Broadway icon Brian Stokes Mitchell joins the CSO for a night of Bernstein

Broadway star Brian Stokes Mitchell is having a busy summer. 

After returning to the Ravinia Festival, where he will perform Aug. 7 in a “Bernstein on Broadway” program with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, under guest conductor Teddy Abrams, he will reprise his revue “Out With the Old, In With the New” on Aug. 12-14 at New York City’s Lincoln Center Theater.

Then he will host a limited-run, streaming talk show called “Crossovers Live!,” featuring “icons who have made the jump from stage to film, television or music.” The subscription series begins Aug. 30 with Marc Shaiman, followed by Bernadette Peters on Sept. 27, Kristin Chenoweth on Oct. 25, David Hyde Pierce on Nov. 22 and a holiday finale on Dec. 20. Also available is an on-demand episode with Vanessa Williams. Part of the proceeds will benefit the Actors Fund.

All this activity comes just months after Mitchell, a 2000 Tony Award winner for “Kiss Me, Kate,” came down with COVID-19 in spring 2020 and then celebrated his recovery by singing nightly from a window of his Upper West Side home to thank first responders and medical workers. "We don’t cure the coronavirus until we first try," he told CBS News. "And that’s what we have so many people doing right now. It was my way first to say thank you to all the essential workers of New York."

Earlier this year, Mitchell joined fellow Broadway luminaries Audra McDonald, Billy Porter, Kenny Leon, Lillias White and more to form the Black Theatre United Coalition. “As members of the Black theater community, we stand together to help protect Black people, Black talent and Black lives of all shapes and orientations in theatre and communities across the country,” he said in a statement. "Our voices are united to empower our community through activism in the pursuit of justice and equality for the betterment of all humanity. We will not be silent. We will be seen. We will be heard. We are here. Join us.”

At Ravinia, Mitchell and guest vocalists Morgan James, Sheléa and Tony Yazbeck and the group Vocality will perform songs from Bernstein’s “Candide,” “On the Town,” “West Side Story” and “Wonderful Town.”