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| Lyrics and Lyricists 2004-2005 35th Anniversary Season |
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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" SERIES |
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| 35TH ANNIVERSARY SEASON |
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2004-2005 Artistic Directors:
ANDRÉ DE SHIELDS
ON ANDY RAZAFF / NOV 20-22
ROBERT KIMBALL
ON MACK GORDON / JAN 29-31
ROB FISHER
ON SHELDON HARNICK / FEB 26-28
DEBORAH GRACE WINER
ON DOROTHY FIELDS / MAR 19-21
PAUL TRUEBLOOD
ON BETTY COMDEN & ADOLPH GREEN / MAY 14-16 |
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| New York, NY, August, 10, 2004—The 92nd Street Y presents the 35th anniversary season of its legendary Lyrics & Lyricists series, which celebrates the words and music of the American songbook. Following the success of last season's new format, L&L again features five shows designed specifically for L&L by five different artistic directors. This year's programs include tributes to and appearances by Sheldon Harnick and Betty Comden. |
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For the first time, the L&L season begins in November instead of January, opening with ANDRÉ DE SHIELDS's innovative tribute to African-American songwriter Andy Razaf (Nov 20-22). In January, renowned musical theater historian ROBERT KIMBALL (Jan 29-31) pays tribute to Academy Award-winning lyricist Mack Gordon. ROB FISHER (Feb 26-28) once again teams up with Sheldon Harnick (who hosted Fisher's L&L tribute to Ira Gershwin last season) for a look at Mr. Harnick's own songs. In March — Women's History Month — journalist and playwright DEBORAH GRACE WINER celebrates the centenary of the only major-league female songwriter of her time, Dorothy Fields (Mar 19-21). To close the season in May, PAUL TRUEBLOOD, longtime music director for Betty Comden and Adolph Green, pays tribute to the inimitable pair, with a special appearance by Ms. Comden (May 14-16). |
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| Each artistic director works with Kristin Lancino, artistic advisor to the 92nd Street Y Tisch Center for the Arts, and the Center's director, Hanna Arie-Gaifman, to create an original program in the L&L tradition: a seamless mix of information and entertainment with a particular focus on lyrics. |
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| All L&L shows are Saturdays at 8pm; Sundays at 2:30pm & 8pm; Mondays at 2pm & 8pm. Individual tickets are $55 and $45; subscriptions to the entire series are $250. |
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| November 20-22, 2004 |
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HOTCHA RAZZ-MA-TAZZ: THE LYRICS OF ANDY RAZAF
ANDRÉ DE SHIELDS, ARTISTIC DIRECTOR
Frank Owens, Music Director |
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| Award-winning actor, director and educator André De Shields ("The Wiz," "The Full Monty," "Ain't Misbehavin'") pays tribute to African-American songwriter Andy Razaf (1895-1973) in Hotcha Razz-Ma-Tazz, named after a Razaf tune that Cab Calloway made famous. Razaf's hits with the great Fats Waller — "Ain't Misbehavin'," "Honeysuckle Rose," "The Joint is Jumping" and "(What Did I Do to Be So) Black and Blue" — have become part of the standard repertoire. Razaf also collaborated with legendary pianist-composers Eubie Blake, James P. Johnson and Willie "the Lion" Smith. |
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| De Shields plans what he calls a "concise show of delicious entertainment" that includes singing, dancing and a touch of history, including the story of how Razaf, the grand-nephew of the last reigning queen of Madagascar, wound up writing some of the biggest hits of the early decades of American popular music. |
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| To convey the historical context in which Razaf wrote and to highlight the African-American lineage of American musical theater in general, De Shields’s tribute takes the form of a minstrel show, albeit with several key elements turned on their heads. The cast of white men in blackface — an image that is synonymous with the minstrel show — is replaced by a cast of male and female African-American performers. And the derogatory stereotypes of the minstrel show are substituted with the multidimensional, socially conscious characters of Razaf's lyrics. As in the minstrel show, the first half is fast-paced and frenetic, while the second act focuses more on story-songs and ballads. Throughout, the show features the highlights of Andy Razaf's Tin Pan Alley writing career during the Harlem renaissance. |
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| January 29-31, 2005 |
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SERENADE IN BLUE: THE LYRICS OF MACK GORDON
ROBERT KIMBALL, ARTISTIC DIRECTOR |
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| The Academy Award-winning lyricist Mack Gordon (1904-1959) wrote the lyrics to more than 120 hit songs — primarily for movies — including "At Last," "I've Got a Gal in Kalamazoo," "Did You Ever See a Dream Walking?" "There Will Never Be Another You," "You'll Never Know" and "You Make Me Feel So Young." In Serenade in Blue, musical theater historian Robert Kimball celebrates the centennial of this remarkable lyricist and his creative partnerships with composers Harry Warren, Harry Revel, and others. Kimball was inspired to pay tribute to Gordon by longtime celebrity publicist and cabaret writer Gary Stevens, who died last spring at 88. Stevens had been good friends with Gordon, often talking up the lyricist's uncanny ability to breathe life into his own songs when performing them for colleagues and movie moguls alike. |
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| February 26-28, 2005 |
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CELEBRATION OF SHELDON HARNICK
ROB FISHER, ARTISTIC DIRECTOR & PIANO |
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| After working as a professional violinist in and around Chicago, Sheldon Harnick (b. 1924) moved to New York in 1950 to pursue a career in the musical theater. Harnick's first song for a Broadway show was "The Boston Beguine" for "New Faces of 1952." His collaboration with composer Jerry Bock produced the Broadway classics "Fiddler on the Roof" (1964 Tony Award), "She Loves Me" (1963 Grammy Award) and "Fiorello" (1959 Pulitzer Prize and Tony Award), among others. Harnick has also provided the librettos for many opera productions, among them "Cyrano" (with Jack Beeson in 1994) and "Coyote Tales" (with Henry Mollicone in 1998). Led by noted music director and conductor Rob Fisher, this show features Sheldon Harnick. The multi-talented Fisher is probably best known as musical director of City Center's Encores! and leader of the Coffee Club Orchestra (a group developed for Garrison Keillor's "American Radio Company"); he was also artistic advisor for Carnegie Hall's two-year Gershwin Centenary Celebration. |
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| March 19-21, 2005 |
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DOROTHY'S SIDE OF THE STREET: THE DOROTHY FIELDS CENTENNIAL CELEBRATION
DEBORAH GRACE WINER, ARTISTIC DIRECTOR
John Oddo, Music Director |
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| Journalist and playwright Deborah Grace Winer presents Dorothy's Side of the Street, a show celebrating lyricist Dorothy Fields (1905-1974) in her centennial year. Fields (who appeared at L&L in 1972) wrote songs that have become part of the fabric of American culture, but her name is not nearly as well known as her lyrics. Her hits include "I Can't Give You Anything But Love (Baby)," "Big Spender," "On the Sunny Side of the Street" and "Don't Blame Me." Fields was the only major-league woman songwriter in the early part of the century. She wrote hits right alongside the Gershwins, Rodgers and Hart and Cole Porter, and collaborated with the great composers Jimmy McHugh, Jerome Kern and Cy Coleman. When Betty Comden did her first show on Broadway, "On the Town," in the mid-1940s, she was still a pioneer in a field almost exclusively dominated by men, but Fields had already been a star lyricist for 20 years. |
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| Deborah Grace Winer is the author of On the Sunny Side of the Street : The Life and Lyrics of Dorothy Fields (Schirmer, 2000), the only book written about Dorothy Fields's life and work. Winer says she got hooked on Fields's songs as a teenage old-movie buff, savoring lyrics like "For Heaven rest us, I'm not asbestos" (from the song "I Won't Dance" in the 1939 Fred-and-Ginger movie "Roberta") and "We should be like a couple of hot tomatoes, But you're as cold as yesterday's mashed potatoes" (from "A Fine Romance" in the 1936 film "Swing Time," also with Astaire and Rogers). Winer is also the author of 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); her play "The Last Girl Singer" was produced off-Broadway in 1995. |
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| Winer enlists John Oddo, longtime musical director for the late Rosemary Clooney (a close friend of Winer), as musical director for her L&L show. |
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| May 14-16, 2005 |
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COMES ONCE IN A LIFETIME: BETTY COMDEN & ADOLPH GREEN
PAUL TRUEBLOOD, ARTISTIC DIRECTOR & PIANO |
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| Betty Comden (b. 1915) and Adolph Green (1915-2002) wrote lyrics together for more than 60 years — they had the longest-running creative partnership in theater history and co-authored the books and/or lyrics to the classic musicals "On the Town," "Singin' in the Rain," "The Band Wagon" and "Bells Are Ringing." |
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| Paul Trueblood, Comden and Green's longtime music director, opens his L&L tribute to the pair, Comes Once in a Lifetime, with the song of the same name, from the 1961 Broadway musical "Subways are for Sleeping." The first half of the show is then devoted to Comden and Green's lyrical take on New York City ("New York, New York," "Christopher Street," and others) and their contributions to the genre Trueblood calls "requited love songs," in which the boy gets the girl ("Just in Time," "A Little Bit in Love"). After intermission, Trueblood treats the audience to some of Comden and Green's lesser known but delightfully satirical work about show business itself, including a comedy sketch they wrote in 1938 about movie ads. The show draws to a close with a stroll through Comden and Green's "star turns" — the songs they wrote for the biggest names with the most distinctive voices, from "100 Easy Ways to Lose a Man" (originally sung by Rosalind Russell) to "Never, Never Land" (immortalized by Mary Martin). |
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| Both Trueblood and Comden and Green have a long history with L&L. The songwriting duo was part of L&L's inaugural season, and Trueblood appeared for the first time during the following season (with Alan Jay Lerner). It was L&L's founding director, Maurice Levine, who introduced Trueblood to the pair; the introduction led to 20 years as musical director on their Broadway and traveling show, "A Party with Comden and Green." Trueblood got to know them on and off stage, he says, and aside from admiring the satire and wit of their lyrics, "being with them was just a riot," he recalls. He brings that spirit to the Y for this L&L show, and welcomes Betty Comden for a special appearance. |
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| ABOUT "LYRICS & LYRICISTS" |
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| The granddaddy of American songbook programs, Lyrics & Lyricists was launched in 1970 when longtime Broadway conductor Maurice Levine and lyricist E.Y. "Yip" Harburg took to the stage of the 92nd Street Y to talk about the then unusual topic of songmaking. The series has featured every great Broadway and Hollywood lyricist and composer, laying the groundwork for more recent series like Lincoln Center's American Songbook, Carnegie Hall's American Popular Song Celebration and City Center's Encores! Great American Musicals in Concert. |
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| Lyrics & Lyricists has been one of the most popular series at the 92nd Street Y since its inception in 1970, when Arthur Cantor, a trustee of the Billy Rose Foundation, approached Hadassah Markson, then the director of the 92nd Street Y Music School, about presenting a music series focusing on lyricists. Markson enlisted longtime Broadway conductor Maurice Levine, who in turn enlisted lyricist E.Y. "Yip" Harburg ("The Wizard of Oz") to launch the series on December 13, 1970. Eventually, the series expanded to include composers, and in 1984 went from first-person histories of the American musical theatre to a series of narrated musical revues. The series has featured some of Broadway and Hollywood's greatest songwriters, including Betty Comden and Adolph Green, Johnny Mercer and Stephen Sondheim. |
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| ABOUT THE 92ND STREET Y |
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| Since its concert series began in 1934, what is now the 92nd Street Y Tisch Center for the Arts, endowed through the generous support of Joan and Preston Robert Tisch, has presented the world's most acclaimed classical musicians like Janos Starker, Emmanuel Pahud and the Tokyo String Quartet. The Center is also well known for its jazz series, curated by jazz great Dick Hyman, and its Lyrics & Lyricists series, the grandfather of the now popular American songbook series. The Center's legendary Unterberg Poetry Center (estab. 1939) presents the country's oldest and most illustrious reading series and an extensive writing program that gives working adults the opportunity to learn from well-known, published authors. Outreach activities include a literacy program for new immigrants and workshops for high school students taught by some of the country's leading writers. |
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| The 92nd Street Y unites culture and community service in one multifaceted institution. Founded in 1874 by a group of visionary Jewish leaders, the Y is dedicated to enriching the lives of the 300,000 people of every race and faith who annually visit its three facilities — the well-known headquarters on Manhattan's Upper East Side, Makor, on the Upper West Side, and the Rockland County campgrounds. Visitors come to the 92nd Street Y to hear music of all kinds; to listen to writers read from their work; to explore Jewish culture; and to gain insight into the events and ideas of the day from public figures and experts in every field. Programs for children and adults help both groups navigate each stage of life, an extensive adult-education curriculum includes instruction by renowned authors and artists, and an unusual wellness initiative offers both a wide range of fitness activities and the opportunity to learn from the nation's leading healthcare professionals. Committed to sharing its programs with all New Yorkers regardless of economic circumstance, the 92nd Street Y provides $1 million in scholarships every year and reaches out to 6,000 public school children with fully-subsidized arts programs. For more information, visit
www.92Y.org/press. |
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