It should come as absolutely no surprise to anyone that Shoshana Bean received a standing ovation as soon as she stepped on stage at Carnegie Hall, even before she sang a single note.
Her sold out solo concert debut at the iconic New York venue took place on Monday, November 3, the night prior to the release of her arguably career-best new album Only Smoke. Of course, this entrance standing ovation was no isolated incident. During the Grammy Award-winner’s performance, I lost track of how many times the audience catapulted to their feet in rapturous applause.
For Bean, the road to Carnegie Hall began with a dream she’s been chasing since age nine, when she first discovered her love for the stage after she was cast in a community theater production of Sunday in the Park with George. New York audiences first fell in love with her during the 2000 off-Broadway production of Godspell, and the love affair continued when she appeared in the original Broadway cast of Hairspray and served as Idina Menzel’s Elphaba understudy and first replacement in Wicked. She then wouldn’t return to The Great White Way for thirteen years, when her good friend Gavin Creel urged her to join the cast of Waitress in 2019. She has since received two consecutive Tony Award nominations for her turns in Mr. Saturday Night and Hell’s Kitchen.
Bean kicked off the evening with a cover of The Rolling Stones’ “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction).” Given the clear 1970’s rock and soul influences found on Only Smoke, this opening signaled that her adoring audience (which also consisted of a who’s who in the music and theater industries like Clive Davis, Jerry Mitchell, and Donna Murphy, to name just a few) was in for a brand new side of the beloved songstress. Music director Steve Jordan’s arrangements of songs like Aretha Franklin’s “Chain of Fools” and Janis Joplin’s “Piece of My Heart” showed off the versatility of Bean’s stunning voice, allowing her to vacillate between brassy gospel and raspy rock-and-roll with an ease that quite frankly deserves to be studied.
The program consisted of a diverse blend of Bean’s own music, covers of some of her favorite songs, and musical theater standards. To the delight of fans who have followed her since her early days, some of her original offerings included “Cold Turkey” and “Blood from a Stone” from the 2013 album O’Farrell Street. The Broadway devotees, meanwhile, were treated to soul-stirring renditions of Stephen Sondheim’s “Finishing the Hat” and “Being Alive,” as well as an emotionally charged “She Used to Be Mine” (from Waitress). The way she cracked the audiences’ hearts open with these numbers convincingly demonstrated that Bean is one of the greatest theatrical stage talents alive today.
(And it’s worth noting I would trade my soul in a heartbeat for a studio recording of her astounding “Being Alive.” To make a Sondheim song sound like it was written especially for you—let alone one as iconic as this one—is not something you encounter regularly).
Bean recalled how while growing up, she wore out the CDs of one of her greatest musical idols, Bernadette Peters, recorded live at Carnegie Hall. Listening to Peters speak about Sondheim on the recording—and how their relationship shaped her both professionally and personally—inspired Bean to dream of one day finding a composer she could share that same kind of creative connection with. She went on to express her gratitude for having found her version of that partnership. Someone whose music, as she put it, “fits my voice like a glove.” With that, she introduced Jason Robert Brown to the stage. As he took his place at the piano, the two launched into “Stars and the Moon” (from Songs for a New World). While the audience chuckled at one of the song’s early lines, by its final, soaring notes, her voice filled the hall with such aching honesty that not a single eye was left dry.
A true standout in the evening came in the form of Bean’s duet with composer and singer-songwriter Sara Bareilles. When Bareilles came on stage, she applauded Bean for “fucking killing it” and noted “you have no idea how many shoes are being thrown backstage.” A Waitress duet may have been expected from the two performers; instead, they sang an astonishing version of Joni Mitchell’s “A Case of You.” Their sumptuous harmonies delivered a vocal masterclass that was alone worth the price of admission.
Another highlight of the evening was a request section in which audience members called out random songs from Bean’s vast repertoire and she would perform acapella pieces of them on the fly. These included throwback tracks like “Naomi” and “116th” (from her 2008 debut album Superhero), “All to Me” (from 2018’s Spectrum), the standalone single “One Way to Go,” and a cover of Bonnie Raitt’s “I Can’t Make You Love Me.” Her two different and mind-blowing “Defying Gravity” riffs incited full blown gay panic (including Frankie Grande literally jumping out of his seat as he cheered). When she walked over to her former Hairspray co-star Harvey Fierstein in the audience to ask if he had any requests, he sweetly replied “anything you want, my darling.” When she sang her Hell’s Kitchen eleven-o-clock number “Pawn It All,” she shouted out Alicia Keys’ mother (who inspired her character in the show), who was on her feet dancing with a smile from ear to ear. And when she closed the section with “Empire State of Mind,” the audience sang along with infectious Election Night-eve pride.
Of course, the evening also doubled as a celebration for the release of Only Smoke. Bean debuted several tracks from the album, including the jazzy earworm “Left Over Love,” the funk-infused “Quite Like Me” (which wouldn’t sound out of place on Kelly Clarkson’s Meaning of Life), and the heart-wrenchingly beautiful ballad “Let Me Believe.” She also delivered a powerhouse performance of the album’s fantastic R&B-tinged lead single, “Hard Woman to Love,” showcasing her signature blend of vulnerability, strength, and soul as she seamlessly melded her voices across genres with masterful command.
During her encore, Bean reminisced about attending a Tony Bennett concert at Carnegie Hall in 1999 with a friend. She recalled how Bennett, eager to demonstrate the venue’s remarkable acoustics, set aside his microphone and sang a cappella — his voice carrying effortlessly to even the highest balcony seats where she sat. The purity and power of that moment, she said, stayed with her ever since. In tribute, Bean began her final number, the standard “One for My Baby (and One More for the Road),” away from the microphone. When she finally stepped back behind it, letting the full force of her extraordinary voice fill the hall one last time, it was hard to tell which lasted longer—the echoes of her final note or the audience’s latest standing ovation.
By the end of the night, Shoshana Bean didn’t just sing at Carnegie Hall. She claimed it as her own.
PHOTOS | ©2025 Chris Lee