Interview: Deborah Grace Winer of SONGBOOK SUNDAYS at Dizzy's Club

From a very early age Deborah Grace Winer had a strong appreciation for the catalogue of music known as The Great American Songbook. A theatrical craftsperson, Deborah grew up in and around groups of people who shared her passion for the performing arts and all of the aspects of creating art that informed the pop culture of the day. Whether scripting plays, writing books, or curating shows, Deb Winer has spent her life devoting her time and her interests to the theater, but there is no denying that her particular interest has leaned into the standards that make up The Songbook, and (to point out an even more detailed fact) the women who have made their mark in the industry, having written books about Dorothy Fields, Julie Wilson, Barbara Cook, and the legendary Rosemary Clooney. Deborah Grace Winer loves a good theme project, and earlier this year she embarked on one of the most successful and most enticing theme projects of 2022: SONGBOOK SUNDAYS.

Songbook Sundays is a series of shows that are presented every other month at Dizzy's Club, which is a part of the Jazz At Lincoln Center organization. The shows that play Dizzy's get two performances, one at five pm and one at seven-thirty pm, on one Sunday, every two months, and each Sunday Deb and a smashing company of musicans focus their attention, for one solid hour, on the music of a great composer from The Songbook. The first of these editions was a Gershwin show, and the second put a spotlight on Cole Porter. For these Sunday performances, Ms. Winer calls up a few friends from The Broadway and asks them to come to the party, and she always chooses meticulously a singing actor who perfectly embodies the composer in question. For the Gershwin night, Deborah Grace called upon Karen Ziemba, who played Broadway in the Gershwin musical CRAZY FOR YOU, and the lead player for the Cole Porter program was the always refined (if a bit naughty) Christine Andreas. Working alongside the fine folks at Jazz At Lincoln Center, Deborah Grace Winer gathers together a cast of singers and musicians from varying demographics ranging from generation to ethnicity to level of experience. It is a miraculous way in which to present these classic composers in a manner that matches the continually evolving art form of cabaret and concert, and a most welcome one, at that.

As Songbook Sundays gears up for the third installment in the series, a Duke Ellington night titled IN AN ELLINGTON MOOD, Deborah Grace Winer took a call from Broadway World Cabaret to talk about her passion for the arts, the excitment of evolution, and the family atmosphere being created at Songbook Sundays.

This interview has been edited for space and content.

Deborah Grace Winer, welcome to Broadway World!

How lovely! Thank you!

Deb, you have this wonderful new series playing Dizzy's Club at Jazz at Lincoln Center called SONGBOOK SUNDAYS. You've had two performances that I just loved. How did you come up with this idea?

Well, thank you for that. During the pandemic, I was talking to the folks at Jazz At Lincoln Center and I had had the good fortune of doing some projects with them in the years leading up to the pandemic, and I just love them - they're an artist-run organization. They are made up of really fine people, many of whom are artists, or who began that way. They really have passion and they're really good human beings, so that makes every project there fun and joyful. So, during the pandemic, at the depth of everybody bottoming out, I was talking to them, and it had been my dream to bringthe American Songbook back there, so it began with me trying to find ways, during the shutdown. First, there were outdoor things, and (I was) creating content for them (and) the conversation evolved very quickly. Jason Olaine and I figured out that it would be a wonderful thing, as Dizzy's was going to be reopening, to bring the American Songbook back, and I would create these shows that would be fun and fresh and informal, like a joyful jam party, to celebrate the idea of bringing artists together, and also bringing the audience together. I think we have a new appreciation of what it means to come together, to experience music in person, to experience performing arts in person. I think this is a tribute to that thought that we always took for granted... but now we don't take it for granted. So there's a celebratory air of it. Jason gave me great latitude: I pick the topics, and, really, celebrating songwriters is the focus, so I said, "Let's start with Gershwin. Then I want to do Cole Porter. Then I want to do Duke Ellington, then I want to do Irving Berlin." We started in May and it's been a joy! And we have just been picked up for next season!

How exciting! You have an encyclopedic mind for this material and these composers. Where did that begin for you?

I grew up in Manhattan (and in the summers in Westport Connecticut), so I sort of grew up in a world of... Mom was a former concert pianist, my Dad was a doctor, and they had a lot of performing friends. So I kind of grew up in it, and I was immediately drawn to movie musicals and Broadway musicals and cast albums and everything retro - old movies of all kinds. I just loved the stuff. My friends were listening to rock and roll and going to concerts, and I like all kinds of music but I liked listening, as a child and teenager, to Ella Fitzgerald and Peggy Lee and Rosemary Clooney and Billie Holiday and Louis Armstrong, Nat Cole - I grew up knowing about it and loving it. That's where that comes from. I'm a trained theatrical writer, I'm from the theater, so I learned early on that I loved writing about what I wrote for. I could make a living writing about music and musicals, and that's how I became - I don't know what - sort of an authority. I started young, writing for the Sunday Times Arts and Leisure section about this - mostly American Songbook Standards. Cabaret is a venue more than a style of music. Mass popular music, before rock and roll, was jazz standards and I always loved it.

I love that you said that cabaret is a venue, not a style. By definition, cabaret is a performance that occurs in a place where food and drink is served.

Yes!

You have taken your work over to Jazz At Lincoln Center and melded jazz and cabaret, as it were, what does it feel like to create a broader understanding of the art form?

Thank you for asking that - it feels so exciting I cannot even contain my joy and my happiness and the sense of fun. Cabaret is a venue but, now, it has become an umbrella word for the kind of music that we usually hear in a cabaret, like a non-jazz (sound), as opposed to what goes on in a jazz club. But (this is) bringing together the people. I pick all the singers, I choose the subject, the music director, the two major singers, and then Jason Olaine and Lincoln Center suggest the band. We usually have four musicians, the Music Director plus three players. They choose the band from their wonderful starry family, and they have this family of people - it's so much fun, you have these wonderful people who love playing this music; American Songbook tunes are what most classic jazz is based on. And in addition to that, we decided to choose one emerging young artist, instrumentalist, and one emerging artist, vocalist, every time. That comes through the Jazz At Lincoln Center Young Artist Development Program. So we've got this family jam meeting of Broadway singers like Karen Ziemba and Christine Andreas, and coming up, in the Duke Ellington show, we've got La Tanya Hall and Nicolas King, and at the end of the year, in The Irving Berlin show, we've got Emily Skinner and Darius de Haas. So you get Master Singers like that, paired with a young vocalist, and we've had these great young musicians. It's something that's intergenerational, very diverse in terms of peoples' backgrounds, and some people come from musical theater and some come from the straight jazz world. Everybody's learning from everybody else. It's a huge gift for the musical theater people to be able to play with these incredible jazz musicians, and it's fun for the musicians to go back to the purity of just playing a whole set of Gershwin tunes or Porter tunes. It's really fun. Fun and joy is the idea of this.

You host the evening without notes, with all the facts in your head. You are able to just speak extemporaneously about the writers and their histories.

(Laughing) I look at it as a party and I'm hosting the party! I've done this in many different ways over the years - some had more formality and some has less. This has the vibe of a party. I enjoy being that person that just (acts as) spirit guide of the evening, getting us from one place to the other, with a little bit of narrative. The other thing is: I don't think they have ever done a five o'clock show at Dizzy's before, on a Sunday, at least. The Jazz At Lincoln Center folks specifically made a five o'clock show on Sunday and a seven-thirty, to make it really accessible. We're hoping to get families in - and we've gotten kids, it's a fun thing to do on a Sunday afternoon. And Monday is a school day, so it's fun for anybody to be able to do a show at five o'clock. It's a blast!

I grew up getting my culture off of PBS. I've been to both shows so far, and it feels like a PBS special.

(Laughing) Thank you! I take that as a great compliment, I love PBS!

I mean it as a compliment. I've seen the kids and the families at your show, and that five o'clock start time gets everyone home at a proper hour.

They serve food, they serve drinks, and that view! There's no more beautiful place in the city to share music.

It is lovely.

That view of Central Park South and the park! It's just beautiful. And I get home early, too! I think we're in a new time, a new chapter, with the complete shutdown and the complete collapse of our industry, that we all reevaluated what is really important in life. What do I want to spend my time doing? Who do I want to spend my time with? And what's important? What do I want to communicate to other people? What do I want to create? Those things went into our thinking when creating this. Let's gather people and let's make joy, giving, purely, the best music on a silver platter with some fun chit chat, and we can all celebrate that together.

I believe you've achieved that goal. This is nightclub entertainment for this era.

Some people think nightclub entertainment is of a past era or it's not something people do anymore. Sometimes people say cabaret is a dying art, which I don't believe for a second, but we wanted to reinvent this with the diversity of generations and people, and what's fun is we bring musical theater audiences to Dizzy's, who are new to Jazz At Lincoln Center. And at the same time, the Jazz At Lincoln Center audience, which is mighty, enjoys this very different, accessible way into jazz. There's nothing like a song served up with great jazz players, as a wonderful, accessible, friendly way to enjoy jazz.

As we wrap up this interview, I want to ask you the rattiest question I've ever asked a single person.

Ooooh. Now I'm scared.

Who's your favorite?

My favorite what?

You've done Gershwin, you've done Porter, you're about to do Ellington, and then Berlin. Who's your personal favorite, of all of the composers?

That's a really sneaky question, Stephen. I'm going to give you the answer that my mom always gave me and my sister when I would, brattily, with humor, ask who she loved more, me or my sister. I'm going to give you a ratty answer: I'm going to say that these four shows and these four composers, I love equally, according to the different quarters of the ventricles of my heart. (Laughing) They are all absolutely wonderful in their own way, it's hard to pick a favorite. But here's a little bit of a bone to throw, because next year we are going to do Rodgers and Hart and Rodgers and Hart has a special place in my affection.

I've been hoping they would land on your list.

They will absolutely land on my list. At some point I hope to also do Dorothy Fields, she's one of the greatest ever.

We have been lucky to have these people writing this music and I'm so grateful that you are still bringing it to the public.

It's something that I live with every day. It's so basic to the fabric of my life - I can't imagine life without it. It's not something in the past, it's something that lives in the present, always, and I'm lucky that I live in a community that appreciates it as a part of the fabric of life. When I'm excited about something, I love to share it with people, and that's what I'm doing.

Deb, thank you for chatting with me today, I can't wait for the Ellington show!

Thank you so much for the support you give us.

SONGBOOK SUNDAYS will play Dizzy's Club on Sunday, September 11th at 5 pm and 7:30 pm with IN AN ELLINGTON MOOD, featuring La Tanya Hall and Nicolas King. For information and reservations visit the Jazz At Lincoln Center website HERE.

Deborah Grace Winer has a website HERE.

THIS is the Jazz At Lincoln Center Homepage and HERE is the Dizzy's Club homepage.

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