Purl, Hall, Rodgers Join Cast Of Lyrics & Lyricists Series

The 92nd Street Y announces final casting for the 2009 season of Lyrics & Lyricists^TM, the Y's legendary American Songbook series. Linda Purl, La Tanya Hall, Johnny Rodgers and Hilary Kole join Polly Bergen, Lucie Arnaz, Tom Wopat, Marilyn Maye and more who will sing the songs of Ira Gershwin, Mel Tormé and DeSylva, Brown & Henderson. Charles Osgood returns to L&L as host, for the latter show. This is the first season curated by new series artistic director Deborah Grace Winer.

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

LYRICS & LYRICISTS - FINAL CAST DETAILS
April 4, 5, 6
SUNNY SIDE UP: ROARING THROUGH THE TWENTIES WITH DESYLVA, BROWN & HENDERSON
Robert Kimball, Artistic Director
VINCE GIORDANO, Co-Music Director
JOE THALKEN, Co-Music Director
CHARLES OSGOOD, Host
Randy Skinner, Stage Director & Choreographer
The Lennon/McCartney of their time, DeSylva, Brown & Henderson were the megastar songwriting team of Prohibition-Era Tin Pan Alley who turned out hits like "You're the Cream in My Coffee," "Button Up Your Overcoat," "The Best Things in Life Are Free" and the definitive college musical, Good News. Musical theater historian and guest artistic director Robert Kimball has previously created L&L shows on Mack Gordon, Johnny Mercer and Irving Berlin. Featuring the vintage big band Vince Giordano & The Nighthawks, with authentic sizzling-‘20s arrangements.

Nancy Anderson, vocals
Anderson's Broadway credits include Wonderful Town and A Class Act. She also starred in therecent Encores! production of No, No Nannette.

Jeffry Denman, vocals & dancer
Denman's Broadway credits include the upcoming production of Irving Berlin's White Christmas, The Producers, Dream and How To Succeed in Business Without Really Trying.

Jason Graae, vocals
Cabaret star Graae's Broadway credits include A Grand Night for Singing and Falsettos.

Randy Graff, vocals
Graff won the Best Featured Actress in a Musical Tony Award for City of Angels, and was nominated for a Tony Award for Best Actress in a Musical for A Class Act. Additional Broadway credits include Fiddler on the Roof, Falsettos and Grease.

Meredith Patterson, vocals & dancer
Patterson's Broadway credits include the upcoming production of Irving Berlin's White Christmas and 42nd Street.

Charles Osgood, host
The Emmy Award-winning CBS newsman returns as host, bringing to the show his longtime love of music. Between musical numbers, Osgood offers biographical tidbits, stories behind some of the songs, and a smattering of history with the same flair heard in his CBS radio segments, "The Osgood Files," and CBS Sunday Morning (which he took over from the late Charles Kurault).

May 9, 10, 11
THE MAN THAT GOT AWAY: IRA AFTER GEORGE
Rex Reed, Artistic Director & Host
Tedd Firth, Music Director & Piano
Caitlin Carter, Stage Director
Some of Ira Gershwin's greatest hits - including "Long Ago and Far Away," "The Man That Got Away," and "My Ship" - were co-written not with his brother George, but with composers Jerome Kern, Harold Arlen and Kurt Weill, among others. The inimitable critic and authorRex Reed, longtime co-host of the syndicated television show At the Movies and currently a culture columnist for The New York Observer, leads this showcase celebrating the astonishing career of Ira Gershwin apart from George.

Lucie Arnaz, vocals
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 in London's West End and Chicago, as well as on Broadway, where her credits include Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, Lost in Yonkersand They're Playing our Song.

Polly Bergen, vocals
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.

Linda Purl, vocals
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, vocals
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, vocals
Wopat's Broadway credits include A Catered Affair, which garnered him a Tony Award nomination for Best Actor in a Musical, Glengarry Glen Ross, 42nd Street, Annie Get Your Gun, Chicago, Guys and Dolls and City of Angels.

June 6, 7, 8
SUNDAY IN NEW YORK: MEL TORMÉ IN WORDS AND MUSIC
Billy Stritch, Artistic Director, Vocals, Piano
Mark Waldrop, Stage Director, Co-Script Writer
Billy Stritch, Grammy-winning jazz singer, composer, arranger, vocalist, and jazz pianist, honors the incomparable singer and songwriter Mel Tormé. Widely known as a singer, Tormé also wrote more than 250 songs, including one of the most famous lines in the American Songbook: "Chestnuts roasting on an open fire," from "The Christmas Song." Billy Stritch performed with Mel Tormé in 1988 as part of the JVC Jazz Festival at Carnegie Hall and his fifth CD, Billy Stritch Sings Mel Tormé, was released earlier this year.

La Tanya Hall, vocals
As a backup singer, Hall has sung with such legends as Harry Belafonte, Diana Ross and Aretha Franklin. Michael Feinstein wrote that "...her musicality and myriad interpretive gifts make her singing a unique and joyous experience." Hall recently released her debut solo CD, It's About Time, featuring such standards as "Straighten Up and Fly Right," "The Nearness of You," and "Summertime" and has Off-Broadway roles in A Christmas Carol and the Encores! production of Promises, Promises to her credit.

Hilary Kole, vocals
Singer, pianist and composer Kole began her professional career as the youngest singer to perform at the Rainbow Room, going on to appearances at the Oak Room, Birdland, the Jazz Standard, Lincoln Center and Carnegie Hall.

Marilyn Maye, vocals
Legendary cabaret star Maye appeared a record-setting 76 times on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson. Earlier this year she received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Bistro Awards committee, and played to SRO crowds at the Metropolitan Room. Music writer Gene Lees called her "the best singer I have ever heard of either gender, in any language, in any style, and in any idiom."

Johnny Rodgers, vocals & piano
Singer, pianist, songwriter Rodgers recently debuted on Broadway with Liza Minnelli in Liza at the Palace and co-wrote the ballad I Would Never Leave You featured in the production. In additional to his own work with the Johnny Rodgers Band, he has also toured around with world with Minnelli. He also performed with such artists as Paul McCartney, Ann Hampton Callaway and Michael Feinstein.

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 evening performances of L&L on April 5 and May 10 are underwritten by The Henry Nias Foundation, courtesy of Dr. Stanley Edelman. The May 11 evening performance of "The Man That Got Away: Ira After George" is underwritten by Nancy and Jeffrey Lane.

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