Local Brother, Sister Duo Produce Variety Show Big band Performance Set for Oct. 28th, 2007

By Carol Rosen
Staff Writer Evergreen Times
August 24, 2007

Evergreen resident Joyce McCulloch and her brother, Rich Santoro, both love to sing. That love of singing led them to organize a variety show they produced last year at the Improv and will produce again this year at the Montgomery Theatre.

Last year, Santoro came to McCulloch with the idea of putting together a variety show. McCulloch, who has been singing with two big bands for 20 years, liked the idea, and the two “put our heads together and grew our ideas.” Last year’s show at the Improv was sold out in two months, said McCulloch.

In order to accommodate a growing number of fans for this year’s show, the brothersister team moved the show to the Montgomery Theater in order to have more seats. By the fourth week in August, about 350 of the theater’s 500 seats had already been sold for the Oct. 28 performance. It sold out by the first week in September. The show was also moved to the Montgomery Theatre, McCulloch said, to provide “greater ambiance. It’s more of a theater [than the Improv] and offers more seating.”

This year’s show, dubbed “Rich Santoro and Joyce McCulloch present their second annual Variety Show” is similar to the old “Ed Sullivan Show,” McCulloch said. “There’s an opening act with a comic followed by a big band playing several numbers and a couple doing swing dancing,” she said. “The second set also features a comedian, band, swing dancers and a group of singers with an act similar to the Andrews Sisters.”

The featured band is the Swing Solution Big Band, which McCulloch has been a member of for the past 20 years as its singer. The two-hour performance also booked comedian Jim Summers, who McCulloch noted is a family-oriented “clean” comedian.

For Santoro and McCulloch, however, it’s all about singing. McCulloch and her ex-husband formerly earned their living with McCulloch singing with his rock band. She currently works as a legal clerk for the public defender. She has lived in the Evergreen area since 1976 where she raised her three children. While she’s moved from her original home, she still shares a townhouse with one of her sons in Evergreen. Another son is a musician in New York and her daughter lives in Seattle with McCulloch’s grandchild.

“We were full-time musicians when we moved to Evergreen and that’s how we supported our family,” she said. “We had a band and we worked clubs four to five nights a week and did weddings on the weekends. It was a top 40s/rock band.”

She later enrolled in a big band class at a local junior college, leading to her current love of being a big band singer.

Santoro is a salesman and lives in the Berryessa neighborhood, but also spent time as a comedian. “He was always working and raising his family,” McCulloch said, “but a couple of years ago he started singing with me and a second big band.”

While the show last year brought in about $8,000 to $9,000 most of that went back into producing this year’s show.

“Last year we didn’t have much left over, and what we did, we put back into this year’s show,” McCulloch said. “For us to continue doing this and go big, you need a lot of backing. We’re not interested in making money, but putting the show on is a lot of work.” Putting on such shows is also quite costly, she said, not to mention the ample amount of work required to put it all together.

“We started working on this year’s production about two months after we finished last year,” she said. “We will probably wait a couple of years before we put on the next one.”

Tickets for the two-hour Sunday Oct. 28 performance are $22 each, and while children are invited, they should be old enough to sit through a two-hour performance comfortably, McCulloch noted. The show is from 2 to 4 p.m., with doors opening at 1 p.m. Early attendance is suggested in order to get good seats. The Montgomery Theatre is located at 271 Market Street. Parking is free at various downtown San Jose lots on Sunday.

For more information e-mail Joyce at: girlsingerjoyce@yahoo.com.