Tony Corrao has had a song in his heart for as long as he can remember.
“I grew up in a house full of music. My mother loved to sing, and she was a big Sinatra fan — she was one of the bobby-soxers who saw him at the Paramount Theater in New York,” said Corrao, who had a successful 40-year career in the IT field with a consulting company of his own. “I heard that music whether I liked it or not, but as time went on, I started getting into the music myself.”
Corrao and the 18-piece One More Once Jazz Ensemble will headline the inaugural Phyllis A. Ludwig Concert — “A Celebration of the American Songbook” — which will be held in the Temple Ambler Learning Center Auditorium on Sunday, March 8. A reception for all guests, sponsored by Ludwig Business Consultants, will begin at 1:30 p.m. The concert will start at 2:30 p.m. The suggested attire is business casual. Reserve your spot today! The concert is made possible by the Phyllis A. Ludwig Concert Endowment. Learn more about the concert here.
Corrao’s early interest in music — and a voice of his own to fill his home with song growing up — didn’t initially translate to a desire to share that gift with the world.
“By the time I was 15, I knew a lot of the songs that Sinatra sung — they kind of stuck in my head,” he said. “But back then I didn’t have the guts to go out and do any sort of performing.”
Corrao intentionally blew an audition in elementary school to avoid having to join the Glee Club because growing up in Brooklyn “if I was a member of the Glee Club, I would have gotten beaten up pretty much every day at 3 o'clock,” he joked.
“If we were out on the street as young kids, maybe I’d be singing outside and having a good time — people told me I was pretty good and I should do something with it. In my mid-20s, a friend convinced me to sing at one of his corporate parties; it was embarrassing for me, but everybody seemed to like what I was doing,” he said. “This is when I first really attempted something with performance. We put together a trio and started doing some performing in SoHo at a place called Upstairs at Green Street. From there, we started to go into Manhattan Beach and Brooklyn and going into studios.”
Working as an independent contractor on a major IT project for Goldman Sachs during the day and trying to balance that with gigs that sometimes went late into the night, however, proved too much. In 1987, Corrao hung up his microphone and didn’t pick it back up again until 2010 when he was encouraged to audition for the “Sinatra Birthday Bash” at the Count Basie Theater in Red Bank, New Jersey.
“It was my wife who literally drove me to the studio to record songs to submit — I recorded 10 to 12 songs. One day the phone rings and it’s the conductor for the Red Bank Jazz Orchestra; they offered me a spot in the show, and it was the first time I sang with a big band,” he said. “That’s when I met John Colianni who had been a piano player for Mel Tormé — he really mentored me over the years and pushed me to do more, to expand what I was singing, different stylings and how I was performing.”
Another fateful call led Corrao to perform at the Jazz Standard in NYC in a show named “Sinatra — From Vegas to New York.”
“The band leader told me ‘no time for rehearsal, just show up and perform.’ The band was a who’s who of performers — Peter Washington, a bass player who played on a Tony Bennett recording; Louis Nash, who played drums on something like 400 jazz albums; Jeremy Pelt, an American Jazz trumpeter, composer and bandleader regarded as one of the prominent voices in contemporary jazz; and a few other Sinatra horn players,” he said. “I was basically playing with Frank Sinatra’s orchestra; they were that good. I got there, the place was packed — they were outside in the street — I sang 13 songs and it was simply incredible. These top musicians have become lifelong friends who I’m still in contact with today.”
The very next afternoon, Corrao performed at the Count Basie Theater with the 28-piece Red Bank Jazz Orchestra in the 100th Centennial Event for Frank Sinatra’s birthday. He was joined on stage by five singers including Deana Martin — Dean Martin’s daughter — and Joe Piscopo.
Fast forward through countless shows with orchestras, ensembles such as One More Once Jazz and smaller musical groups, including a gala to raise money for the Hoboken Historical Museum — “if you’re in Hoboken, you have to sing Sinatra” — that led to a recording contract for his own album of new music, and one of the next stops on Corrao’s musical journey will be the inaugural Phyllis A. Ludwig Concert at Temple Ambler.
“Songs like I Get a Kick Out of You by Cole Porter would be considered something from the Great American Songbook. I think we’ll be doing songs like that — Irving Berlin, Cole Porter, Guys and Dolls, My Fair Lady, Zing! Went the Strings of My Heart by Judy Garland,” he said. “My goal is to always try to convey my deep feelings for the music. I like to connect to songs — I don’t just sing songs because I like a melody or I like the music behind it, I like lyrics and what the song is really saying — and have the audience connect to that good feeling that we all get where time stands still and you allow yourself to get lost in the music.”