Hoagy Carmichael in the Spotlight on January 24 at Glenridge Performing Arts Center
[Sarasota, FL: January 12, 2015] Hoagy Carmichael was a “jazz-crazed” boy from Bloomington, Indiana who composed music that sounded ‘right’ and in 1930 made recordings of his songs “Georgia On My Mind,” “Rockin’ Chair,” and “Lazy River.” Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington and the Dorsey brothers made these songs famous, but the most famous of them all was “Stardust.” Peabody award-winning author and pundit Michael Lasser returns to Glenridge PAC with his friends, songstress Cindy Miller and pianist Alan Jones, to celebrate a great musical genius still popular today in “Stardust Melody: The Songs of Hoagy Carmichael” at 8:00 pm, Saturday, January 24, 2015 (at The Glenridge Performing Arts Center, 7333 Scotland Way, Sarasota.)
Lasser will lead the audience through an evening of and entertaining song, music, and enlightening narration that brings the essence of the great jazz musician and composer Hoagy Carmichael to life.
An attorney-at-law and a composer, Hoagy was an intriguing mix of contradictions who, when all was said and done, wrote as many classic American songs as any of his great contemporaries. If he fell just short of Jerome Kern and George Gershwin, he was certainly the equal of Frank Loesser and Harry Warren.
In a thirty-year career, Hoagy emerged as an unlikely mix of the down home and the sophisticated – the young fellow from Bloomington, complete with Hoosier twang, and the New York jazzman at home in the big city. Although he was a composer, he wrote a lot of lyrics for which he never took credit. He also acted and sang in movies, even though he said he sang “flatsy through the nose.” Flatsy or not, such songs as “Star Dust,” “Georgia on My Mind,” and “Rockin’ Chair” are among the great standards that continue to survive, generation after generation.
Tickets for the Michael Lasser & Friends are $22.50 per person and can be purchased online at www.GPACTix.com, or by calling the GPAC Box Office at 941-552-5325.
OTHER PROGRAMS IN JANUARY 2015
GLENN MILLER ORCHESTRA
Sunday, January 25 at 2:00PM
Tickets: $35/$38 GPAC FAMILY
The great band leader and trombonist Glenn Miller said, “A band ought to have a sound all of its own. It ought to have a personality.” Decades after his disappearance over the English Channel, his band, with its unique jazz sound, is still performs and is considered one of the greatest bands of all time. Re-formed in 1956, the Glenn Miller Orchestra plays an average of 300 live dates a year all around the world.
For one foot-stomping, swing in your seat afternoon, they’ll be all yours in the best jazz club in Sarasota – our own intimate GPAC theatre.
I’VE GOT A LITTLE TWIST
New York Gilbert & Sullivan Players
Saturday, January 31 at 8:00PM
Tickets: $30/$25 GPAC Family
It’s where The Mikado meets The Music Man. Where the HMS Pinafore sets sail for Brigadoon. Where The Pirates of Penzance take shore leave On the Town. It’s I’ve Got a Little Twist—a one-of-a-kind show that proves the Gilbert & Sullivan repertoire is as fun, fresh, and full-of-life as, well, three little maids from school! See for yourself as New York Gilbert & Sullivan Players celebrates the legacy of Gilbert & Sullivan in American musical theater, featuring favorites from Rodgers & Hammerstein, Bernstein, Sondheim, Lerner & Loewe, Meredith Willson, and Jerry Herman. Life is a cabaret and so is this show—and as we all know, it’s always more entertaining when you add a little twist.
“New York Gilbert & Sullivan Players mission statement is ‘giving vitality to the living legacy of Gilbert & Sullivan.’ I’ve Got a Little Twist does just this and in the process gives one of the freshest and most heartfelt performances that I’ve seen the company do in years.” -Daniel Kelley, nytheatre.com
