Composer/pianist/singer/actor/bandleader Hoagy Carmichael wrote four of the most-recorded American songs of all time: "Stardust," "Georgia on My Mind," "The Nearness of You," and "Heart and Soul." Lyrics & LyricistsTM closes out its 40th anniversary season with its first-ever tribute to this American Songbook icon with "In the Cool, Cool, Cool of the Evening: The Stardust of Hoagy Carmichael." The show's artistic director is TED SPERLING, with a trio of Broadway vocalists: LAURA MARIE DUNCAN, CAPATHIA JENKINS and CLARKE THORELL. Sperling, who returns for his fourth L&L season, is one of Broadway's most pre-eminent musical directors, with credits including South Pacific, The Light in the Piazza, The Full Monty and Guys and Dolls.
Series artistic director DEBORAH GRACE WINER comments, "We're thrilled to have someone with the musical stature of Ted Sperling explore Hoagy Carmichael's work. Because underneath that homespun surface, Carmichael's songs are among the most musically sophisticated and satisfying in the American Songbook."
L&L shows are Saturday, June 5 at 8 pm; Sunday, June 6 at 3 and 8 pm; and Monday June 7 at 2 and 8 pm. Individual tickets are $62 and $52. There is also a special under-35 ticket price of $25 for the Saturday and Sunday evening shows.
About Hoagy Carmichael
Jazz man Hoagy Carmichael's career dated back to the earliest days of jazz when he worked with such innovators as Paul Whitman, Bix Beiderbecke, Louis Armstrong and Duke Ellington in the 1920s and ‘30s, writing and recording songs like "Stardust" and "Rockin' Chair." Eventually, like many other songwriters of the time, he migrated to Hollywood, where, writing music and occasional lyrics, he collaborated with Johnny Mercer, Ned Washington and Frank Loesser. In more recent years, artists as varied as Norah Jones and Barbra Streisand ("The Nearness of You"), Leon Redbone ("Lazy Bones"), Van Morrison ("Georgia on My Mind") and George Harrison ("Baltimore Oriole" and "Hong Kong Blues") have covered his songs.
Carmichael was also an actor whose 14 film credits include To Have and Have Not, Young Man with a Horn, and The Best Years of our Lives, alongside stars like Kirk Douglas and Lauren Bacall. He described his own on-screen persona as "the ‘hound-dog-faced old musical philosopher noodling on the honky-tonk piano, saying to a tart with a heart of gold: He'll be back, honey. He's all man'."
Cast:
Laura Marie Duncan, vocals
Duncan currently appears on Broadway as Ensign Diana Murphy in South Pacific, and was in the original Broadway casts of Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, and The Full Monty.
Capathia Jenkins, vocals
Jenkins has appeared on Broadway in Martin Short: Fame Becomes Me, Caroline, or Change, The Look of Love and The Civil War. She garnered a Drama Desk nomination for Outstanding Solo Performance for (mis)Understanding Mammy: The Hattie McDaniel Story.
Clarke Thorell, vocals
Thorell originated the role of Corny Collins in Hairspray and Jim Farrell in Titanic. He made his Broadway debut in The Who's Tommy and he was recently in the world premiere of Marc Shaiman's new musical, Catch Me if You Can.
ABOUT LYRICS & LYRICISTS
Long one of the 92nd Street Y's most popular programs, the American Songbook series Lyrics & LyricistsTM 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.
The Lyrics & Lyricists series receives support from Lucie Arnaz Luckinbill and The Blanche and Irving Laurie Foundation.
ABOUT THE 92nd STREET Y
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 - about 300,000 people each year.
Since launching its concert series in 1934, what is now the 92nd Street Y Tisch Center for the Arts has presented acclaimed classical musicians and exciting newcomers. The Center is also home to 92Y's legendary American songbook series, Lyrics & Lyricists, and to 92Y's summer Jazz in July festival, with artistic director Bill Charlap. The Tisch Center's literary program, the Unterberg Poetry Center, presents the country's oldest and arguably most illustrious reading series as well as an extensive writing program that gives working adults access to teachers who are published authors - a rarity outside M.F.A. programs. The 92nd Street Y Tisch Center for the Arts is endowed through the generosity of the Joan and Preston Robert Tisch family.
For more information, please visit www.92Y.org.
