Tony Award-winner Victoria Clark will host “Backstage at Encores!,” a Studio 5 at City Center event, on Monday, February 6 at 6:30 pm at City Center. Joining Clark for an informal conversation will be Encores! Artistic Director Jack Viertel, Tony Award-winning lyricist Sheldon Harnick and composer/arranger Jeanine Tesori. Studio Five events take place in the Barbara and David Zalaznick Studio at City Center, 130 West 56th Street (between 6th and 7th Avenues).
The February 6 conversation will look at today’s musical hits as possible future Encores! productions. Harnick and Tesori are two artists whose shows have been and will be part of the Encores! tradition: Sheldon Harnick, best known for his collaborations with composer Jerry Bock on hit musicals such as Fiddler on the Roof, has had several Encores! revivals over the years, including Fiorello!, Tenderloin, She Loves Me, and The Apple Tree. Tesori is the award-winning composer of shows such as Violet; Caroline, Or Change; Thoroughly Modern Millie; and Shrek the Musical. The pair will join Clark and Viertel to discuss the changes in this eclectic art form and predict what we can expect in the decades ahead.
Sheldon Harnick’s career began in the 1950s with songs in revues both on and off-Broadway (e.g., The Boston Beguine, Merry Little Minuet). In 1957 he teamed with Jerry Bock to create a number of memorable musicals including Fiorello! (Tony Award, Pulitzer Prize), She Loves Me (Grammy), Fiddler on the Roof (Tony), The Apple Tree, and The Rothschilds. Other musicals:Rex (Richard Rodgers), A Wonderful Life (Joe Raposo), A Christmas Carol (Michel Legrand), The Phantom Tollbooth (with Arnold Black and co-librettist Norton Juster), and his own Dragons. Mr. Harnick also contributed songs to the films The Heartbreak Kid and Blame It On Rio (music by Cy Coleman), and Aaron’s Magic Village (music: Michel Legrand). In the 1970s Mr. Harnick expanded his activities by translating The Merry Widow (for Beverly Sills), Carmen, Ravel’s The Enchanted Child, and Stravinsky’s The Soldier’s Tale. The 1970s also saw Mr. Harnick’s entry into the field of opera. His collaboration with Jack Beeson produced Captain Jinks of the Horse Marines, Cyrano, and Dr. Heidegger’s Fountain of Youth. Among his other opera collaborations are Coyote Tales (Henry Mollicone) and Love in Two Countries (Thomas Shepard). Mr. Harnick is a member of the Dramatists Guild and The Songwriters Guild.
Jeanine Tesori has written four Tony-nominated scores for Broadway: Twelfth Night at Lincoln Center, Thoroughly Modern Millie (lyrics, Dick Scanlan), Caroline, or Change (lyrics, Tony Kushner), and Shrek the Musical (lyrics, David Lindsay-Abaire). The production of Caroline, or Change at the National Theater in London received the Olivier Award for Best New Musical. Her first off-Broadway musical, Violet, written with Brian Crawley, received the New York Drama Critics Circle Award in 1997. She has been the recipient of many other honors including Drama Desk and Obie Awards, and was cited by ASCAP as being the first woman composer to have "two new musicals running concurrently on Broadway." She composed the music for The New York Shakespeare Festival's production of Brecht's Mother Courage, as translated by Tony Kushner, starring Meryl Streep and Kevin Kline. She has written songs for the movie Shrek The Third. Her film scores include Nights in Rodanthe, Winds of Change, Show Business, Wrestling With Angels, and Every day with Live Schreiber. Ms. Tesori’s opera, A Blizzard On Marblehead Neck, is a recent commission for the Met/LCT Opera/Theater and Glimmerglass Opera. She has produced 60 CDs for Silver-Burdett Ginn's Making Music and the original cast albums for Twelfth Night, Violet and Caroline, or Change. Ms. Tesori, a Barnard graduate, is on the council of the Dramatists Guild. Her next project is Fun Home based on the graphic novel by Alison Bechdel, with book by playwright Lisa Kron.
