Ben Platt Is Kicking Off His 'Gay Americana' Era With A Concert Residency

The "Dear Evan Hansen" star will celebrate his new album, "Honeymind," with a show he hopes Judy Garland would love.

Ben Platt is set to usher in the next phase of his music career this spring with a Broadway return and a nod to his self-proclaimed “foremothers,” Judy Garland and Liza Minnelli.

To celebrate his third album, “Honeymind,” Platt is set to perform a series of 18 concerts at New York’s Palace Theatre, beginning May 28. In doing so, the Emmy-, Grammy- and Tony-winning actor and singer follows in the footsteps of Garland and Minnelli, both of whom played the Palace in their primes with sold-out residencies. He’ll also become the first performer to grace the century-old theater’s stage since 2018, when it closed for a $2.5 billion renovation.

Though the May 31 release of “Honeymind” seems auspiciously timed to the Palace’s reopening, Platt never envisioned himself playing the historic venue as a solo artist. Still, he’d been looking for ways to bridge his Broadway background with his work as a singer-songwriter, so when the Palace opportunity arose, it felt like “the universe really did me a favor,” he said.

“So many people I admire, from the days of yore to the Barbra [Streisands] of the world ... that kind of synergy doesn’t really exist anymore,” Platt told HuffPost in an interview. “Doing something that felt like a little tapestry of all the things that I do felt like an exciting idea.”

As for those “foremothers,” he added: “I wouldn’t be here, as happy and openly queer as I am, without those two women and everything they stood for, and the support they gave the LGBTQ+ community. So I feel immense pride, and I want it to be a show they would both love.”