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| "Lyrics & Lyricists" with Deborah Grace Winer (3.29-31.08) |
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| Tickets/Registration: 212.415.5500 |
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| Media Contact: Beverly Greenfield, 212.415.5452, email |
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92nd STREET Y'S "LYRICS & LYRICISTS"
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| I'VE GOT YOUR NUMBER: ROMANCE, THE RAT PACK AND CAROLYN LEIGH |
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DEBORAH GRACE WINER, Artistic Director & Host
JOHN ODDO, Music Director & Piano |
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with
DEBBY BOONE, LOSTON HARRIS,
JAMES NAUGHTEN, and KAREN ZIEMBA
Sat, Mar 29 / 8pm / $60 & 50
Sun, Mar 30 / 3 & 8pm / $60 & 50
Mon, Mar 31 / 2 & 8pm / $60 & 50
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New York, NY, March, 17, 2008—Journalist and playwright DEBORAH GRACE WINER was recently named Series Artistic Director of the 92nd Street Y's legendary American Songbook series Lyrics & Lyricists (beginning with the 2009 season). This month, she comes to the 92nd Street Y as host and artistic director of L&L's I've Got Your Number: Romance, the Rat Pack and Carolyn Leigh, which runs March 29-31. Winer's Carolyn Leigh tribute features vocalists Debby Boone, Loston Harris, James Naughton and Karen Ziemba. John Oddo is music director, and Mark Waldrop is stage director.
L&L shows are Saturday at 8 pm, Sunday at 3 and 8 pm, and Monday at 2 and 8pm.
Individual tickets are $60 and $50; subscriptions to the entire series are $250 and $220. |
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| ABOUT CAROLYN LEIGH |
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| Carolyn Leigh's first big break as a songwriter—"Young at Heart"—became a huge hit for Frank Sinatra. The year was 1954; Leigh was still in her twenties. She went on to write elegant, savvy songs that embodied the martini-lounge sensibility of the 1950s and '60s and was the major female songwriter of her generation (a successor of sorts to Dorothy Fields). Carolyn Leigh's songs—recorded by and still associated with Sinatra, Peggy Lee, and Tony Bennett, among others—included "The Best Is Yet to Come," "Witchcraft," "Rules of the Road," and "I've Got Your Number." She also wrote songs for Broadway shows including Peter Pan (with Moose Charlap) and Little Me, with her longtime collaborator Cy Coleman. This evening of L&L includes many of Leigh's blockbusters, as well as little-heard gems like her major country-and-western hit and her 1957 snapshot of suburban Connecticut that could easily be a precursor to "Desperate Housewives." |
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| ABOUT THE ARTISTIC DIRECTOR & CAST |
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| Deborah Grace Winer has written extensively about the American Songbook. She is the author of On the Sunny Side of the Street: The Life and Lyrics of Dorothy Fields (Schirmer, 1997)—the only book written about Dorothy Fields's life and work; The Night and The Music: Rosemary Clooney, Barbara Cook and Julie Wilson Inside the World of Cabaret (Schirmer, 1995); and co-author of Sing Out, Louise!: 150 Broadway Musical Stars Remember 50 Years (Schirmer, 1993). She also authored three companion coffee table books included in each of three box sets of the complete early recordings of Rosemary Clooney (22 CDs in all, issued by Bear Family, 1997-2000). Winer's articles on music have appeared in the New York Times and Town and Country, among other publications. Her plays have been developed at Lincoln Center Theatre, the Women's Project, the Actors Studio, and the Westport Country Playhouse, among other theaters; "The Last Girl Singer," starring Tony Award winner Kelly Bishop, was produced off-Broadway. Winer has written many benefit shows for venues like New York City Center and Town Hall, and she recently wrote the Lifetime Achievement tribute show to Bock and Harnick for the William Inge Playwrights Festival. Deborah Grace Winer has served as artistic director of recent L&L shows about Rosemary Clooney (2007) and Dorothy Fields (2005). She is a native of Manhattan and a graduate of Swarthmore College. |
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| Debby Boone won the Grammy Award for Best New Artist in 1977 when "You Light Up My Life" became an overnight hit and then sold over four million copies. Since then, she has won two additional Grammy Awards and has received seven Grammy nominations. Her Broadway credits include Seven Brides for Seven Brothers and Grease; she also earned a Drama Desk nomination for her role as Maria in Lincoln Center's 30th-anniversary production of The Sound of Music. |
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| Now in his sixth season performing five times a week at the famed Bemelmans Bar in the illustrious Carlyle Hotel, pianist and vocalist Loston Harris blends traditional jazz riffs, gospel, and blues into his own unique style. His trio was seen in the movie "Little Manhattan," starring Cynthia Nixon, and his most recent CD, "Timeless," is a collection of both classic and original songs. |
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| James Naughton has won critical acclaim in dramas, comedies and musicals. He is a two-time Tony Award winner as Best Actor in a Musical for Chicago and City of Angels, for which he also won a Drama Desk Award. His solo concert/cabaret acts, James Naughton Live, at the Manhattan Theater Club, Street of Dreams, and the recent Looking for the Heart Of Saturday Night have also earned critical acclaim. |
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| Karen Ziemba won the Tony, Drama Desk and Outer Critics' Circle Awards for her performance in the hit musical Contact at Lincoln Center Theater. More recently, she won the Outer Critics Circle Award and was nominated for the Tony, Drama Desk and L.A.'s Ovation Award for her performance in the Broadway musical Curtains. She has appeared on Broadway in Chicago, A Chorus Line, Never Gonna Dance and Steel Pier, among other shows. |
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| Upcoming L&L Shows |
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| May 3-5, 2008—THE 1959 BROADWAY SONGBOOK |
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JEFF HARNAR, Artistic Director, Host & Vocals
Alex Rybeck, Music Director
Sarah Uriarte Berry, David Burnham, Sally Mayes
Special Guest: Donna McKechnie
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| May 31-June 2, 2008—DID THE AMERICAN SONGBOOK END IN 1965? |
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ANDREA MARCOVICCI, Artistic Director, Host & Vocals
Shelly Markham, Music Director & Piano
Francesca Amari, Kelly Houston, Lee Lessack, Stacy Sullivan, Vocalists |
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| ABOUT "LYRICS & LYRICISTS" |
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| Long one of the 92nd Street Y's most popular programs, the American Songbook series Lyrics & Lyricists was launched in 1970 when longtime Broadway conductor Maurice Levine and lyricist E.Y. "Yip" Harburg (The Wizard of Oz) took to the stage to talk about the then unusual topic of songwriting. Over the years the series has featured every great Broadway and Hollywood lyricist including Betty Comden and Adolph Green, Johnny Mercer, Stephen Sondheim, Dorothy Fields, and Alan Jay Lerner. In 1978, Lyrics & Lyricists began celebrating composers as well as lyricists and, in 1982, the series evolved from first-person histories of the American musical theatre to narrated musical revues. In 2004, the 92nd Street Y reinvented the format yet again when it asked several accomplished champions of the repertoire—artists like John Pizzarelli, Andrea Marcovicci, Rob Fisher, Sheldon Harnick, Robert Kimball and Ted Sperling—to present original programs in the Lyrics & Lyricists tradition: seamless mixtures of information and entertainment with a particular focus on lyrics. For more information, please visit www.92Y.org/lyrics. |
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| ABOUT THE 92nd STREET Y |
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Founded in 1874 by a group of visionary Jewish leaders, the 92nd Street Y has grown into a wide-ranging cultural, educational and community center serving people of all ages, races, faiths and backgrounds. The 92nd Street Y's mission is to enrich the lives of the over 300,000 people who visit in person each year as well as those who visit virtually, through the Y's satellite, television, radio and Internet broadcasts. The organization offers comprehensive performing arts, film and spoken word events; courses in the humanities, the arts, personal development and Jewish culture; activities and workshops for children, teenagers and parents; and health and fitness programs for people of every age. Committed to making its programs available to everyone, the 92nd Street Y awards nearly $1 million in scholarships annually and reaches out to 7,000 public school children through subsidized arts education programs. For more information, please visit www.92Y.org.
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© 2008 92nd Street Young Men's and Young Women's Hebrew Association
All Rights Reserved. |
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