Jerome Kern on Broadway and in Hollywood with Marc Strauss
Monday evenings on Zoom from 7-9 p.m.
October 18, 25, November l, 8, 15.
Jerome Kern (1885 - 1945), early 20th century composer in the West End of London, on Broadway, and in Hollywood, wrote over 700 tunes over four decades, leaving the world with some fifty-odd famous tunes immediately recognizable and hummed to this day nearly 80 years after his death. Songs such as "Old Man River," "Smoke Gets in Your Eyes," "The Way You Look Tonight," "All the Things You Are," "The Last Time I Saw Paris," and "Long Ago and Far Away" remain essential standards in the Great American Songbook. Kern was acknowledged by both George Gershwin and Richard Rodgers as their most important early influence, and Gershwin was even Kern's rehearsal pianist on several shows in the teens. In many ways a link between the European operetta tradition and the Broadway musical style, Kern 's songwriting showed a remarkable evolution toward greater and greater sophistication and a truly American style.