Interview: Glenn Crytzer's SONGBOOK SESSIONS Has an Unusual Album Release Plan

NYC-based bandleader Glenn Crytzer is in the middle of an unusual project. During the pandemic, he and his quartet converted a room of his Manhattan apartment into a studio to record an ambitious, fan-funded project: a 250-song anthology of standards and lesser-known gems. Each Sunday for 25 weeks, they recorded 10 songs live in front of a streaming audience, beginning with songs from 1920 in week one and finishing with songs from 1944 in week 25. Crytzer is currently releasing these songs one week at a time for 250 consecutive weeks.

I've listened to the first volume, with songs of the 1920s, and it's marvelous how Crytzer and his band recreated the sound of that era and captured it with modern recording technology, free of the degraded quality that recordings of that time often suffered. The songs are lush, bouncy and buoyant. Volume 1 officially comes out on December 5, 2025, but you can listen to the tracks as they come out each week on Spotify here. Crytzer began releasing the singles on Friday October 3, and will continue every Friday until all 250 songs are released.

We spoke with Crytzer about what sparked this wide-spanning project, his love for this era of music, and more.

How did you originally get the inspiration to embark on this project?

Well, necessity is the mother of invention. During the pandemic, we'd been playing a lot outdoors, but we knew that when it got cold we'd need to do something with livestreaming to make ends meet until gigs returned. We're all about making deep dives into the repertoire, and our fans love that we bring a researched, historical approach to our work. Going through the songbook year by year gave the series - well I wouldn't go so far as to call it a narrative, but a progression. Something new for people to engage with every week, the opportunity to hear how the songwriting slowly changed over time, and so on.

What is important to you about preserving and sharing the music of the early 20th century?

I fell in love with this music through swing dancing. I started dancing in the late 1990s when I was in school studying classical composition. Of course, then most of the bands weren't doing an historical thing – it was a mix of swing and ska and rockabilly – but that got me interested in the older music and I started going down that rabbit hole. As the dance scene got more into vintage music in the 2000s, nobody was really playing the music I wanted to dance to, so I took up the torch and applied my classical background to studying performance practice in Jazz Age and Swing Era music.

I think what we're seeing now with jazz and the songbook is something similar to what happened in classical music around the turn of the last century. There was a time when Baroque music was just considered old-fashioned. Then people started seeing it as having value for educational purposes, then people started seeing it as interesting for performance, and finally people started getting hip to the idea that the performance practice in Bach should be different from Brahams or Beethoven. I think we're starting to see that happen with Jazz Age and Swing Era music now, though we've still got a ways to go! But it's exciting to be part of it.

When did you first realize that you wanted to collect the songs you performed on Instagram Live and turn them into an album series?

At first we only released the recordings to people who had subscribed to the livestream series. But after a few years of people asking me if we were ever going to put these songs out, I finally thought "well I guess maybe we should." It seemed a shame to do all this work and not share it with as wide an audience as possible.

What made you decide to try this unique album release format in releasing singles for 250 weeks in a row? 

This goes back to what the original series was about. During Covid, especially in the winter, we all felt isolated, and these weekly concerts not only gave our little pod a chance to get together and play music but a way to create some community online with our fans. After the concert every week I'd host a Zoom where everyone could connect. We'd usually have a special guest talk about some historical topic. DeWitt Fleming Jr. (Fate Marable / Lincoln Perry in What a Wonderful World) gave a talk on tap dance history one week. Another week we had Colleen Darnell (both a vintage fashion influencer and a professor of Egyptology) come and give a talk on the influence of ancient Egyptian motifs on 1920s design. It was a bright spot in an otherwise bleak time.

Releasing once a week is an attempt to mirror that. Folks don't have time for a weekly livestream now that the world is moving full steam ahead, but we hope that the songs can be a little bright spot at the end of a long work week. The music of the Jazz Age and Swing Era is nothing if not optimistic. We're hoping it'll be a sort of a Friday morning pick-me-up.

How does it feel now looking back on your pandemic song recordings and what they've turned into?

It's kind of wild. 250 songs is more than a lot of artists release in their entire career. It was a ton of work and looking back I'm sort of like, "Woah, how'd we do that?"

Are you working on anything else besides this album project that you'd like to share with us?

Well, in addition to my weekly residencies (Festival Cafe on Thursdays at 61st and 2nd and Peck Slip Social for Saturday brunch 1-4 pm), I'm performing at and organizing the 10th annual Repeal Day Party on December 5 at the Refinery Hotel, celebrating the repeal of Prohibition. I'll have a seven-piece band playing early 30s music. We're going to have some burlesque performers, DeWitt Fleming Jr. will be MCing, and I've brought in my friend Shannon Mustipher from Privateer Rum to do some specialty cocktails. I've played this party every year for a number of years now, and it's always a lot of fun.

My long-term slow burn project has been working on opening a venue in midtown dedicated to this period of music. Think Broadway show meets fine dining meets walking into a room that makes you feel like you're in an Astaire/Rogers picture. I've put a great team together including a celeb chef, a Tony-winning producer, an Emmy-nominated designer, a rockstar publicist and a lot of other really talented folks. Something of this size takes time to bring to fruition but once we're able to put all the financial pieces together on it I think it's going to be one of the most exciting things to do in NYC!

Is there anything else you'd like to add?

Just a few links!

• Songbook Sessions songs released so far: http://songbook.glenncrytzer.com 
• Pre-save the future songbook sessions releases (it's free) at presave.glenncrytzer.com. Pre-saving tells your favorite streaming platform to add the songs to your library whenever they come out each week. We're also gifting folks some unreleased songs from my orchestra and larger combos when they pre-save! 
• Repeal Day Party info and tickets: repeal.glenncrytzer.com
• For those looking for some great holiday music this year I hope they'll also check out my last album "Underneath the Mistletoe" which features my full orchestra, 11 new original Christmas songs, and 9 new arrangements of holiday classics. They can find that on my Spotify at Spotify.GlennCrytzer.com

For more on Glenn Crytzer and the Songbook Sessions project, visit www.glenncrytzer.com