Philanthropy Technology & The Performing Arts

Sharon McNight is the San Francisco tribute to Sophie Tucker with a dash of Dorothy Parker thrown in for good measure. She’s actually a far more worthy San Francisco ‘treat’ than that packaged fast food that adorns cable cars in cheesy television ads the world over. Few ‘Red Hot Mama’s’ have etched their ‘brand’ on more stage door Johnny’s than this whirlwind of a bottled blonde and smoky siren. I don’t know who said this line, but it is a near perfect snap of Ms. McNight…”If Jimmy Cagney had a sister, it’d be her.” Few contemporary song stylists approach Sharon McNight in range, style or substance as she cavorts lyrically from Ziegfeld to Broadway, visiting along the way at Tin Pan Alley, the Borscht Belt, the Ed Sullivan Show and television and movies.
In a career spanning more than 25 years, Ms. McNight has won numerous awards for work in projects and vehicles as varied as her debut performance in “Starmite” in 1989 playing the role of Diva which led to her first Tony nomination, her pivotal work in “Heartbeats”, the razzle dazzle of her part in “Hello Dolly”, her comedic glimmering in “Nunsense” all leading to her book of work based on the 60 year career of Sophie Tucker in “Last of the Red Hot Mama’s” which has won awards everywhere McNight has carried this unique and powerful production that she is so closely associated with. Super Diva Carol Channing presented Ms. McNight with the coveted Theatre World Award for "Outstanding Broadway Debut" for this breakthrough performance. She narrated the documentary, "There That Night," the story of the Provincetown, Massachusetts fire, and was featured in the recent A & E documentary, "It's Burlesque", for her research on Mae West and Sophie Tucker. With six solo recordings to her credit, the most recent being "Songs To Offend Almost Everyone", "The Sophie Tucker Songbook", which contains the music of the one- woman show based the show business legend. Other recordings include “Now And Then”, “In The Meantime”, and “The B & B Years”, which ca be purchased through her own website at http://www.sharonmcnightmusic.com/albums.htm. She has won six San Francisco Cabaret Gold awards, a MAC award, a Bistro award, and is most noted for her movie reenactment of The Wizard of OZ and for being one of the few real women to impersonate Bette Davis. She has been in the forefront in the fight against AIDS since the early eighties, and was featured in Randy Shilt's book, And The Band Played On.
In a typical show McNight rips into "Stand by Your Man," making the song her private property and then cavorts through medleys of great Hank Williams songs followed by a wailing walk through Roy Orbison's "Crying." Her stage presence becomes positively electric when belting out her signature "City of New Orleans" and the yearning she infuses into Harry Nillson's "Don't Forget Me."
McNight has become one of cabaret’s super star divas with cult status enjoyed by only a handful of other stars. McNight is a powerhouse performer and consummate singer that easily moves her adoring audience from introspective soaring to bawdy, irreverent wisecracking that packs each performance she gives. Sharon McNight is a larger than life star who gives each performance her heart and soul, then reaches deep down inside and finds more to give day after day to countless men, women and children living with HIV and AIDS without ever asking for as much as a thank you. A legend indeed!