Lincoln Center’s acclaimed series American Songbook returns to the elegant Allen Room in January for its fourteenth season celebrating the diversity of American popular song. For 16 nights the series will explore the best of the golden age of musical standards through to today’s most dynamic songwriting. Week One of the 2012 season will start off with a relatively new composer on the scene, multiple Tony-winning Lin-Manuel Miranda (In the Heights) who will be bringing his new rap composition about American historical figure Alexander Hamilton called The Hamilton Mixtape. Next up is the just-nominated-for-a-Grammy Award duo Chris Thile and Michael Daves, who play a dazzling, modern form of bluegrass that nonetheless references legendary bluegrass artists from the past. From the rock canon will be J.D. Souther, performing songs he wrote for Linda Ronstadt and the Eagles as well as newer compositions. To close out Week One, composer William Finn (Falsettos, The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee), along with guest vocalists, will be performing a song cycle inspired by the poetry of William Blake.
All American Songbook shows are presented in the spectacular Allen Room, located in Frederick P. Rose Hall, home of Jazz at Lincoln Center on Broadway at 60th Street. The Allen Room possesses one of New York’s greatest settings – a stunning vista of Central Park and the Manhattan skyline that provides an evocative backdrop for the performers.
TICKETS can be purchased online at Lincoln Center’s website www.AmericanSongbook.org, via CenterCharge at 212-721-6500, at the Alice Tully Hall, Avery Fisher Hall Box Office, or at the Frederick P. Rose Hall Box Office.
New: Premium packages—including wine, dinner, and the best seats in the house—are available for the first time this year, for $250. More information at AmericanSongbook.org.
Wednesday, January 11, 2012, 8:30 pm Lin-Manuel Miranda
In 2008 some of the top honors at the Tony Awards were taken by a show created by a virtually unknown young composer and actor – Lin-Manuel Miranda and his original musical, In the Heights. The music was a fusion of Latin, hip-hop and classic Broadway styles. On January 11th Miranda will perform a sneak preview of new songs from an anticipated work-in-progress: The Hamilton Mixtape, a hip-hop song cycle about the life and death of Alexander Hamilton. Miranda first performed part of The Hamilton Mixtape for President Obama at the White House; this one-night-only performance is scheduled for Hamilton’s 255th birthday.
Thursday, January 12, 2012, 8:30 pm Chris Thile & Michael Daves
Mandolin virtuoso Chris Thile (of the groups Nickel Creek and Punch Brothers) and guitar maven Michael Daves form an impassioned collaboration in their Grammy-nominated new recording, Sleep with One Eye Open, playing songs made famous by legendary bluegrass artists from years past. Together they bring “small-town music with New York City intensity” (NPR) to bluegrass standards played with punk rock abandon. But while acknowledging history they exuberantly defy tradition. Their take-no-prisoners bluegrass will be on dazzling display in The Allen Room.
Friday, January 13, 2012, 8:30 pm JD Souther
The songs of JD Souther are on the personal soundtrack of virtually every American over the age of 30. Souther wrote many of the hits by the Eagles – The Best of My Love, New Kid in Town, Heartache Tonight, to name a few – as well as Linda Ronstadt’s Prisoner in Disguise and Faithless Lover, for example, as a key songwriter for the golden era of California rock in the 1970s. What Souther is doing now is taking his best compositions, in stripped-down arrangements, and singing to recapture the moment and emotion of their creation.
Saturday, January 14, 2012, 8:30 pm William Finn: Songs of Innocence and Experience
William Finn’s enormously popular Broadway musicals – Falsettos and The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee – along with his numerous works Off Broadway including A New Brain, Elegies, and Romance in Hard Times mine his life experiences of being gay and Jewish to usually hilarious, often tender effect. His newest project is a Broadway-bound musical of the movie Little Miss Sunshine. Finn will be joined by favorite vocalists and they’ll bring to The Allen Room a song cycle inspired by the poetry of William Blake focusing on family, belonging, love, loss, and healing – the stuff of the great American Songbook.
