Austin Symphonic Band Performing Showboat: Selections from the 1927 musical скачать в хорошем качестве

Austin Symphonic Band Performing Showboat: Selections from the 1927 musical

Austin Symphonic Band ( https://austinsymphonicband.org/ ). April 13, 2025. ASB performing Showboat: Selections from the 1927 musical by Oscar Hammerstein II /Jerome Kern (arr. Clifton Jones). [NOTE: Click 'more' to read the program notes.] Music Director Dr. Kyle R. Glaser conducting. "Celebration" concert at the Connally HS Performing Arts Center in Austin, TX. Austin Symphonic Band depends on the financial support of viewers like you. Visit https://austinsymphonicband.org/donate Attend the next Austin Symphonic Band concert! Visit https://austinsymphonicband.org Video and Sound Production: Eddie Jennings From the program notes written by David Cross: Showboat (Selections from the 1927 musical) Lyrics and book by Oscar Hammerstein II (1895-1960) Music by Jerome Kern (1888-1945) Arranged by Clifton Jones Program Note by Dave Kopplin: Pulitzer Prize-winning writer Edna Ferber, author of the 1926 novel Show Boat, didn't like the idea of a musical adaptation of her book. Indeed, she expressed grave reservations about having it set for the musical stage; post-World War I Broadway musicals had been "suffering from sameness and tameness" according to Stanley Green, author of Broadway Musicals, Show by Show. Ferber was worried that her story would be subjected to the same fluffy and frivolous treatment so popular in the revues and light operas of the day. It was composer Jerome Kern who convinced her otherwise. He and lyricist Oscar Hammerstein II agreed to write a new kind of show, one that would forever change the face of American musicals. Kern assured her that he and Hammerstein would concentrate on bringing Ferber's complex story to life in music, a story line that included dramatic elements hitherto unexplored seriously in musical theater, especially racism and infidelity. Kern and Hammerstein's show wouldn't be just another musical; it would be a drama with music. Show Boat was everything they hoped to create and more. Great tunes were not the only thing that made this a classic musical. Before Show Boat, musicals were often just a pastiche of song and dance numbers. Sometimes the tunes would barely relate to each other and shows frequently had flimsy plots or no plots at all. According to most theater scholars, it marked the arrival of the modern musical. Theater scholar Geoffrey Block, author of Enchanted Evenings: The Broadway Musical from Show Boat to Sondheim, noted the work's "unprecedented integration of music and drama, its three-dimensional characters, and its bold and serious subject matter." Richard Kislan declared that Hammerstein's libretto for Show Boat "brought before the public for the first time the human and moral concerns that would become the heart of the enduring musical." The treatment of African Americans in musical theater had reflected the prevailing thinking of the day: "Almost without exception, the American theater had treated the black person as a comic character in the genre of fool, clown, or … simpleton," wrote Kislan. This story was different; Show Boat portrayed the plight of black Americans in sympathetic terms, and even dealt openly with the issue of Julie's "mixed-race" marriage, still illegal in many states at the time the musical was written. Miscegenation laws, as they were called, were upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court in Pace v. Alabama (1883) and not overturned until Loving v. Virginia (1967), when 16 states still had such laws on the books. Show Boat is noteworthy for something else, something out of the ordinary for Broadway musicals. There are many versions of the play, but no one single "definitive" production that seems to have swept all other productions aside. It has been remade and revived on many occasions, in 1932, 1946, 1966, 1971, 1983, and in 1994, the last being the most financially successful of the lot. The 1946 version, in particular, took a lighter tone than the previous versions. Also, the movie adaptations — a silent version in 1929 (with a prologue sung by the cast), and talkies in 1936 and 1951 — are all different, with the 1951 film taking its cue from the '46 stage production and moving even further away from the original. The music and story in tonight's Show Boat is closer to the story and music that would have been seen in the 1927 Broadway production, with two important additional tunes: a duet featuring Queenie and Joe, which first appeared in the 1932 revival ("Ah Still Suits Me"); and Kim's number "Nobody Else But Me," the last song Jerome Kern ever wrote in his lifetime, a tune he created for the 1946 revival that he would never live to hear. Clif Jones, long time member of the Austin Symphonic Band clarinet section, is a master artist of windband colors. His fresh approach and imaginative harmonies bring new life to these classic tunes. Listen for the tunes (in this order) • Cotton Blossom • Bill • Make Believe • Life Upon the Wicked Stage • Can’t Help Lovin’ That Man • Ol’ Man River