America's Music Film Series: Broadway & Tin Pan Alley

Truly powerful vocal performance in musical theater is more than just the sum of good vocal tone and correct notes. As experienced teacher, director, and performer Mark Ross Clark lays out in The Broadway Song, powerful performance communicates the central function of a song within the context of the surrounding narrative, or the "truth" of a song. Because unstaged performances of a song, such as auditions, are key to the success of all aspiring singers, Clark provides here the essential practical manual that will help performers choose the right pieces for their vocal abilities and identify the key truths of them.

The remarkable career of composer-orchestrator Robert Russell Bennett (1894-1981) encompassed a wide variety of both "legitimate" and popular music-making in Hollywood, on Broadway, and for television. Bennett is principally responsible for what is known worldwide as the "Broadway sound" and for greatly elevating the status of the theater orchestrator. He worked alongside Jerome Kern, Cole Porter, George Gershwin, Irving Berlin, Richard Rodgers, and Frederick Loewe on much of the Broadway canon, eventually providing orchestrations for all or part of more than 300 musicals between 1920 and 1975. This work is the first publication of Bennett's autobiography, which was written in the late 1970s. It also includes eight of his most important essays on the art of orchestration. George J. Ferencz is Professor of Music at the University of Wisconsin at Whitewater.

In the 1930s, Broadway's lights still burned brightly. Ethan Mordden completes his history of the Broadway musical by taking a look at this forgotten era. Shows like Anything Goes brought the glitter of Cole Porter and Merman's brass to the public. Innovations in dance were pioneered by Balanchine and others. Scenic advancements made Astaire's The Band Wagon move across the stage in novel ways. Gershwin's revolutionary Porgy and Bess entered the canon of American Classics. And The Cradle Will Rock and Johnny Johnson took the American political temperature. With his trademark wit and style, Ethan Mordden shines the spotlight on Broadway's forgotten decade.

At the turn of the twentieth century, Scott Joplin struggled on the margins of society to play a pivotal role in the creation of ragtime music. His brief life and tragic death encompassed a tumultuous time of changes in modern music, culture, and technology.
This biography follows Joplin's life from the brothels and bars of St. Louis to the music mills of Tin Pan Alley as he introduced a syncopated, lively style to classical piano.

Curmudgeonly Broadway critic John Simon recently wrote in New York magazine, "Now, if ever, is time to conclude with lament for the current state of the Broadway musical." While many agree, now is also the time to rejoice over such a complete, detailed, extensive, and simply glorious set as Broadway: The American Musical. The clips and interviews here are unparalleled for instruction and enrichment. No less a legend than Julie Andrews narrates with the correct balance of reverence and authority. Whether you agree with Simon or not, Broadway: The American Musical is first-class viewing.