When John Ondrasik kicks off his 22-date Northeast string quartet tour on September 19, he is not starting in Boston or New York City — he is starting in Clayton, right on the St. Lawrence River, at the 400-seat Clayton Opera House. This is Night One of the entire run. If you are within driving distance of the North Country, that detail alone should move the needle.
About Five for Fighting with String Quartet
John Ondrasik has been performing as Five for Fighting for more than two decades. The Grammy-nominated singer-songwriter released six studio albums — including platinum-certified America Town and The Battle for Everything — and his catalog has accumulated over two billion streams worldwide. “Superman (It’s Not Easy)” and “100 Years” have been featured in more than 350 films and TV shows, including The Blind Side and Hawaii Five-O; if you grew up in the 2000s, they are probably in your memory whether you knew it or not.
The quartet joining Ondrasik is not a collection of road musicians assembled for the tour — these are Broadway performers who, in Ondrasik’s words, “love playing rock and roll.” Katie Kresek, Tony Award-winning concertmaster and co-orchestrator of Moulin Rouge! The Musical, leads the strings on violin. Melissa Tong, who toured with Post Malone in 2023, is on second violin. Chris Cardona (viola) and Peter Sachon (cello) complete the ensemble. The show format is deliberately intimate — Ondrasik has described it as storytelling alongside special arrangements, promising “new songs, stories, and surprises along with the core tunes.”
Folk-rock duo Lace & Lee opens. Caroline Lace and Olivia Lee met at NYU Tisch, bring Celtic-influenced harmonies and what the band calls “bard-like prose,” and have previously toured with Five for Fighting.
About Clayton Opera House
The Clayton Opera House is a historic 400-seat theater at 405 Riverside Drive — right on the St. Lawrence River in the North Country. For a show built around intimacy and storytelling, this room is the right fit. Clayton is a drive from most of upstate — plan on about two hours from Syracuse — but September on the river is reason enough to make it an outing rather than just a commute. Box office: 315-686-2200.
Tickets
Show time is 7:30 PM on Saturday, September 19. Tickets are available through the Clayton Opera House box office. This is the first night of the full Northeast run — if you have been curious about how the string quartet format changes the experience of songs you have known for twenty years, this is where it starts.