“Smooth & Smart… Rodgers & Hart” Program
Saturday, January 27, 2024 at 7:30 p.m. / Maltz Performing Arts Center
Once again The Musical Theater Project and members of Cleveland Jazz Orchestra team up for an evening of the Great American Songbook, and this year the chapter profiles the sensational team of Broadway’s Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart. The two of them, along with the Gershwins and Cole Porter, raised the bar on sophisticated song, and on hand to prove it are Evelyn Wright and Michael Shirtz. “This Can’t Be Love,” “Bewitched,” “Manhattan,” “My Funny Valentine,” and “The Lady Is a Tramp” – say no more!
TMTP’s Bill Rudman and CJO’s Paul Ferguson co-host.
What kind of concert is this?
Unique. If this is your first experience with a partnership between Cleveland Jazz Orchestra and The Musical Theater Project, we want to tell you what you’re in for.
We’re going to present a number of great songs by composer Richard Rodgers and his first lyricist-partner, Lorenz Hart, going back more than 100 years and including many standards that all of us know—but we’re going to do a lot more than that.
In each of our concerts, which feature terrific vocalists, we tell a kind of “story” (in this case Rodgers & Hart’s) that we hope will help you enjoy the songs even more. We tell that story through the spoken word delivered by the two of us and the singers—and with video clips, audio clips, more than 100 still images and very attractive lighting.
It takes about four months to put one of these shows together, but our goal is to make it look so easy that you’ll truly relax with us. We can’t think of anybody else in America who does exactly what we do. We’re proud of that.
But one thing about “uniqueness”: You can’t be all things to all people. We’ve built an extraordinarily large audience for our collaborations, and we hope that if you’re a first-timer, you’ll come back next year. But if what the two of us do is not your cup of tea, that’s OK, too.
The important that is that we are all joined together right now to share (as Rodgers & Hammerstein put it) “Something Wonderful.”
Can you think of a better way to spend two hours?
–Bill Rudman and Paul Ferguson
SONG LIST
All music by Richard Rodgers (1902-1979); lyrics by Lorenz Hart (1895-1943)
Act I
This Can’t Be Love (from The Boys from Syracuse, 1938)
Any Old Place with You (from A Lonely Romeo, 1919)
Manhattan (from The Garrick Gaieties, 1925)
Mountain Greenery (from The Second Garrick Gaieties, 1926)
Here in My Arms (from Dearest Enemy, 1926)
You Took Advantage of Me (from Present Arms, 1928)
The Girl Friend (from The Girl Friend, 1926; Richard Rodgers, piano)
Thou Swell (from A Connecticut Yankee, 1927)
My Heart Stood Still (from A Connecticut Yankee)
A Ship Without a Sail (from Heads Up, 1929)
This Funny World (from Simple Simon, 1929)
Dancing on the Ceiling (from Evergreen, 1930)
15-MINUTE INTERMISSION
Act 2
With a Song in My Heart (from Spring Is Here, 1929)
Mimi (from Love Me Tonight, 1932)
The Most Beautiful Girl in the World (from Jumbo, 1935)
Excerpt from Slaughter on 10th Avenue (from On Your Toes, 1936)
Glad to Be Unhappy (from On Your Toes, 1936)
Where or When (from Babes in Arms, 1937)
The Lady Is a Tramp (from Babes in Arms)
You Have Cast Your Shadow on the Sea (from The Boys from Syracuse, 1938)
I Like to Recognize the Tune (from Too Many Girls, 1939)
It Never Entered My Mind (from Higher and Higher, 1940)
Plant You Now, Dig You Later (from Pal Joey, 1940)
Bewitched (from Pal Joey)
Wait Till You See Her (from By Jupiter, 1942)