TV Exclusive: Song Stories- Lynn Ahrens Explains How Mother Found Her Voice for RAGTIME's 'Back to Before'

How did some of your favorite songs come to be? BroadwayWorld is getting the story behind the song in exclusive interviews from your favorite Broadway composers. Below, watch as Lynn Ahrens, currently represented on Broadway with Once on This Island and Anastasia, explains how she and collaborator Stephen Flaherty came to write an Act 2 anthem from Ragtime, "Back to Before."

Selections from Ragtime and A Man of No Importance will be performed at Manhattan Concert Productions' Broadway Classics in Concert- tonight, February 20 at Carnegie Hall. The evening will be a unique celebration of the past five years of Manhattan Concert Productions' critically acclaimed Broadway Series which has featured award-winning composers, star-studded casts, esteemed creative teams, singers from across the United States, and the outstanding New York City Chamber Orchestra. Other selections performed will include music by Jason Robert Brown, George Gershwin, Alan Menken, Lucy Simon, and Maury Yeston. Click here for tickets.

Ahrens won Tony, Drama Desk and Outer Critics Circle Awards and received two Grammy nominations for Broadway's Ragtime. For Twentieth Century Fox's animated feature film Anastasia, she was nominated for two Academy Awards and two Golden Globes. She and longtime collaborator Stephen Flaherty received the Oscar Hammerstein Award for Lifetime Achievement, and in 2015 they were inducted into the Theater Hall of Fame. Broadway: Anastasia; Once On This Island (Olivier Award, Best Musical; Tony nominations, Best Book and Score); Seussical (Grammy nomination); My Favorite Year; Chita Rivera: The Dancer's Life; Rocky; Madison Square Garden's A Christmas Carol; Ragtime (2010 Broadway revival). Off-Broadway and regional: Lincoln Center Theater's Dessa Rose, The Glorious Ones (both Drama Desk-nominated) and A Man of No Importance (Outer Critics Circle Award, Best Musical); Lucky Stiff; Little Dancer (Kennedy Center world premiere).