Explore and enjoy more glorious songs from the Great American Songbook with stories about their long, often-unexpected lives. The spring lineup covers songs that are considered “simply the best”—ageless and favorite beauties, many by songwriters unmet in prior sessions of this popular series.
Combining a lively lecture with a wide variety of film clips, filmmaker and cultural historian Sara Lukinson traces how these songs came to be and how different artists, unexpected arrangements, and changing times transformed them into something new but still the same.
May 15 Harold Arlen: The Most Original of Them All
Songwriters thought Harold Arlen was the best of all of them, and singers wanted to make his songs their own. Torch songs, blues, finger-snapping jazz, heartbreak and joy all poured out of him. He was a composer who understood what it took for a song to stay with people forever.
Songs include Somewhere Over the Rainbow, Stormy Weather, One for My Baby, The Man that Got Away, I’ve Got the World on a String, and It’s Only a Paper Moon.
May 29 Makers of Magical Worlds: Lerner and Loewe
Theirs was an odd pairing, the old-world composer and high-energy New York lyricist but together they created myth-making worlds on stage and the movies. Their songs painted enchanted worlds we wanted to step into. And sometimes did, as in Camelot, My Fair Lady, and Gigi.
Songs include If Ever I Would Leave You, I Could Have Danced All Night, Almost Like Being in Love, I Remember it Well, Camelot, The Heather on the Hill, and On the Street Where You Live.
June 12 The Great Forget-me-nots: Songs That Stand Alone
We know all these songs, because they are the one-of-a-kinds, written to stand alone or that came out of nowhere, from shows we don’t remember or by writers we’ve long since forgotten. Here’s a chance to enjoy them and meet the people who gave them to us.
Songs include Dancing in the Dark, Smoke Gets in Your Eyes, September Song, The Very Thought of You, Always on My Mind, and Once Upon a Time
Lukinson, who has won three Emmys and seven Writer’s Guild Awards, teaches at NYU and the 92nd Street Y and recently co-wrote 10 Seconds to Air: My Life in the Director’s Chair, with Don Mischer.
3 sessions
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