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More Stories from the American Songbook

Songs with Wide Open Arms

Afternoon Course

Thursday, February 17, 2022 - 12:00 p.m. to 1:15 p.m. ET
Code: 1K0198
Location:
This program is part of our
Smithsonian Associates Streaming series.
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$25
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Clockwise: Nat King Cole, 1959; The original "South Pacific" playbill; Richard Rodgers seated at piano with Lorenz Hart on right (Library of Congress)

Save when you purchase the More Stories from the American Songbook winter series!

Using a medley of filmed performances, documentary filmmaker and cultural historian Sara Lukinson traces how some of our favorite love songs from the American songbook came to be and how re-imaginings by different artists, unexpected arrangements, and changing times transformed them into something more.

Lukinson, who has won three Emmys and seven Writer’s Guild Awards, now teaches at NYU and the 92nd Street Y. Her personal essays have appeared in the New York Times, Washington Post, and Intima: A Journal of Narrative Medicine.

Session Information

Songs with Wide Open Arms:What a Wonderful World” and “Smile”

These are the songs that can lift your spirits, bring back a smile, or open your arms to the day. They can melt our blues and keep us company when we’re happy. A wide range of arrangements keep them living on and on, through times of joy and tears.

Additional Sessions

Patron Information

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