Frankie Moreno to evoke Frank Sinatra in first Carnegie Hall appearance

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Stratosphere headliner Frankie Moreno performs during the Nevada Sesquicentennial All-Star Concert on Monday, Sept. 22, 2014, at the Smith Center for the Performing Arts in downtown Las Vegas.

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Frankie Moreno has never played a club called the Brass Ring, which evidently is the name of a lounge in Indianapolis.

But the longtime Las Vegas entertainer is playing the brass ring of all concert venues Friday night.

Moreno is scheduled to perform at Carnegie Hall’s main hall, the Isaac Stern Auditorium and Ronald O. Perelman Stage, as a guest star in the Frank Sinatra tribute show “Let’s Be Frank.” The concert is a celebration of Sinatra’s 100th birthday, which is Dec. 12.

“I have never even been inside Carnegie Hall,” Moreno says. “This will be the first time. I hope it’s not the last.”

Moreno is joined by a multifarious lineup of artists singing Sinatra classics while backed by the New York Pops in Carnegie Hall’s 2,800-seat theater.

Joining the show are Broadway performer Ryan Silverman, known for his performances in “Side Show,” “Phantom of the Opera” and “Chicago” (Silverman also appeared onstage with Moreno during Moreno’s run at the Stratosphere); Storm Large, a finalist on the CBS contest show “Rock Star: Supernova” and a headliner at Cabaret Jazz in the Smith Center in November; and jazz vocalist Tony DeSare, who has opened for Don Rickles at the Orleans and has been dubbed a “Rising Star” by the respected music industry publication Downbeat magazine.

In this rollout of Sinatra standards, Moreno is singing “That’s Life,” “I’ve Got the World on a String,” “One For My Baby (And One More For the Road),” “Birth of the Blues,” “All of Me” and joins the show-closing medley. He duets with Silverman on “Birth of the Blues” and DeSare on “All of Me.”

“What they’re after is representation of Sinatra’s career from New York and Las Vegas, and that’s where I come in,” Moreno says. “But to play Carnegie Hall — it seems like an impossible thing to accomplish, but when you are an artist, it is the most prestigious place you can play in this country.”

Moreno deems himself “a Sinatra fan, but I never learned much of his music growing up.” Moreno’s father, Frank, is an Elvis guy. “But my grandfather, he showed me around the piano and would play Italian songs and a lot of Sinatra. It was fun to actually learn these songs, finally. They are so great.”

How Moreno came to be included in this lineup for this particular show can be traced to his personal and professional relationship to violin great Joshua Bell. As the two recorded “Eleanor Rigby” for Bell’s 2009 “At Home With Friends” all-star release (Sting, Josh Groban, Kristin Chenoweth, Chris Botti and Regina Spektor were among the other performers who contributed to that CD), Moreno connected with Bell’s manager David Lai, a monster musician and conductor and music executive who helps recruit talent for pops shows at such venues as Carnegie Hall and Kennedy Center.

Lai met Moreno when Moreno first recorded with Bell in New York, and Lai was an executive with Sony Music, which at the time was interested in recording Moreno before a management change derailed those plans.

But Moreno’s connection to the Bell camp lives on and has extended to the Hollywood Bowl, where Moreno joined Bell for his “Joshua Bell & Friends” concert last July.

For the past few years, Lai has been telling Moreno that he should join a pops show or series sometime at Carnegie Hall or Kennedy Center or any number of legendary venues.

“Nothing ever happened until there was this opportunity,” Moreno says. “Now we’re going all over the place with it.”

The Carnegie Hall-Sinatra show is not a one-off experience. The same lineup, backed by the National Symphony Orchestra, is performing the Sinatra show at Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., on June 5. By year’s end, it’s off for shows with the Indianapolis Symphony and another date in Naples, Fla.

Typical of Moreno’s schedule is he is due back in Las Vegas on Saturday to perform his second show at Rocks Lounge in Red Rock Resort.

What this means is on consecutive nights, Moreno will play the esteemed music hall that opened in May 1891 with a concert by Tchaikovsky, then the Las Vegas hotel-casino lounge that opened in June 2006 with a performance by Zowie Bowie.

In each instance, Moreno is in for a classic experience.

Follow John Katsilometes on Twitter at Twitter.com/JohnnyKats. Also, follow “Kats With the Dish” at Twitter.com/KatsWiththeDish.

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