Celebrating their 40th season of performing arts, Centenary Stage Company opens with a Curtain Up! performance by John Lloyd Young, the original Broadway Jersey Boys, Frankie Valli. Experience this talented singer for one night only, September 20 at 8pm.
A Tony and Grammy winner, multi-Platinum recording artist and Presidential Appointee, Young garnered unprecedented accolades from New York and national media. He is the only American actor to date to win all four Broadway Leading Actor in a Musical Honors for a Broadway debut and include the Tony, Drama Desk, Outer Critics Circle and Theatre World Award. He was hand-picked by director Clint Eastwood to reprise his role in the Warner Bros. film adaptation of Jersey Boys, becoming one of a select-few actors in entertainment history to take his Tony-winning role to the big screen.
Young has sung selections from Jersey Boys at the White House, in the halls of Congress, and to past presidential and vice presidential families including the Kennedys, Clintons, Bushes, Obamas, Bidens, Trumps, and Pences. Other performances have been for the Prime Minister and First Lady, Shinzo and Akie Abe, of Japan and the President and First Lady of Finland, Sauli Niinistö and Jenni Haukio.
As a concert artist, Young has taken his expertly-curated repertoire of classic pop and R&B to filled rooms, thrilling his audiences with a “disciplined one-in-a-million high tenor shading into falsetto that he can direct through the stratosphere,” said The New York Times.
He has played The White House, Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, The Hollywood Bowl, The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, the U.S. Embassy in Finland, Mar-a-Lago, Clint Eastwood’s Tehama Country Club, New York’s Café Carlyle, Feinstein’s in NY and San Francisco, Radio City Music Hall, the Macy’s Thanksgiving Parade and New Year’s Eve in Times Square.
John Lloyd Young’s five-star-rated solo album of classic R&B, My Turn..., debuted as a best-seller on Amazon. It remains a fan-favorite with several songs from the album requested at each of his live performances.
Appointed to the President’s Committee on the Arts and Humanities by Barack Obama, Young was sworn in at the Supreme Court of the United States by Justice Elena Kagan. As a member of the Committee, Young represented the United States on the first U.S. Cultural Mission to the Republic of Cuba, along with fellow Committee members Kal Penn and Alfre Woodard, guest artists Usher, Smokey Robinson, Dave Matthews, violinist Joshua Bell, playwright John Guare, U.S. arts officials, including the Chairs of the NEA and the Smithsonian Institution, and members of Congress.
Young has appeared on Live with Kelly and Michael, The Today Show, Extra, Entertainment Tonight, NPR’s All Things Considered and Here and Now, Access Hollywood, C-SPAN’s Washington Journal and more.
A resident of Los Angeles, Young was educated at Brown University, and at the University of Salamanca in Spain. He is fluent in Spanish, conversational and written in Mandarin, and sings in several languages, including Spanish, Mandarin, Hebrew and Italian. Trained by world championship title holders and Chinese Shaolin monks, Young holds a brown-belt in Shaolin Temple-style kung fu, and is a student and practitioner of Chinese Chan Buddhism.
Young ardently supports charities including the USO, amFAR and the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation and has been a member of the American Civil Liberties Union since 1995.
Tickets are $40 for orchestra seating, $35 for balcony seating, and all tickets increase by $5 the day of the performance. For more information, visit centenarystageco.org or call the Centenary Stage Company box office at 908-979-0900, open Monday through Friday from 1-5 pm and two hours prior to performances.
Located in the Lackland Performing Arts Center on the campus of Centenary University at 715 Grand Ave. Hackettstown, CSC can also be found across social media platforms; Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, and Twitter. Like and follow to receive the latest in CSC news and special offers.
The 2025-26 Season of Performing Arts events at the Centenary Stage Company is made possible through the generous support of the NJ State Council on the Arts, the Shubert Foundation, the Blanche and Irving Laurie Foundation, the Sandra Kupperman Foundation, the John and Margaret Post Foundation, The New Jersey Theatre Alliance, the CSC corporate sponsors, including Heath Village, Riverwalk Village at The House of The Good Shepherd, Visions Federal Credit Union, Explore Warren, and Fulton Bank, and Centenary Stage Company members and supporters.
CSC's Curtain Up! presents John Lloyd Young
Centenary Stage Company kicks off its 40th year in style with a concert by Tony and Grammy Award winner John Lloyd Young for the season-opening Curtain Up! Gala. In his signature, passionate and thrilling style, Young interprets the spine-tingling, soul-bearing showstoppers that shaped his earliest Broadway aspirations. Young sings from The Wiz, Chicago, Bye Bye Birdie, Les Miserables, and Jersey Boys, along with classics by legendary Broadway writers including Rodgers, Hart, Hammerstein, and more.