Down the street, Oklahoma! is premiering, a debut that for Hart (Ethan Hawke) stings. His longtime collaborator, the composer Richard Rodgers, has made it not with Hart but with his new songwriting partner, Oscar Hammerstein II. Six months from this night, Hart will die from pneumonia after spending a cold night passed out outside an 8th Avenue bar. He was 48.
The Songbook Sundays concert series created and hosted by Deborah Grace Winer, will continue October 5 at Jazz at Lincoln Center's Dizzy's Club with a celebration of the work of Leonard Bernstein. Entitled Tonight, Bernstein, performances are scheduled for 5 PM and 7:30 PM. Interpreting the work of the late composer and lyricist will be Tony winner Karen Ziemba, Hamilton favorite Sydney James Harcourt, and Simona Daniele. The evening's music director is Tedd Firth.
The lyrical register of pop music demands imagery that's direct and broadly relatable, the kind of message that can be easily understood over a thudding bass line. So too does gospel, where the communion arrives not on Saturday night at the club but at a service the next morning. In either case, the roof might get blown off, and in a moment of mass worship, you're able to believe for a few minutes at a time in a collective euphoria.
The Los Altos Stage Company presents Cabaret, one of the most iconic musicals in American theater history. With music and lyrics by John Kander and Fred Ebb, and a book by Joe Masteroff (which in turn was based on a play by John Van Druten and a novel by Christopher Isherwood), the musical debuted on Broadway in 1966 and was later adapted into the 1972 film, which won legendary director-choreographer Bob Fosse his first Oscar.
Sweet Charity is a timeless musical that captures the essence of love and hardship through the story of Charity Hope Valentine, a taxi dancer in New York.
I don't think that the system broke down at random; I think it broke down in response to more colleges creating more B.F.A. programs, not because they were equipped to have those programs, but because they thought they would be cash cows—and they were.