Tin Pan Alley’s Impact on Today’s Musical Theater

In Tuesday’s blogpost about Tin Pan Alley and the Jazz Age, I said that I wanted to talk a little more about how the songwriters of that era impacted shows after it, even up to today.

When I taught this course back in 2020, I asked my class the question:

What do these old dead guys have to do with today’s musicals?

And today I answer the question, from the perspectives of melody (Berlin), rhythm (Gershwin), and “anything goes” (Porter).

The music still plays on

Two years ago this month, my mother-in-law, Barbara O’Meally, died of Alzheimer’s Disease. She was a truly lovely person, vital and curious, and probably the best mother I’ve ever known. Alzheimer’s is a horrible disease that robbed her of that vitality and that curiosity and deprived her 6 sons (!) and their families of herContinue reading “The music still plays on”

Curiosity Killed the …

Nothing. It kills nothing.  Curiosity is a good thing. According to Seth Godin (who I haven’t quoted for a while), curiosity is one of the three foundations of art: Curiosity Generosity Connection These three components allow us to create and to make art, which “is a tool that gives us the ability to make thingsContinue reading “Curiosity Killed the …”

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