Deborah Grace Winer Hosts 'Lyrics and Lyricists' at Y

Journalist and playwright Deborah Grace Winer was recently named Series Artistic Director of the 92nd Street Y's legendary American Songbook series Lyrics and Lyricists (beginning with the 2009 season).  This month, she comes to the 92nd Street Y as host and artistic director of L&L's I've Got Your Number: Romance, the Rat Pack and Carolyn Leigh, which runs March 29-31.  Winer's Carolyn Leigh tribute features vocalists Debby Boone, Loston Harris, James Naughton, and Karen Ziemba.  John Oddo is music director, and Mark Waldrop is stage director.

L&L shows are Saturday at 8 pm, Sunday at 3 and 8 pm, and Monday at 2 and 8pm.  Individual tickets are $60 and $50; subscriptions to the entire series are $250 and $220.

 Carolyn Leigh's first big break as a songwriter – "Young at Heart" – became a huge hit for Frank Sinatra.  The year was 1954; Leigh was still in her twenties.  She went on to write elegant, savvy songs that embodied the martini-lounge sensibility of the 1950s and '60s and was the major female songwriter of her generation (a successor of sorts to Dorothy Fields).  Carolyn Leigh's songs – recorded by and still associated with Sinatra, Peggy Lee, and Tony Bennett, among others – included "The Best Is Yet to Come," "Witchcraft," "Rules of the Road," and "I've Got Your Number."  She also wrote songs for Broadway shows including Peter Pan (with Moose Charlap) and Little Me, with her longtime collaborator Cy Coleman. This evening of L&L includes many of Leigh's blockbusters, as well as little-heard gems like her major country-and-western hit and her 1957 snapshot of suburban Connecticut that could easily be a precursor to "Desperate Housewives."

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