Hoagy Carmichael News

Torch songs, smoky clubs and great music... The 70's in Chicago was a time of amazing people and music for a fresh young face out of Minnesota.  Suzanne Petri, Bobby Schiff, Jim Cox and Robert Breuler share fantastic stories of the great Chicago clubs such as Mr. Kelly's, The London House, Chez Paree and The Happy Medium.

Three members from the original Broadway Production of A Gentleman's Guide to Love & Murder - Kristen Hahn, Jennifer Smith, and Catherine Walker - join the cast of the First National Tour during its St. Louis engagement at the Fabulous Fox Theatre, tonight, September 13, through September 25, 2016.

The Old Globe today announced the first production of its 2017 Summer Season: Guys and Dolls, a musical fable of Broadway. Based on the stories and characters by Damon Runyon, with music and lyrics by Frank Loesser and book by Jo Swerling and Abe Burrows, Guys and Dolls will be directed and choreographed by Josh Rhodes, returning to the Globe after the great successes of Ken Ludwig's Baskerville: A Sherlock Holmes Mystery, which he directed, and Bright Star, which he choreographed.

A Gentleman's Guide to Love & Murder announced today that three members from the original Broadway Production - Kristen Hahn, Jennifer Smith, and Catherine Walker - will join the cast of the First National Tour.

On September 23 and 24, vocalist and keyboardist Ellis Hall and the Utah Symphony will perform soul music favorites, including classics by Marvin Gaye, Ray Charles, and The Temptations.

Norah Jones has announced the October 7 global release of Day Breaks (Blue Note Records), her stunning sixth solo album which is a kindred spirit to the singer's breakout debut Come Away With Me and finds the 9-time GRAMMY-winner returning to the piano and her roots. Norah has also announced Fall tour dates in North America and Europe including The VETS in Providence on December 8 at 8:00pm.

Kaufman Music Center will host a diverse 2016-17 season at Merkin Concert Hall, highlighting Broadway musicals as part of the Broadway Close up series giving theater fans a new perspective on the shows and songs they love, with compelling performances along with eye-opening interviews.

?GABRIELLE STRAVELLI - the celebrated pop/jazz vocalist and songwriter called an "outstanding singer" by The Wall Street Journal and "hotter than the equator" by The Village Voice - will introduce a new evening celebrating the legendary songwriters Johnny Mercer and Hoagy Carmichael at Kitano Jazz (66 Park Avenue at 38th Street) on Wednesday, July 13 with sets at 8:00 PM and 10:00 PM. In addition to well-known standards by Mercer ("Dream") and Carmichael ("Stardust") and compositions they wrote together ("Skylark," "In The Cool Cool Cool of the Evening"), the show includes collaborations with other composers and lyricists. The evening also features rare material by the pair from their Broadway Show I Walk With Music and movies from the 1950s and 60s. She will be joined by Art Hirahara on piano, Pat O'Leary on bass and Eric Halvorson on drums.

?Acclaimed vocalist GABRIELLE STRAVELLI and jazz pianist MICHAEL KANAN will celebrate their powerfully intimate new duet recording Stairway to the Stars with a concert at The Cornelia Street Cafe (29 Cornelia Street in New York) on Monday, July 11 at 8:30 PM. The album is currently available via iTunes and other digital formats; physical copies will be available on Friday, June 24. Stairway to the Stars is produced by Gabrielle Stravelli and Pat O'Leary. 

?Acclaimed vocalist GABRIELLE STRAVELLI and celebrated jazz pianist MICHAEL KANAN will release the powerfully intimate new duet recording Stairway to the Stars on June 24. The album is currently available in digital formats. Stairway to the Stars is produced by Gabrielle Stravelli and Pat O'Leary. 

The fourth time was the charm for Minda Larsen, winner of the 2015 MetroStar Competition: “I have an MFA in opera,” she joked during the debut of her show, My Southern Song, at the Metropolitan Room on May 21, “So it took four tries in six years to win that competition.” The remark is typical of the self-deprecating humor of the versatile singer from Jacksonville, FL, who spent time in Georgia and went to school in South Carolina. Itching all her life to get out of the South, now she longs to get back. Her new show (a four-date run that is her award for winning the MetroStar) captures that longing with love, laughter, and an occasional tear.

Last Saturday night at the Rose Theater, Jazz at Lincoln Center presented a celebration on what would have been Ray Charles' 85th Birthday. The program was led by Musical Director and trumpeter Kenny Rampton (who once toured with the Ray Charles band), and included 10 longtime members of the icon's orchestra, along with the most recent “Rayettes” (backup singers Renee Georges, Katrina Harper, and Angela Workman). “Ray Charles Robinson, the genius of soul, his music was beyond genre,” Rampton told the audience. “Anything Mr. C. did from country to blues to the National Anthem was all Ray Charles . . .'

I hear music, mighty fine music . . . Host Michael Feinstein sings with pristine bass accompaniment, as Musical Director Tedd Firth's Big Band filters in musician by musician. The sweetest sounds I ever heard . . . he continues as a light saxophone joins syncopated rhythm. Then whomp! All 17 players swing. Rarely have I heard sound design so perfectly balanced, appropriately favoring vocals. Feinstein remains smooth and easy riding the wave. 'You may wonder about the role of jazz in popular song . . . ' our host begins at the start of Jazz at Lincoln Center's first of three segments of the Jazz & Popular Song Series in the Appel Room. At a time when popular songs came and went with alacrity, jazz artists meeting for improvisational jam sessions needed pieces they all knew. Thus jazz mined popular music creating an intersection of the two art forms. Aided and abetted by four very different featured guests, Feinstein illuminates by example, not narrative.

Johnny Mercer (1909-1976) wrote the lyrics to more than 1500 songs, including dozens upon dozens for movies and Broadway shows. He received 19 Academy Award nominations, and won four Best Original Song Oscars. Mercer was also a composer, a vocalist and the foresighted founder of Capitol Records. To appreciate The American Songbook, one must be familiar with this multifaceted artist. In a revue presented last Thursday to Sunday at the Studio Theater on West 42nd Street, Accentuate The Positive staged its title song as an evangelical meeting. You've got to ac-cen-tu-ate the positive/E-li-mi-nate the negative/Latch on to the affirmative/Don't mess with Mister In-Between…(Harold Arlen/Johnny Mercer) Stephen Belida played a preacher while around him Lynne Halliday, Tom Hafner, Madison Stratton, Lou Steele, and Carey Van Driest chanted, sung, snapped, clapped, circled, and raised their arms in Hallelujah fashion. An auspicious beginning.

42nd Street Moon concludes its 23rd season with Frank Loesser's glorious Napa Valley romance, the Tony Award-winning THE MOST HAPPY FELLA. This masterpiece with book, music and lyrics by Frank Loesser (Guys and Dolls, How to Succeed in Business …, Where's Charley?) is an unconventional and sweepingly romantic love story set in the vineyards of Napa Valley. Considered one of Loesser's greatest works, the stunning score includes "The Most Happy Fella," "Standing on the Corner," "Joey, Joey, Joey," "Rosabella," "Big D," "My Heart Is So Full of You" and "Song of a Summer Night." Directed by Cindy Goldfield, with musical direction by Dave Dobrusky, THE MOST HAPPY FELLA will run April 27 - May 17, 2016 (Press opening: Saturday, April 30) at the Eureka Theatre, 215 Jackson Street, San Francisco. For tickets ($25-$75) or more information, the public may call (415) 255-8207 or visit www.42ndstmoon.org. 

Bar Thalia, a narrow, uber-casual bar/café adjacent to the Upper West Side arts hub Symphony Space, has become the musical pied-à-terre of vocalist Marcus Goldhaber. Each first Sunday of the month, the artist presents two loosey-goosey acoustic sets with a guest singer and guitarist. The past Sunday's show featured vocalist Tessa Souter with Tony Romano on guitar.

Vocalist BJ Ward and pianist Simon Wallace return to London's The Crazy Coqs on March 21st 2016 at 8pm to perform the music of the late Marshall Barer.

Principal Baltimore Symphony Pops Conductor Jack Everly presents top notch entertainment.

Jeff Macauley loves Dinah Shore. That's usually the case when a cabaret performer devotes an entire show to a star's body of work. But there's affection and admiration, and then there's all-encompassing passion and adoration that informs the performer's every note, lyric, and anecdote, and thereby imparts that love to us (whether or not we were previously fans). By that standard, MWAH! The Dinah Shore Show, Macauley's 1998 Backstage Bistro Award Winner for 'Outstanding Theme Show' (revived last Saturday night as part of Stephen Hanks' monthly New York Cabaret's Greatest Hits series at the Metropolitan Room--is one of the most successful shows of its kind I've seen.

The Great American Songbook Foundation presents a new gallery exhibit, The Great Indiana Songbook: Two Centuries of Hoosier Music, opening on February 15. The yearlong exhibit celebrates Indiana's bicentennial by highlighting the rich musical heritage of the Hoosier state.