92 St Y Presents THE MAN GOT AWAY: IRA AFTER GEORGE 5/9-5/11

The 92nd Street Y continues the 2009 season of Lyrics & Lyricists^TM with THE MAN GOT AWAY: IRA AFTER GEORGE. The show spotlights the hits - including "Long Ago and Far Away," "The Man That Got Away," and "My Ship" - lyricist Ira Gershwin wrote with composers such as Jerome Kern, Harold Arlen and Kurt Weill, among others. Critic and author Rex Reed, longtime co-host of the syndicated television show At the Movies and currently a culture columnist for The New York Observer, is the program's artistic director and host. Deborah Grace Winer serves as series artistic director.

L&L shows are Saturday at 8 pm, Sunday at 3 and 8 pm, and Monday at 2 and 8 pm. Individual tickets are $60 and $50. There is also a special under-35 ticket price of $25 for the Saturday and Sunday evening shows.

Lucie Arnaz
Actress/singer Arnaz began her career on the TV shows The Lucy Show and Here's Lucy, appearing with her legendary mother, Lucille Ball. She won an Emmy Award as the executive producer of the documentary film Lucy and Desi: A Home Movie. As a stage actress she has appeared on Broadway, where her credits include Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, Lost in Yonkers and They're Playing our Song, as well as in Chicago and London's West End.

Linda Purl
Raised in Japan, Purl once played the role of "Louis" in The King and I in Japanese. In addition to a lengthy list of TV and film credits, she has appeared on Broadway in The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Getting and Spending. She recently released a concert CD, Out of this World - LIVE.

Kurt Reichenbach
Jazz vocalist Reichenbach has drawn comparisons to such jazz legends as Chet Baker, Mel Tormé, and Bobby Darin, and plaudits for his debut album The Night Was Blue, hailed by jazz columnist Christopher Loudon as "... one of the most dynamic vocal debuts of the past decade... a truly impressive new guy... who can stand shoulder to shoulder with the likes of Kurt Elling, John Pizzarelli and Curtis Stigers...."

Tom Wopat
Wopat was nominated for Tony Awards for A Catered Affair and Annie Get Your Gun. His Broadway credits also include Glengarry GLen Ross, 42nd Street, Chicago, Guys and Dolls and City of Angels.

Polly Bergen - Special Guest
Over the course of a six-decade-plus career (starting at age 14), Bergen has been as well known for her dramatic film and Emmy Award-winning TV performances as for her musical endeavors, which include a Tony Award nomination as recently as 2001, for her role in Follies. Additional Broadway credits include Love Letters and Cabaret.

Coming up in 2009

June 6, 7, 8
SUNDAY IN NEW YORK: MEL TORMÉ IN WORDS AND MUSIC
Billy Stritch, Artistic Director, Host, Vocals, Piano
Mark Waldrop, Stage Director
Marilyn Maye, vocals; La Tanya Hall, vocals; Hilary Kole, vocals; Johnny Rodgers, vocals & piano.

ABOUT LYRICS & LYRICISTS
Long one of the 92nd Street Y's most popular programs, the American Songbook series Lyrics & Lyricists^TM 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 is partially underwritten by The Blanche and Irving Laurie Foundation. The performances of Lyrics & Lyricists' "Sunday in New York" show are underwritten by Gilda and Henry Block and Kenneth Kolker. The May 11 evening performance of "The Man That Got Away: Ira After George" is underwritten by Nancy and Jeffrey Lane.

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. For more information, please visit www.92Y.org.