May 31, 2011
Michael Feinstein & the Boston Pops celebrate the Great American Songbook
Lewis Whittington READ TIME: 5 MIN.
In his PBS series The Great American Songbook, Michael Feinstein claims he is actually shy, but you would hardly notice because the singer- pianist seems to be on stage, all the time. He performs 150 concerts a year, has a new CD and he is in the creative development stages of a two Broadway musicals and a musical biography of the brothers Gershwin.
But his main mission remains to preserve the artistry and craft of the golden age of American song.
Feinstein will be performing many of those songs with Keith Lockhart and the Boston Pops on May 31 and June 1. Asked about Feinstein in a recent interview, Lockhart said, ""If anyone can be called the curator of the Great American Songbook it is Michael Feinsten," Lockhart said. "His encyclopedic knowledge of it is astounding. He got his start working with Ira Gershwin and hasn't stopped exploring that Songbook since."
Preserving the American popular song
"I have always been interested in the preservation of music," Feinstein said from New York. "I have a huge collection of sheet music, recordings and ephemera relating to American popular song, memorabilia of songwriters. The purpose is to keep this art form alive any way I can. Through live performance and now the creation of a foundation," which he thinks is important because "there is no physical space for the American popular song."
That foundation is part of Center for the Performing Arts in Carmel, Indiana - a new facility for which Feinstein is the artistic director. The first phase of the completed project took place this past January with the opening of its concert hall, The Palladium. Feinstein headlined the concert along with trumpeter Chris Botti and the Carmel Symphony Orchestra. Feinstein's first recording with the orchestra, featuring some of his own compositions as well as songs from the Great American Songbook, is due for release on July 31, 2011. For on the CD, entitled "We Dreamed These Days," visit Story continues on the following page:
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A generational shift
Feinstein possesses an unfussy, serene vocal quality that illuminates the songs of George and Ira Gershwin, Irving Berlin, Cole Porter, Harold Arlen, Johnny Mercer, among many others. "I can't do better than what the songwriters wrote. I do interpretations where I take liberties, but the essence is so important to me. Just like you don't screw around with Shakespeare.
"The joy in music is something that I find sometimes missing in the way music is created today. If you look at the archival clips in my PBS series and look at the singers and big-bands, it was all live and groups of people making music together with such joy. It used to be a communal experience. That's something I strive for in my shows. And you see it in the faces of the people in the audience. Music had a very different place then compared to they way people experience it now... alone on their iPods."
What's heartening for Feinstein is what he sees as a generational shift in appreciating these songs from the Great American Songbook.
"This music continues on. When I first started 20 years ago the audiences were primarily older people, and I thought I might not have a future audience, but more and more young people are discovering it."
Appreciating gay songwriters
Feinstein is also a part of the generation of top-flight artists who are publicly out (Rufus Wainwright, Melissa Etheridge, Elton John). He married his longtime love Terrence Flannery in 2008 with Hollywood royalty in attendance. His is also concerned with the mostly hidden history of gay American songwriters, who include Cole Porter, Lorenz Hart, Billy Strayhorn, Leonard Bernstein and Stephen Sondheim.
"Knowing that many of these writers were gay and how that influenced their work is fascinating.
"Every composer's music is informed by their experience. Edward Heyman, who wrote 'Body and Soul' and When I Fall in Love'... these are lyrics that are clearly to me referencing the circumstance of how he had to live his life. 'Body and Soul', if you look at it from the perspective of a gay man, it takes on a different resonance. In Cole Porter's 'Picture Me Without You,' he wrote 'Picture Central Park without a sailor...,' seems to reference cruising in Central Park.
Speaking of composers, Feinstein is developing a film about Ira and George Gershwin for Dreamworks. "Doug Wright (Pulitzer-Prize winner for I Am My Own Wife) is doing the screenplay. And then there is The Thomas Crown Affair - that is slowly moving forward, the way musicals trod."
For the musical, Feinstein is writing the music with librettist Warren Brown, but he wants to keep the Oscar-winning song from the film 'The Windmills of your Mind' in adaptation because "It would be inconceivable to me not to include it." he said. Feinstein also is working on a new two-person musical based on the life of Woolworth heiress Barbara Hutton, entitled The Gold Room. Playbill.com reported that last March Tony Award winner Victoria Clark (The Light in the Piazza) and Tony nominee Jonathan Groff (Spring Awakening) took part in a Manhattan reading of the project.
Michael Feinstein performs with Keith Lockhart and the Boston Pops on Tuesday, May 31 and Wednesday, June 1, 2011 at Symphony Hall, Boston, MA. For more information visit To learn more about Michael Feinstein" s="" upcoming="" dates=""
Watch this video of Michael Feinstein performing a Gershwin medley at the New York Marriott Marquis hotel in 1987, the 50th anniversary of George Gershwin's death.
Lewis Whittington writes about the performing arts and gay politics for several publications.
