Prince, Blank, Lawrence, Kander and More Featured in NYPL's 'The Sound of Broadway Music' Discussion Series, Begins 10/19

A collection of some of Broadway's most well known orchestrators will come together for a series of discussions at the New York Public Library beginning October 19th. The evening will feature Larry Blank, Elliot Lawrence, Sid Ramin, and Jonathan Tunick for the "Broadway Orchestrations" discussion. Following that, they will be joined by Harold Prince, John Kander and Sheldon Harnick for a discussion entitled "The Authors and the Creators."

Larry Blank received Tony nominations for his work on Irving Berlin's White Christmas and The Drowsy Chaperone. Elliot Lawrence won the 1962 Tony Award Best Conductor and Musical Director for his work on How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying. Sid Ramin provided the original orchestrations to Broadway classics such as Gypsy as West Side Story. Jonathan Tunick has won an Emmy, an Oscar, a Tony, and a Grammy for his musical work and has work on more than 60 Broadway musicals. The man behind Phantom of the Opera, Candide and A Little Night Music, producer/director Harold Prince is has garnered twenty-one Tony Awards, more than any other individual, including eight for directing, eight for producing the year's Best Musical, two as Best Producer of a Musical, and three special awards. John Kander, of the writing team Kander and Ebb is responsible for over 20 musicals including Cabaret and Chicago.  Sheldon Harnick, with writing partner Jerry Bock, is can also be credited with creating over twenty musicals, some of which - including Fiddler on the Roof - remain amongst the most cherished of all time.  

The New York Public Library will host a second session, entitled "Arrangers and Musical Directors" on November 2nd featuring Paul Gemignani, Donald Pippin and Bruce Pomahac as wel as a discussion panel entitled "Theatrical Orchestration Today," with Michael Starobin, Bruce Coughlin, Larry Blank and Daniel Troob.

The New York Public Library comprises simultaneously a set of scholarly research collections and a network of community libraries, and its intellectual and cultural range is both global and local, while singularly attuned to New York City. That combination lends to the Library an extraordinary richness. It is special also in being historically a privately managed, nonprofit corporation with a public mission, operating with both private and public financing in a century-old, still evolving private-public partnership. The research collections (for reference only, and organized as The Research Libraries, with four major centers) resemble the holdings of the great national and university libraries, and the community circulating libraries (organized as The Branch Libraries) resemble classic American municipal libraries.

For more information, visit www.nypl.org.