KLEA BLACKHURST is an actress, singer and comedienne who is best known for her award-winning tribute to Ethel Merman, Everything The Traffic Will Allow. Among many accolades, this production earned her the inaugural Special Achievement Award from “Time Out New York” magazine and the recording of Everything the Traffic Will Allow was named one of the top ten show albums of 2002 by Talkin’ Broadway.com.  Klea next turned her passion for musical-theatre history toward the Broadway career of composer Vernon Duke and debuted Autumn in New York: Vernon Duke's Broadway at New York's Café Carlyle with a subsequent sold-out engagement at Joe's Pub at The Public Theater. Her most recent project, “Dreaming of a Song: The Music of Hoagy Carmichael,” is a collaboration with Billy Stritch. They celebrated their CD release with a packed performance at Birdland, where she is also a frequent guest host for Jim Caruso’s infamous Cast Party.

Klea has performed with symphonies, orchestras and in theatrical productions across the country and abroad including the London Palladium presentation of Jerry Herman’s Broadway with Angela Lansbury, the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, 10 Mabel Mercer Foundation Cabaret Conventions, New York’s Town Hall, Jazz at Lincoln Center, Carnegie Hall, New York’s 92nd Street Y Lyrics & Lyricists, (Leo Robin & Cole Porter) The Chicago Humanities Festival and as Ado Annie in the BBC Proms concert of Oklahoma! in London’s Royal Albert Hall. Klea currently plays Shelby Cross, former prosecutor and hypercritical pundit on the IFC Channel comedy series, “Onion News Network.” Theatre credits include: New York - The recent revival of A Tree Grows In Brooklyn, Bingo, By Jupiter, Radio Gals, Oil City Symphony; Regional – Call Me Madam, Chicago, The Great American Trailer Park Musical, Red Hot and Blue, Anything Goes. TV and radio: “Law and Order: SVU,” “The Rosie O'Donnell Show,” “Sesame Street” and “A Prairie Home Companion.” Klea’s albums are on the Ghostlight Records label and available at http://www.sh-k-boom.com/ and www.ghostlightrecords.com. She’s also featured on “Jule Styne in Hollywood” on PS Classics; the original cast recordings of Bingo and Radio Gals; “Lost in Boston IV,” “Unsung Irving Berlin,” and “The Best of Off Broadway.”