Deborah Grace Winer – Defined By the Company She Keeps
Author/historian/dramatist and self avowed “show maker,” Deborah Grace Winer owns her grandmother’s 1929 piano. (“Lots of cool people,” some of the best in the business, play it.) Among photos atop the instrument is her younger self with beloved mentor Rosemary Clooney. On the wall behind is a framed copy of “The Ballad of The Shape […]
That’s Entertainment: Dietz & Schwartz and Friends
The Mabel Mercer Foundation’s annual summer concert celebrated composer Howard Dietz (1896-1983) and lyricist Arthur Schwartz (1900-1984), while including an unrelated roster of other writers. Relative newcomers and established artists presented jazz, cabaret, and musical theater interpretations out of what we call The American Songbook, which, despite suggestions to the contrary, continues to endure and […]
Songs and Stories with Harvey Granat: Alan and Marilyn Bergman
Lyricists Alan and Marilyn Bergman were both born out of the same Brooklyn hospital into Eastern European families. Despite neighborhood proximity, they didn’t meet until respectively landing in Los Angeles the 1950s. One might call this particular collaboration Kismet. The married couple has been nominated for 16 Academy Awards garnering three. Their extensive oeuvre also […]
Hello Dillie! – Sheer Delight
“I’ve gotten to an age when people say to me you’ve had an interesting life. Had?!” Dillie Keane and songwriting partner of 35 years, Adele Anderson (they both write lyrics, Keane writes the music) might be love children of Dorothy Fields and Noel Coward. As with Fields’ work, cleverness never obscures honesty or empathy. Like […]