American Songbook Project - 2010

presents

The

Name That Tune Benefit

honoring

Margaret Whiting and

Michael Mayer S AT U R D AY | NOVEMBER THE EDISON BA 240 WEST 47TH

7:00 PM 6, 2010 LLROOM STREET

Jamie deRoy & friends Design: B&W CREATVE GROUP, NYC Photo: ERIC STEPHEN JACOBS

congratulates

Margaret Whiting and Michael Mayer and

& PLEASE JOIN US FOR OURVERY SPECIALANNUAL

HOLIDAY SHOW SAVE THE DATE THURS,DEC 2 @ 7 PM 34West 22nd Street BET. 5TH & 6TH AVES.

RES: 212 206.0440 $25 COVER 2 DRINK MINIMUM

Bravo! honors our friend

MICHAEL MAYER

Mission The mission of The American Songbook Project: The American Songbook Project was founded in 1999 as a 501(c) (3) charitable organization. It brings singers from Broadway and cabaret into New York City schools and community organizations to introduce young people to some of the beautiful melodies and meaningful lyrics of the American songs that are part of their heritage. These one-hour programs include not only American popular standards, but also some of the great new songs being written by today’s talented composers. No matter where these young students travel around the world, American songs will no doubt be playing in the background. These songs are their birthright as American citizens and one of the glories of our country.

Through these programs, we hope to be planting the seeds to develop new songwriters, performers, and if nothing else, new listeners.

•

Preserve the heritage of American songs and to foster its artists.

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Promote the art of live performance with a special focus on classic and contemporary popular American songs.

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Present American popular songs in schools, community centers, and other venues with the goal of education and developing new audiences for them.

Advisory Board Lucie Arnaz Anna Bergman Danny Burstein Charles Cermele Ann Froman James Gavin Malcolm Gets Ralph and Calla Guild

Robert Lopez Rebecca Luker Jeff Marx Ian Ralfini Frank and Mary Skillern Dr. Glory Van Scott Rex Urice Margaret Whiting

Board of Directors Michael Putman Estwanik P re side n t

photo by Shirin Tinati

Jamie deRoy

Vic e P re side n t

Timothy Connell Se c re ta r y

John Sterba Tre a su re r

Pam Laudenslager Amy Rivard Robert M. Safron Daryl Embry P rogra m Dire c tor

Tracy Green Landauer, Esq. Le ga l Adv isor

Michael Putman Estwanik

November 6th, 2010 Welcome friends of The American Songbook Project, Why do we choose our causes?

In 1980 I was living in spectacular Lake Tahoe so I could ski each winter. But there was little quality entertainment for me to enjoy except for casino shows and I noticed there was nothing for families. So one day I decided to begin a summer musical theatre company. In our second year I was asked by one of our directors to play the role of Snoopy in the musical “You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown.” The business aspect of the company was running pretty well so I thought, what the hell. Because the only water fountain in the facility where we performed was in the lobby (and bottled water had not yet been invented), after intermission I would wait until the very last minute and sneak out there for a quick drink just before going back onstage to face “The Red Baron.”

One afternoon, when the doors to the auditorium were already closed and I was leaning over the fountain, a little five-year-old boy came barreling out of the men’s room, wondering where everybody had gone. I went over to him and said “What’s your name?” He said “Tommy, Snoopy.”

“Well Tommy, you’d better hurry back to your seat for the second half.” “Oh, you mean there’s more Snoopy?” and he went skipping off. He started to run back into the auditorium to join his family who must have been wondering where he was. But he suddenly darted back out, tugged on my costume and asked “Snoopy, is the second half going to be in color too?”

That is why I founded that theatre company. And our Board of Directors of The American Songbook Project and the many performers we have taken to our New York schools for the past eleven years could each tell you similar stories that reinforce why we are committed to preserving The American Songbook Project. To sharing it with our youth. With the arts budget cuts in our schools, with the little bit of exposure our youth have to our great songs of beautiful melodies and meaningful lyrics, we all need to do what we can if we expect these treasures to be around much longer. But TASP programs do not include only the “old standards.” We also include many of the great songs being written by our very talented contemporary songwriters whose work also deserves to be shared.

The American Songbook Project does not have all the answers to this challenge. But we are trying and we would love for you to try with us. Soon we will be forming a Guild, a group of volunteers who believe in our mission and who would like to become involved. We need you, and more importantly our young children and our songwriters need you. Please visit our website from time to time for updates on this important next step. www.theamericansongbookproject.org We hope you enjoy this evening and we are most grateful for your support.

Yours truly,

Michael Putman Estwanik President, Board of Directors

Tonight’s Program 7:00 PM

Silent Auction and Raffle Tickets For Sale

7:30 – 8:15 PM

Song Title Costume Judging in Upstairs Lounge by Our Celebrity Judges: • • • • • • •

Frank Dilella, NY1News “On Stage” Adam Feldman, “Time Out New York” Hilary Kole, jazz vocalist William Ivey Long, Tony Award-winning costume designer Jordan Roth, Producer and President of Jujamcyn Theatres Tara Rubin, casting director / Tara Rubin Casting Frank Skillern, arts supporter

8:15 PM

Buffet Dinner

9:30 PM

Awarding of Best Song Title Costume •

Wins a week in Paris and on the French Riveira in presidential suites courtesy of Radisson Blu Hotels with airfare.

Raffle Ticket Drawings •

Including nine days in Hawaii (Four Seasons Maui, Kauai Marriott Resort, and Hotel Lana’i).

Live Auction with Jim Caruso: •

“An Evening with Brooke Shields and John McDaniel” in an elegant apartment overlooking Lincoln Center with your thirty best friends.

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A $30,000 nine-day vacation in Switzerland courtesy of Swiss Airlines, the Swiss Convention Bureau, Vitoria Jungfrau Hotels and Beau Rivage Palace.

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A $11,000 vacation to Vancouver’s Westin Bayshore Hotel and to the sublime award-winning wilderness resort on Vancouver Island, Clayoquot. www.wildretreat.com

10:00 PM

Tribute to Margaret Whiting with Maureen Moore and Nellie McKay Tribute to Michael Mayer with Dick Scanlan, Jane Kaczmarek, and Kate Baldwin

10:30 PM Dancing

Our Sponsors $5, 0 0 0

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“ Te a c h Yo u r C h i l d re n Wel l ”

Graham Nash – Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young

Bad Boy Entertainment (Sean “Puff Daddy” Combs) Roy Niederhoffer and Jenny Lebowitz |

$2 ,5 0 0

“ C o u n t Yo u r B l e s si ngs” Irving Berlin

Edythe Kenner Foundation Carmine Nicoletti and Belaire Offset Printing Robert and Lynda Safron Kara J. Unterberg $ 1 ,0 0 0

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“ A t t h e S a m e T i me”

Ann Hampton Callaway

Anonymous Kenneth C. Cohen Jamie deRoy Barry R. Feirstein The Friars Foundation Bill Haas and Bob Stroney $500

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Jane Kaczmarek Jo Sullivan Loesser Jordan Roth Frank and Mary Skillern Foundation Donna Soloway Sylvia and David Steiner “ G ra t e f u l ”

John Bucchino

Wendy Federman Susan Irwin and Mark Shehan Ralph and Call Guild John Kander

Charles Kaye Andrew and Andrea Potash Tommy Tune

presents

“The Art of Song Performance”

A one-week intensive workshop for 14-18 year olds, taught by some of New York’s finest performer-teachers Please visit our website after January 1 for further information. www.theamericansongbookproject.org or email michaelsongbook@gmail.com

THE LONGEST-RUNNING NIGHTCLUB ACT ON BROADWAY! ScoBar Entertainment + BUG:OUT:MUSIC present

TERESE GENECCO & HER LITTLE BIG BAND BIG BAND TUESDAYS! UESDAYS!!

AT THE IRIDIUM

The Iridium Jazz Club 1650 Broadway @ 51st St, NYC www.iridiumjazzclub.com www.teresegenecco.com

TIX + INFO: 212.582.2121 $25 + $10 food/bev minimum

“Frisky Retro Fun!” - Time Out New York

FINAL PERFORMANCES IN 2010 November 30th and December 28th

Thank You

“( Yo u ’v e G o t To H a v e ) F ri e n d s” Mark Klingman - Buzzy Linhart

Our Auctioneer

Jim Caruso

Kate Botello

Graphic Designer traversecitywebdesign.com

Our Celebrity Judges

Tara Rubin Frank Dilella Adam Feldman Hilary Kole William Ivey Long Jordan Roth Frank Skillern

Beck Lee

Press Representative mediablitz.biz

Mary Ann Pierce MAP digital, inc.

MetaMeetings Website Ticketing www.mapdigital.com

Terese Genecco Shaynee Rainbolt Bug:Out:Design Advertising Sales bugoutdesign.com

Robert Sokol

VIA MEDIA Event Program Design www.viamedia.net

Carmine Nicoletti Belaire Offset Printing Printing

And Also “Help”

John Lennon - Paul McCartney

Milena Alberti Linda Amiel Burns Sean Attebury Melissa Attebury Kate Baldwin Anna Bergman Emily Bley Kate Burton Robert Callely Will Campbell Heather Casey Philip Di Belardino B a n fi F in e Win e s

Brion Dinges Michael DiPetro Eric Dunlap Kelly Egan Billy Estwanik Ann Froman Greg Giancola Deborah Hecht

Rick Hinkson Cindy Hoddeson Justin Jones Jon Jordan Jane Kaczmarek Jamie Kaplan Ginger Karren Brian Koonin Megan Larche Josh Lehrer Rebecca Luker John McDaniel Nellie McKay Frank McVeigh Ryan Moller Maureen Moore Jim Pierson Rachelle Rak Ian Ralfini Bl u e N o t e an d M an h at t an Re co rd s

Austin Regan

Shelley Roberts Steve Ross Seth Rudetsky Peter Sachon Dick Scanlan Stan Schnier Secret Garden Flowers Brooke Shields Sherie Rene Scott and Kurt Deutsch S h- K- B oo m R ec o r ds

Mary Skillern Donald Smith Eileen Solomon Michael Timmons Chase Timmons Shirin Tinati Roma Torre Tom Viola Debbie Whiting Larry Yurman

With heartfelt congratulations and much love to Michael from his NYSAF family

A Memory of Margaret Whiting I first met the lady of the evening (I think she would appreciate the double-entendre) in the mid-Sixties. I was working at a piano bar next to a summer stock theatre in suburban Washington.

Margaret and Don Ameche were appearing in together in the show I Married an Angel.

After the show, all the cast would repair to the only game nearby, i.e. my bar, to drink, socialize, sing and in general impress the socks of this young performer.

If you can be warm and dry at the same time, that’s what Margaret is – affectionate and supportive as well as viewing life from a humorous and somewhat ironical standpoint. I love both of the these qualities and over these many years, that’s what Margaret has shown to me.

This doesn’t even mention the power, sensitivity, honesty and musicianship of her own singing – a benchmark to all.

Steven Ross

Born in 1924 in Detroit, MI, Margaret Whiting is the daughter of Eleanore Young and famed songwriter Richard Whiting, a major contributor to the golden decades of pop songs, the 1920s and 1930s.

Margaret Whiting

While the Whiting house in Hollywood was filled with colleagues of her father such as Harold Arlen, Johnny Mercer, Frank Loesser, July Styne, Leo Robin, Gus Kahn, Jerome Kern, and the Gershwin brothers, Whiting said that the greatest influence on her was the jazz pianist Art Tatum. While living in Hollywood she got to be his friend and was impressed by his musicality, his rhythm, his chord structure. She learned to enjoy singing from him.

Johnny Mercer became Whiting’s mentor, close friend and musical guide from childhood. He first heard her sing when she was six years old. When her father died in her teens, he became her surrogate father, guiding her into singing professionally.

When Mercer cofounded Capitol Records in 1942, 16-year-old Whiting was one of the first artists he signed to the new label. Her first major hit was Mercer’s and Arlen’s “That Old Black Magic” recorded one week after she turned 18. She recorded her late father’s song “My Ideal” in 1943 with lyrics by Leo Robin. It became the first of a long list of hits she made for Capitol and the first of over a dozen records that sold over a million copies. She remained with Capitol for 17 years until she moved to Dot Records in 1958. In 1960, Whiting switched to Verve Records, recording a number of albums including one with vocalist with Mel Tormé. In the early ‘60s, she returned to Capitol Records and then joined London Records in 1966, recording two additional pop singles.

Whiting has recorded more than 500 popular songs.

Whiting also turned her talents to a number of Broadway productions, including Gypsy, Pal Joey, and Call Me Madam, and an off-Broadway play, Taking My Turn in 1983. She also joined three other 1940s and 1950s singers Kay Starr, Rosemary Clooney, and Helen O’Connell, and comediennes Rosemarie, Martha Raye, and Kaye Ballard in a rotating singer/comedienne act called “4 Girls 4” that toured for 12 years. Whiting appeared in many motion picture films as an actress and vocalist. She worked on TV on The Bob Hope Show and regularly appeared on The Jack Smith Show. In the 1950s, Whiting and her older sister Barbara, hosted their own television series, a sitcom called The Whiting Girls.

In 1997, she appeared in the Broadway salute to Johnny Mercer entitled Dream with John Pizzarelli, Lesley Ann Warren and Brooks Ashmanskas. She has also entertained aboard cruise ships, in music halls, night clubs, on big band tours and in cabarets rooms across the country.

Whiting is President of the Board of Directors of the Johnny Mercer Foundation, a board member of the Songwriters Hall of Fame, the Society of Singers, Grammy Awards and The Manhattan Association of Cabarets and Clubs.

Dear Michael:

Anyone Can Whistle. Except me.

Your nemesis of 30 years, Agent Smith

A Tribute to Michael Mayer I saw his work before I met Michael Mayer. It was a play at The Atlantic Theater Company and I remember thinking that the play was beautifully directed. Who was this Michael Mayer? I think I may have met him that night. I found out that he had been a student at the University of Wisconsin with my roommate at The Yale School of Drama, Jane Kaczmarek. That he knew a lot of my friends.

I then saw You’re A Good Man, Charlie Brown and laughed uproariously at that sweet, funny show. I followed his career knowing that it was a special one. Then I got a call to participate in one of the many workshops of a musical adaptation of Wedekind’s Spring Awakening....and I fell in love with Michael Mayer.

Watching him in action was a revelation. He was so smart, so funny, so caring and so loving but he had a tenacity that could meld this brilliant old seminal play and this brilliant new music. He was able to communicate equally with blooming teenage actors as well as seasoned Broadway veterans. He had a plethora of tools and all of them under lied his humanity.

I called my husband, Michael Ritchie, after the first rehearsal and told him what I had just experienced. I said, “This is really something.” How right I was! Then last spring how blessed I was to experience American Idiot? I feel so lucky to have had the experience of working with him and to be able to be an audience member at all of his shows. He is a treasure and an utter original and I am so pleased he is being honored tonight.

Kate Burton

photo by Shirin Tinati

Michael Mayer

Michael Mayer was born in 1960 in Washington, DC and raised in Rockville, MD. His father Jerry was a lawyer at the NLRB and his mother, Lou, a homemaker and political activist.

Mayer was first smitten with the movies before graduating from grade school when he played the role of Alfalfa in a classroom film based on the Our Gang films. He made several films using a Super 8 single lens camera with a zoom that his parents had given him, but after graduating from high school, he entered the University of Wisconsin-Madison, subsequently transferring to NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts Graduate Acting Program where he graduated in 1983.

Mayer began performing onstage in New York but by 1988 he had turned his sights toward directing, staging student plays and teaching at the Lincoln Center Theatre Institute, Juilliard, Yale, Fordham, the Playwrights Horizons Theatre School and back at NYU where he directed the first New York production of Angels in America - Part II: Perestroika.

His Broadway credits include Triumph of Love, A View From the Bridge (Drama Desk for Outstanding Direction of a Play), Side Man (Drama Desk for Outstanding Direction of a Play), You’re A Good Man, Charlie Brown, The Lion in Winter, Uncle Vanya, An Almost Holy Picture, Thoroughly Modern Millie (Drama Desk for Outstanding Director of a Musical), After the Fall, ‘night Mother, Spring Awakening (Tony Award® for Best Direction of a Musical, Drama Desk for Outstanding Director of a Musical), co-wrote and directed American Idiot (Drama Desk for Outstanding Director of a Musical), and Everyday Rapture.

His off-Broadway credits include Everyday Rapture, Our House: 10 Million Miles, Antigone in New York, Baby Anger, The Credeaux Canvas, and Stupid Kids. Mayer also directed the national tours of Spring Awakening, Thoroughly Modern Millie and Angels in America.

Mayer’s regional work includes plays at Berkeley Rep, La Jolla Playhouse, McCarter Theatre, Center Stage, and Yale Rep. In 2004, after working steadily as a theater director for more than 15 years, Mayer returned to his first love - film - making his first directorial debut in a feature film with A Home at the End of the World starring Colin Farrell and Robin Wright. In 2006, he made the family film Flicka, an adaptation of the story “My Friend Flicka.”

Since the early 1990s, there has hardly been a season when Mayer hasn’t had a production that he’s directed playing on or off-Broadway, in regional theater, on national tour, or overseas.

Congratulations, Margaret!

BOBBIE HOROWITZ