 years, making it (at that time) the longest running musical in history. Featured in that original, brilliant company was a diminutive powerhouse named Kay Cole as Maggie. In the song, “At the Ballet,” composer Marvin Hamlisch wrote her one of the greatest money notes in history and when Kay hit it, it was like the heavens opened — it was a great Broadway voice of incredible purity and power, but also subtlety and nuance.

Kay was already a musical theatre veteran by that time. As a young performer she played Amaryllis in the first national tour of The Music Man with Forrest Tucker. She’d been on Broadway in the national tour of the original production of Bye Bye Birdie, and had so-starred opposite the then-just-starting-out Liza Minnelli in Best Foot Forward. She also appeared in Stop the World, I Want to Get Off with Anthony Newley, and was in the original cast of Newley’s The Roar of the Greasepaint, the Smell of the Crowd.

A few years later she did Hair, Jesus Christ Superstar, andd I’m Getting My Act Together and Taking It on the Roa. It’s taken a little over forty years for Kay to do her first solo album. During that time she began a successful career as director/choreographer, making only occasional appearances as a performer. A long friendship with record producer, Bruce Kimmel would always result in conversation about doing an album, but other jobs came and went and time marched on — but the album was always something both wanted to do. In 2013 Kimmel convinced Kay to come guest star in one of his monthly Kritzerland series of cabaret shows (now in their 12th year), and that performance was so magical, that she came back several times to enchant audiences; and conversations about the album began again. And so, her first solo recording, Souvenir, was recorded and released in 2017.

Cole and Kimmel have used many of the songs from her debut CD and crafted an evening’s entertainment, also called “Souvenir.” This event is her first as a solo artist headlining a cabaret concert ... yet another souvenir in a lifetime of treasures.