American Classics - Introduction

American Classics is the Boston area's only organization devoted solely to the performance of American music, giving voice to forgotten gems and newly discovered musical treasures in concerts of vocal and instrumental music.

American Classics was founded in 1996 by The Camptown Ladies (Mary Ann Lanier & Sylvie Stewart), Benjamin Sears & Bradford Conner and Margaret Ulmer as a summer concert series at the Swedenborg Chapel in Cambridge. Concerts for American Music Week in November and a Christmas concert soon were added to the schedule. In 1999 American Classics moved to the Longy School of Music in Cambridge.

For the 2000 Season, American Classics gave a Gala Fifth Anniversary Concert celebrating the previous four seasons, featuring music from each season. The other Fifth Anniversary event was the creation of the Musicals in Concert series, with two performances of Irving Berlin's first musical, originally produced in 1914. The score was also Broadway's first "ragtime" musical and the first time Tin Pan Alley went "uptown" to Broadway. Watch Your Step features the Berlin standard Simple Melody, along with nineteen other delightful "ragtime" songs, including a clever operatic parody incorporating themes from Aida, La Bohème, Carmen, Faust, and I Pagliacci. These were the first performances of in the Boston area since 1916.

In 2001, American Classics continued Musicals in Concert with the first revival of the classic Howard Dietz, George S. Kaufman, and Arthur Schwartz revue The Band Wagon as part of the 2000-2001 Schwartz centenary. This production received a special 2001 IRNE (Independent Reviewers of New England) Award for Musical Theatre.

In 2002, American Classics performed the first revival since 1915 of Irving Berlin's second Broadway show, Stop! Look! Listen! (book by Harry B. Smith). The show, which was presented in a newly-revised version of the original, is considered by many to be one of Berlin's best scores, containing such evergreen classics as "I Love a Piano" and "The Girl on the Magazine," plus the amazing "Ragtime Melodrama," the closest Berlin ever came to writing an opera.

The Rodgers & Hart rarity Peggy-Ann was the 2003 entry of Musicals in Concert. Peggy-Ann is one of the earliest efforts on the part of Rodgers & Hart to redefine the American musical comedy, and is a forerunner of techniques that would come to fulfillment in Oklahoma! In the words of Richard Rodgers, "by 1926 Freud's theories, though much discussed, had not yet found expression in the theatre, and the time seemed ripe for a musical comedy to make the breakthrough by dealing with subconscious fears and fantasies. That's exactly what we did in Peggy-Ann."

Musicals in Concert claimed another Boston area premiere in 2004 with the original 1927 version of the George S. Kaufman and George & Ira Gershwin show Strike Up the Band.

The 2002-2003 season saw the creation of a new American Classics series: Songs and Singers, which celebrates both great American songwriters and the singers who sang their songs. The first season featured two concerts of Irving Berlin's songs for the films of Fred Astaire and Bing Crosby as part of the 2003 Bing Crosby Centenary. The 2003-2004 season brought Rodgers & Hart to the series with You Took Advantage.

Other concerts by American Classics are in the American Samplers series and have included Hooray for the Ladies, a program dedicated to women composers, songwriters, and lyricists.

American Classics also includes The Smart Set (song duos Valerie Anastasio & Tim Harbold and Benjamin Sears & Bradford Conner). They have presented two acclaimed shows Noël & Cole - Together With Music, which brought together songs by Noël Coward and Cole Porter, and Fred & Ethel - Great Songs of Astaire & Merman. They quartet has toured New England with performances at Scullers Jazz Club in Boston, the Chatham Drama Guild on Cape Cod, Levitt Pavilion (Westport, Connecticut), Stage Front (Machias, Maine), Worcester Light Opera Company (Worcester, Massachusetts), University of Massachusetts (Darmouth), Wheaton College (Norton, Massachusetts), Williams College (Williamstown, Massachusetts), and Don't Tell Mama (New York).

"American Classics has been a particularly welcome newcomer to the summer scene, in delightful programs of historical American popular music." (Richard Dyer, Boston Globe)

"What American Classics does is document people's dreams, and the way they've manifested themselves in the humble popular song over the generations. Nobody does it better." (Richard Buell, Boston Globe)

" ... Summer allows the talented performers of American Classics to celebrate the music of good times [with] delightful concerts of American light music. The members of American Classics are connoisseurs of the unusual, so there were many rarely heard pieces of the program. Margaret Ulmer, at her best, plays with a dappled variety of touch that must make the others want to sing all that much better. Benjamin Sears has a sunny baritone and a theatrical temperament counterweighted by an ironical self-awareness. Mary Ann Lanier's soprano soars and she boasts excellent diction. Sylvie Stewart has a voice to match her outsize personality. Bradford Conner knows how to put patter across. The secret of light entertainment is that the standards of execution are no less demandingly exact than in the other musical arts. The best work by the American Classics performers demonstrated that they know this." (Richard Dyer, Boston Globe)

"American Classics offered audiences a fascinating look into the time capsule of the Broadway musical." (Ellen Pfeiffer, Boston Globe, review of Peggy-Ann)

"The music is glorious. The performances are riotously screwball and you will leave humming the tunes. What's not to love? If I didn't have expensive opera tickets for Sunday, I'd see it again." (Beverly Creasey, TheatreMirror, review of Strike Up the Band)

"Pure delight." (Lloyd Schwartz, Boston Phoenix)

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