Jerry Gretzinger
Jerry Gretzinger is thrilled to be returning to Bridge Street Theatre after having performed there last December in The Singing Anchors’ Reunion Holiday Show. In Sinatra: The Man, The Myth, and The Music, he shares the stage with his wife, Erin and his longtime musical director, Jay Kerr.
Jerry is most widely recognized for the 20+ years he spent as an Emmy winning television newscaster in upstate New York, anchoring broadcasts for WRGB and WNYT (though some may remember him as the pitchman for Grasshopper Heating and Cooling). He has performed in over 200 Broadway-style musicals and cabarets, including Guys and Dolls, The Music Man, Chicago, Forever Plaid, Into the Woods, Annie, The Secret Garden, 42nd Street, Evita, Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat and more. He has just completed his role as Charlemagne in Pippin for Schedectady Light Opera Company.
Jerry and Jay Kerr co-wrote a musical comedy featuring the songs of Frank Sinatra,, called Frank ‘N Stein that premiered at the Fort Salem Theater in 2018. In 2023, Jerry was delighted to be named one of the top actors in the Capital Region by the Times Union.
He’s currently the Associate Commissioner for Internal and External Affairs at the New York State Office of Addiction Services and Supports, where he oversees the communications and media relations teams.
Jerry and his wife Erin
Jerry Gretzinger’s explorations of the Great American Songbook over the past fifteen years led him to appreciate and then celebrate the legacy of The Chairman of the Board, Frank Sinatra. Gretzinger does not imitate Frank. Sinatra created a style and embraced a repertoire that no one else has mastered. In The Man, the Myth, and the Music, the former television news anchor, joined on a few numbers by his talented singer-wife, Erin, paints an intimate musical portrait of a performer who was bigger than life.
Jerry’s first Sinatra show, Mostly Frank, created in the cabaret at Fort Salem Theater, was recorded live at WAMC’s Linda Auditorium in Albany, broadcast regularly even now on the PBS station since its first airing in 2011. He and Erin have perfected their Sinatra salute in presentations at Fort Salem Theater, MacHaydn Theatre, Caffè Lena, Prime at Saratoga National, and at Universal Preservation Hall in Saratoga.
The Gretzingers regularly appear together in local musicals (The Music Man, Guys and Dolls, and Joseph and the Amazing Techniclor Dreamcoat). They have performed opposite one another in two Fort Salem musicals, Women in My Life and Frank and Stein, which Jerry co-wrote with their musical director and arranger, Jay Kerr. The lead character in that show, Bobby Stein, is a genetic scientist obsessed with singing Frank Sinatra songs, so much so that he robs Sinatra’s grave and injects himself with the Chairman’s DNA. Frank; and Stein. Laugher and Sinatra songs ensue.
Gretzinger developed his confident, easy-going style from work in over two hundred classic musicals and cabarets, from his childhood in Kingston, at the directorial hand of his father, to lead roles in professional and community theater shows throughout the Capital Region. In over two decades reporting the news and as a co-anchor with icons Liz Bishop and Benita Zahn, he developed quick, effective reflexes, ably reacting with ease to breaking news and on-set mishaps.
Jerry currently supplements his musical activities with a full-time day job for New York State, overseeing communications and media relations teams as the Associate Commissioner for the Division of Internal and External Affairs at the Office of Addiction Services and Supports.