ALEXANDER RAGTIME BAND Hits The Stage At Longy For B-day Celebration

Irving Berlin's Alexander's Ragtime Band took the musical world by storm after its publication on March 18, 1911, and remains one of the most popular songs in American music to this day. On Friday, March 18, 2011, American Classics will present a special concert and birthday celebration honoring one hundred years of this classic. Song duo, music historians and Berlin specialists Benjamin Sears and Bradford Conner, with Mary Ann Lanier and Margaret Ulmer, are the featured performers, joined by Valerie Anastasio, Tim Harbold, and leading members of Boston's musical theatre community and other American Classics regulars in this gala celebration. There will be one performance only, on the "birthday" itself, Friday, March 18, 2011 at 7:30pm at the Pickman Concert Hall of the Longy School of Music, 27 Garden Street, Cambridge, Massachusetts. Tickets are $25 and $20 students/seniors. For tickets contact American Classics at 617-254-1125 or ac@amclass.org. For more information, please visit the website, www.amclass.org.

Berlin did not expect much of the song when he first released it, but singer Emma Carus had a great success with it in the spring of 1911 and suddenly it was being sung everywhere. The song was featured in two Irving Berlin films, Alexander's Ragtime Band, sung by Alice Faye, and There's No Business Like Show Business where it received a major production treatment with Ethel Merman, Dan Dailey, Johnny Ray, Mitzi Gaynor, and Donald O'Connor. Classic recordings include those by Billy Murray, Al Jolson, Bing Crosby, and Bessie Smith, and in more recent years both Mandy Patinkin and Michael Feinstein included it in Broadway concerts. Sears & Conner performed it on their first concert in 1989 and it has been a staple of their repertoire ever since, and American Classics featured it in their ragtime concerts in 2005 and 2006. (For more information on the history of Alexander's Ragtime Band go to http://benandbrad.com/alexander.html)

Along with Alexander's Ragtime Band, the program will include other songs from the era by Irving Berlin (Alexander and his Clarinet and Oh, That Beautiful Rag, both 1910), some featuring references to his hit song (Alexander's Bagpipe Band, 1912; They've Got Me Doing It Now, 1913; and Send a Lot of Jazz Bands Over There, 1918). Songs that influenced Berlin (Alexander, Don't You Love Your Baby No More?, Harry Von Tilzer, 1904) and, in turn, songs by other composers who played on Alexander's success (When Alexander Takes His Ragtime Band to Flanders, Bryan, Hess & Leslie, 1918) will round out this "ragtime" spectacular.

Benjamin Sears & Bradford Conner have been performing together since 1989 and have been called "Boston's favorite song duo" by the Boston Globe. Their first concert featured Alexander's Ragtime Band and since then Irving Berlin, particularly his early songs, have been a specialty, including four CD releases of his songs from 1909 through 1925, and two more in development. Benjamin Sears is currently editing The Irving Berlin Reader for publication in November, 2011 by Oxford University Press and Bradford Conner is the editor for a forthcoming reissue of Alex Wilder's classic American Popular Song: The Great Innovators, 1900-1950, featuring an updating of the Irving Berlin chapter, also for Oxford University Press in 2011. Sears has contributed articles on songwriters Ann Caldwell and Ann Ronell for the new second edition of the Grove Dictionary of American Music.

Ben & Brad will be giving lecture/recitals on "Alexander's Ragtime Band" for the Thursday Lecture Series at the Cambridge Center for Adult Education on February 17, for the Annual Conference of the Society for American Music on March 10 in Cincinnati, Ohio, and at the Leventhal-Sidman Jewish Community Center in Newton on March 30.

 

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