Andreasong and the 92nd Street Y Lyrics & Lyricists series recently announced the release of Kurt Weill In America, the CD of the original concert conceived, written and directed by Andrea Marcovicci and presented at the Y in November 2005. The album, produced by Ms. Marcovicci and her longtime musical director Shelly Markham, with Frank Skillern serving as executive producer, celebrates the German-born composer Kurt Weill and the lyrics of Maxwell Anderson, Ira Gershwin, Oscar Hammerstein, Langston Hughes, Alan Jay Lerner, Ogden Nash, Paul Green and Ann Ronell. The cast includes Andrea Marcovicci, Anna Bergman, Barbara Brussell, Mark Coffin, Chuck Cooper, Jeff Harnar and Maude Maggart. The CD is available through Andrea’s web site www.marcovicci.com, at Lyrics & Lyricists shows and now, being distributed through LML Music, is in record stores throughout the country, as welll as for sale online at Amazon.com, iTunes, CD Universe and Circuit City, among others.
The recording has received exciting reviews from newspapers around the country, as well as online publications. It will be submitted for Grammy consideration in the coming season. Rating: (WILD APPLAUSE) EXCELLENT. The genius of Kurt Weill shines in the melodic mastery he brought to lyricists Maxwell Anderson, Ogden Nash, Langston Hughes, Oscar Hammerstein II, Alan Jay Lerner and Ira Gershwin. A generous 27 songs, from the underappreciated “Johnny Johnson” (1936) on, are beautifully rendered by seven superb voices and musical director Shelly Markham’s small ensemble at this 2005 concert, scripted and directed by Andrea Marcovicci, in the 92nd Street Y Lyrics and Lyricists series. Selections range from familiar—Chuck Cooper’s celestially poignant “Lost in the Stars”; a swinging “I’m a Stranger Here Myself”; Barbara Brussell’s lilting “Speak Low”—to such rarities as Weill’s last song, “This Time Next Year” (deftly styled by Marcovicci), and “The River Is So Blue” (cut from a 1937 film), sung with magnetic yearning by Maude Maggart, who also excels on “My Ship.”
—Robert Hurwitt, San Francisco Chronicle
In November 2005, [Marcovicci] thrilled audiences with her innovative program, Kurt Weill in America; and now, a CD of that show—which also features Anna Bergman, Barbara Brussell, Mark Coffin, Chuck Cooper, Jeff Harnar, and Maude Maggart—“I’m just thrilled about it,” she says. “I work for a year on these projects and usually, poof, they’re gone in a flash and all your hard work disappears in the ether. Now, this experience is permanent.”
—Theatermania.com
Listen to an audio clip of the cast singing Alan Jay Lerner’s “Love Song.”
[Lyrics & Lyricists: 38th Season at the Y]
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The Tokyo String Quartet recently played at the Saratoga Chamber Music Festival and freelance writer James Hennerty writes in Albany’s Times Union, “Tokyo quartet wows festival”: The players gave a perfectly persuasive performance, and the final lyrical postlude was transcendentally beautiful. The Quartet is to be congratulated for programming such a new work. [34-year-old composer Lera] Auerbach’s music shows tremendous potential—if she doesn’t pass out from exhaustion first.
The Tokyo Quartet’s playing with tone that is full but never fat, and its ability to make the four players sound like a single personality in interpreting the piece was as well-suited to this music as any recently heard.
The group treated the cheering audience to an encore of a virtuoso movement from Haydn’s “Rider” Quartet.
The Tokyo String Quartet have been playing at the Y regularly since the mid-1970s and this season will mark their 5th as the Y’s string quartet-in-residence. The first show in their series is Saturday, October 27. You can read more about the group on their official website.
In the audio player below, listen to a sample of their January 2006 performance at the Y playing Mozart String Quartet in B flat major, K.589 (Part 2).
Previously: New York Times review
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