Tony Award Winning Actress Laura Benanti Partners with K4Connect and Seniorly for a Live #Sunshineconcerts event

April 27, 2020

View Livestream Here: https://bit.ly/sunshineconcert1

RALEIGH, NC–On the heels of her viral social media campaign, #SunshineSongs, Tony Award winning actress Laura Benanti is partnering with K4Connect and Seniorly to bring joy through music to senior living communities, aging loved ones isolated in their homes, children’s hospitals, and beyond.

On Saturday, May 2, at 6 p.m. EST, the Sunshine Songs Concert will present the first intergenerational live viewing experience. In March, Laura created #SunshineSongs, to invite students across the country to share videos of the performances they were not able to give this year due to the COVID-19 Pandemic.

Laura first partnered with her friend Kate Deiter-Maradei to explore a way to distribute the performance videos to senior communities and Children’s Hospitals, as a result creating the Sunshine Concert event which will have a live viewing party on Laura’s YouTube page as well as at www.SunshineSongs.com.

COVID-19 has suddenly changed the way we are all living, but for older generations and hospitalized children around the world, the impacts have been particularly significant. In senior living communities and Children’s Hospitals, residents and patients under strict quarantine safety measures are unable to visit with family or friends.

Together with the teams at Seniorly and K4Connect, they were hoping to remedy this by bringing a little bit of joy through streaming a variety of #SunshineSongs performances.

“I was talking to my mom (Linda Benanti, a renowned voice teacher), and she shared how disappointed her students were that their school musicals were canceled due to Covid-19. These shows bring entire towns together in celebration of their talented young people, and I wanted to provide a platform for them to be seen and celebrated,” said Laura. “The tremendous outpouring of love on social media for #SushineSongs led me to my friend Kate, and together we devised a plan to bring #SunshineConcerts to vulnerable communities—our beloved seniors as well as our young people in children’s hospitals that might not be active on social media.”

Seniorly will be providing the technical and creative live streaming expertise in collaboration with K4Connect’s distribution. The live stream event will be directed by Ashley Rodbro and produced by Stephanie Cowan. Prompt, a mission-driven education company, is developing the website and providing creative support.

In the midst of an illustrious career spanning Broadway, film, and television, Tony® Award-winning actress, singer and author, Laura Benanti now brings a longstanding dream to life as she gears up to release new solo music with Sony Music Masterworks. She recently released a single, a cover of “Sucker” along with a moving video donating 100% of her earnings to FoodCorps.

With leading Broadway roles ranging from the My Fair Lady revival and Steve Martin’s Meteor Shower to She Loves Me, Laura garnered a Tony® Award in the category of “Best Featured Actress in a Musical” for the 2008 production of Gypsy—among five career nominations to date. Meanwhile, her performance in Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown garnered her a Drama Desk Award and Outer Critics Circle Award for “Best Featured Actress in a Musical.” Simultaneously, she enchanted audiences on the small screen, appearing on Younger, Supergirl, Nashville, The Good Wife, Nurse Jackie, and more in addition to films including WORTH and the upcoming Here Today. Laura recently released a book co-written with Kate Mangiameli, for moms entitled “M is for MAMA (and also Merlot): A Modern Mom’s ABCs” available now on Amazon.

Kate Deiter-Maradei is an attorney, a mediator, and a community activist. She is passionate about helping others and focuses on several initiatives at any given time. Kate and her family have hosted an MLK service day project for nine years and donated almost 2000 pounds of food to Urban Ministries Food Pantry in 2020. Kate has plans to expand this project that honors her daughters’ cultural heritage, by ten-fold in 2021.

For the past four years, Kate has collaborated with Essential Partners to build and strengthen relationships with law enforcement and African American Citizens in North Carolina. She was previously appointed by Governor Perdue to the North Carolina Council for Women and served for many years as Vice Chair of the Wake County Commission for Women. She has received the Triangle Business Journal’s 2019 Leaders in Diversity Award, the Triangle Business Journal’s 40 Under 40 Award, the 2017 North Carolina Leaders in the Law Award, the NCBA 2014 Citizen Lawyer Award, the 2013 North Carolina Lawyers Weekly Rising Star Award, and Tarheel of the Week.

K4Connect is a mission-driven technology company that creates solutions that serve and empower older adults and individuals living with disabilities, together with the people, communities, and organizations that also serve them. The company believes the future of senior living is in enabling Smart Senior Living Communities through tech-based solutions that truly impact the lives of older adults, wherever they live. Its premier solution, K4Community, provides smart products and features across Home, Wellness, and Engagement for residents, and Productivity, Building, and Insight for staff and operators. Based in Raleigh, K4Connect is currently serving tens of thousands of senior living residents and staff at over 800 continuing care, independent living, assisted living, and memory care communities across the nation.

Seniorly is the fastest growing marketplace for senior living, empowering consumers to make better decisions when searching for senior living communities. Seniorly provides fully transparent data, local market insights, education around care options, and then matches searchers with local senior living experts. Seniorly’s marketplace has more than 35,000 senior living community listings, 300 local senior living experts, and the tools to make the entire search and move experience better. Seniorly was founded in 2014 and is headquartered in San Francisco.

With a mission to make people better writers, Prompt is a world leader in writing coaching and feedback, with a focus on content, structure, and clarity.