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DANA’S ANGELS BENEFIT GALA
AND CONCERT
WITH FRANKIE VALLI & THE FOUR SEASONS
Friday, May 20,
at The Palace Theatre
Dana’s Angels Research Trust
(DART) will hold its annual Gala Benefit and Concert on
Friday, May 20, 2011, with Frankie Valli and the Four
Seasons, at the Palace Theatre in Stamford, Conn. One
of the hottest tickets on Broadway is Jersey Boys,
and DART’s Gala night will be a spectacular opportunity to
see the real Frankie Valli on stage – and in
Fairfield County! The evening’s festivities will be hosted
by Kathie Lee and Frank Gifford. The Gala prior to
the concert will feature a 1960’s Rock ‘n Roll theme (for
those that really want to get into the spirit), and will
offer an Italian-themed pasta bar, provided by Rao’s
Specialty Foods, elegant wine and hors d’oeuvres reception,
and a silent and live auction. Some of the fabulous auction
items include table rights to the exclusive Rao’s Restaurant
in New York City, a week in Turks and Caicos, dinner and a
screening with Chazz Palminteri, Tickets to Rihanna and Cee
Lo Green, among other unique and outstanding items. Concert
tickets are $125, $75 and $45 (+SCA fees) and are available
through the Stamford Center for the Arts/Palace Theatre box
office at
http://www.scalive.org or 203-325-4466. Gala tickets
start at $300 and include the reception prior to the concert
and premiere seating; Gala tickets are available by
invitation and at
http://www.DanasAngels.org.
Frankie Valli & the Four Seasons will be on stage with their
full band and will perform many of their Top-40 hits like
Sherry, December 1963 (Oh What A Night), Can’t Take My Eyes
Off You, Grease, My Eyes Adored You, and many
more. Thanks to the volcanic success of the Tony-winning
musical Jersey Boys that chronicles the life and
times of Frankie and his legendary group, the real Frankie
Valli is packing concert halls coast-to-coast.
Frankie Valli rose to fame in 1962 as the lead singer of the
Four Seasons. He’s had 71 chart hits, including 40 in the
Top 40, 19 in the Top 10, and eight Number One Songs. He has
toured the world continuously and his songs have been played
millions of times on the radio, on Broadway, and in movies
like The Deer Hunter, Dirty Dancing, Mrs. Doubtfire,
Conspiracy Theory and The Wanderers, and the hit
television show, The Sopranos. More than 200 artists
have done cover versions of Frankie’s Can’t Take My Eyes
Off You, from Nancy Wilson’s jazz treatment to Lauryn
Hill’s hop-hop makeover. And Frankie’s Rag Doll was
the inspiration for Billy Joel’s Uptown Girl.
Inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1990,
Frankie was born Francis Castelluccio on May 3, 1934, and
grew up in a public housing project and on the tough streets
of Newark, N.J. As the character of Tommy DeVito, Frankie’s
friend and fellow Four Season, says in Jersey Boys,
“If you’re from my neighborhood, you got three ways out: you
could join the Army; you could get mobbed up; or, you could
become a star.” At an early age, Frankie chose “Door Number
3.” When he was seven, his mother took him to New York
City’s Paramount Theater to see Frank Sinatra. “I saw
Sinatra coming out on stage,” recalls Frankie, “and the way
he was lit up, it was like he had an aura around him. I
decided then and there that’s what I was going to do – be a
successful singer.” After nine years of being in a band,
American Bandstand became his big break when the Seasons
sang Sherry and they suddenly became an overnight
sensation and Sherry became a Number 1 song. From
1962 to 1978, Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons sold more
than 100 million records. For decades after their heyday,
Frankie and the Seasons continued to be a top concert draw,
and radio constantly played their classics, not to mention
the new remixes that kept popping up on the charts. In
2007, Frankie Valli had a sold-out concert tour and a new
album, Romancing the ‘60s, and since then, has still
had a sold-out concert tour each and every year.
“We are so excited to have Frankie Valli and the Four
Seasons perform for the DART Gala Benefit Concert this
year,” noted Phil and Andrea Marella, founders of Dana’s
Angels Research Trust. “We have been big fans of Frankie
Valli for many years; and our children are even more
excited! There is just something about Frankie’s music that
makes people of every generation want to get up and dance.
We fully expect the Palace Theatre to be dancing in the
aisles on May 20th.”
Dana’s Angels Research Trust is a non-profit organization
that funds research into a rare disease, Niemann-Pick type
C, a fatal, cholesterol storage disease affecting children.
Two of the Marella’s four children, Dana and Andrew, have
NPC. Although children and some adults worldwide are
afflicted with Niemann-Pick type C disease, research has
been extremely limited primarily because of insufficient
funding, the smaller population of those affected, and a
lack of public awareness. Currently, children with NPC
rarely live past their early teens, and there is no cure for
NPC. Today, there are limited treatment options, with
experimental therapies and medications being tried with hope
that there will be progress. Researchers believe unlocking
the key to NPC may well lead to cures for HIV/Aids, heart
disease, stroke and Alzheimer’s.
The Marella’s children have been on different treatments
that have helped keep the disease at bay – especially for
Andrew, who is currently 11 years old and was diagnosed
early and started treatment at a young age. His sister
Dana, who is now 17, was not diagnosed until she was eight.
She is now confined to a wheelchair, no longer talks, and
requires complete care, but because of some successful
treatment, she is still able to attend school.
To date, DART has raised close to $2 million toward the
search for a cure for NPC. DART is particularly proud of its
commitment to a unique therapy development approach for
additional NPC treatments called SOAR-NPC or Support Of
Accelerated Research. Working with other NPC families
and organizations, SOAR has created a multidimensional
collaborative drug development program searching for an
effective cocktail treatment for NPC. The ambitious goal is
to have at least two or three new NPC therapies ready for
clinical trial in 2011.
To learn more about Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons
concert, and to purchase Gala tickets, or to find out more
about NPC and DART, visit
http://www.danasangels.org. To purchase concert only
tickets, visit
http://www.scalive.org.
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