The 92nd Street Y concludes the 2009 season of Lyrics & LyricistsTM with GrammyTM Award-winning composer/singer/pianist Billy Stritch as host and artistic director of Sunday in New York: Mel Tormé in Words and Music. 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.
"There are many ways to present the American Songbook and one of them is to create a portrait of a great singer's life through the songs he or she chose to sing," comments series artistic director Deborah Grace Winer.
The Cast includes vocalists
La Tanya Hall (Encores! production of Promises, Promises),
Hilary Kole (numerous appearances at the Oak Room, Birdland, Lincoln Center and
Carnegie Hall),
Marilyn Maye (cabaret star who appeared a record-setting 76 times on The Tonight Show with
Johnny Carson), and vocalist/pianist
Johnny Rodgers (who recently debuted on Broadway with
Liza Minnelli in Liza's at the Palace).
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.
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.
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.
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