Robert Wyatt

Gershwin, by George!
2022-03-22 14:00 - 15:30 (America/New_York) | University of Vermont, 40 Pleasant Street, Springfield, VT, 40 Pleasant Street, Springifled, VT
Join pianist and Gershwin authority Robert Wyatt, co-editor of Oxford University Press’ The George Gershwin Reader, in this lively program exploring George Gershwin’s life and legacy. The evening includes live performances of the solo version of Rhapsody in Blue, early and unpublished music, the piano improvisations and other Gershwin hits. Rare film footage obtained from the Gershwin family is projected, along with unpublished photographs of the composer and his friends. Archival recordings of his 1932 – 33 radio programs, Music by Gershwin, are also featured.

A Magician with Music: John Williams
2022-03-10 19:00 - 21:00 | Coral Lakes, 12751 El Clair Ranch Road, Boyton Beach, FL, 33437, United States
In a career that spans five decades, John Williams has become one of America’s most accomplished and successful composers for film and for the concert stage. Mr. Williams has composed the music and served as music director for more than one hundred films. His 40-year artistic partnership with director Steven Spielberg has resulted in many of Hollywood’s most acclaimed and successful films, including Schindler’s List, E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial, Jaws, Jurassic Park, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, four Indiana Jones film and Saving Private Ryan. He has received five Academy Awards and 50 Oscar nominations, making him the Academy’s most-nominated living person and the second-most nominated person in the history of the Oscars.

A Tribute to a King: Elvis Presley
2022-03-09 19:00 - 21:00 | Florida Atlantic University, Barry and Florence Friedberg Auditorium, Boca Raton Campus, Boca Raton, FL, United States
On Sept. 9, 1956, more than 60 million people witnessed a young entertainer with gyrating hips and a honey-coated baritone voice croon his way into national consciousness on The Ed Sullivan Show. His rubbery legs spread wide apart, head thrown carelessly back and mouth twitching, it was apparent that this man was different. With an onstage persona that magnified unbridled sensuality and a versatile musical style which drew from rock and roll, gospel, blues, country and pop, Elvis Aaron Presley exuded charms that would make him the best-selling solo artist in the history of popular music.

The Hollywood Musical: Four Decades of Magic - Part 1
2022-01-11 19:00 - 21:00 | Florida Atlantic University Jupiter Campus, 5353 Parkside Drive, Jupiter, FL, 33458, United States
The golden age of the Hollywood musical coincided with the greatest era of American songwriting. Music-makers like Berlin, Gershwin, Porter, Kern, and Rodgers and Hart wrote brilliant songs and then shuffled them across the continent from theaters in New York to the film studios in California.
The Vitaphone crackles of the first musical talkie traveled in the opposite direction: from the Hollywood sound stages of Warner Bros. to its 1927 world premiere in Manhattan, where audiences heard Al Jolson speak his prophetic line, “Wait a minute, wait a minute…you ain’t heard nothin’ yet!” The sensation created by The Jazz Singer began four decades of melodious invention as the Hollywood musical dominated the landscape of the American film industry. This first of a four-session series pays tribute to the great musicals of the 1930s.

An Enchanted Evening with Rodgers & Hammerstein
2022-01-10 19:00 - 21:00 | Florida Atlantic University, Barry and Florence Friedberg Auditorium, Boca Raton Campus, Boca Raton, FL, United States
In this lively and engaging evening, pianist, raconteur, and American music specialist Robert Wyatt celebrates the lives and works of Rodgers and Hammerstein. Through original cast recordings, film clips, interviews, correspondence, and other primary materials furnished by The Library of Congress and The Rodgers and Hammerstein Organization, learn about the lives of these two icons of the American musical, experience their great productions, and listen to their music which has kept the American public hopeful through wars, recessions, natural disasters, and political intrigue.

The Beatles: An Evening with the Fab Four
2021-12-15 19:00 - 21:00 | Florida Atlantic University Jupiter Campus, 5353 Parkside Drive, Jupiter, FL, 33458, United States
During their years together, the Beatles recorded and released 214 different songs and became the most significant band in history. Their musical style, a combination of pop ballads and traditional 1950s rock and roll, was eventually spiced with classical elements, Indian ragas, and psychedelic hard rock. Their genesis contributed to the evolution of pop music into an art form, while their aura generously sweetened the counterculture of the 1960s. Let It Be, their twelfth and final album, was released just a month after the group’s break-up in 1970. Although their musical life existed for just a decade, the Beatles’ contribution to world music is inestimable.
Musical raconteur Robert Wyatt guides a “magical mystery tour” of the life and works of the Beatles spotlighting recording of timeless songs like “Hey Jude,” “Something,” “Yesterday,” “Strawberry Fields Forever,” “Help!,” “The Long and Winding Road,” and “A Day in the Life.” The evening abounds with clips from their five films, recording sessions, and interviews that showcase the individual personalities that collectively became known as the Fab Four.

The Beatles: An Evening with the Fab Four
2021-12-13 19:00 - 21:00 | Florida Atlantic University, Barry and Florence Friedberg Auditorium, Boca Raton Campus, Boca Raton, FL, United States

An Enchanted Evening with Rodgers & Hammerstein
2021-12-08 18:30 - 20:30 | Smithsonian S. Dillon Ripley Center, 1100 Jefferson Dr SW, Washington, D.C., 20560

A Salute to George and Ira Gershwin
2021-07-15 18:30 - 21:00 | Smithsonian Portrait Gallery, 8th and F Streets, NW , Washington, DC
Ira was known as “The Jeweler,” a songsmith whose exquisite craftsmanship allowed him to embed a seamless mosaic of words within the contour of a melodic line. And when his brother George sat at the piano, an endless assortment of tunes came “dripping from his fingers.” From their first hit tune in 1918, “The Real American Folk Song (Is a Rag),” along with immortal blockbusters like “I Got Rhythm,” “Embraceable You” and “The Man I Love,” to the heart-wrenching “Love Is Here to Stay,” a song left unfinished by George’s death in July 1937, the brother’s legacy of over two dozen scores for Broadway and Hollywood helped establish musical comedy as an American art form.

Cole Porter: Sophisticate of American Song
2021-03-16 18:30 - 20:15 | Smithsonian S. Dillon Ripley Center, 1100 Jefferson Dr SW, Washington, D.C., 20560
Dilettante, hedonist, elitist, snob: Cole Porter was called all of them during his glittering yet troubled life. Whatever detractors may have said about him personally, Porter’s reputation as a musical genius has never been questioned. The lecture surveys Porter’s life on Broadway and in Hollywood, covering 40 years that produced 33 stage works and the music for 23 films. Rare archival film clips and recording of original cast members, including Ethel Merman, Fred Astaire, Louis Armstrong, and Bing Crosby are featured, along with Porter himself singing and playing “You’re the Top”—which he was.
Through the use of a grand piano and a PowerPoint presentation, the audience will sway with the songs that people enjoy humming, masterworks like “Night and Day,” “Another Op’nin’, Another Show,” “Begin the Beguine,” “I Love Paris” and many, many more. American music specialist Robert Wyatt will walk you through Cole Porter’s dramatic and fascinating life.

Irving Berlin: The Last Troubadour
2021-02-24 18:30 - 20:15 | Smithsonian S. Dillon Ripley Center, 1100 Jefferson Dr SW, Washington, D.C., 20560
It was truly a “ragtime to riches” path chosen by the immigrant Russian Jew Israel Baline. A teen aged waif slumming an existence in the Bowery during the earliest years of the twentieth-century, Irving Berlin, as he was later known, began writing songs before he knew how to read music. A self-taught and rather pathetic pianist, he morphed into a genuine musical icon by the age of 23 and remained the standard bearer for all songwriters until his death at the age of 101. Perhaps Jerome Kern describes it most succinctly: “Irving Berlin has no ‘place’ in American music—Irving Berlin IS American music.”

The Hollywood Musical: The 1960s
2021-02-16 10:00 - 11:30 | Project Independence, 112 Exchange Street, Middlebury, VT, 05753
Films created during the 1960s belong to the most creative era in cinema history, a time of tremendous social change, the Vietnam War, fashion, fads, rock ‘n’ roll and the acceleration of technological ingenuity. However, movie audiences were rapidly diminishing due to the dominance of the television industry and only 145 musicals were produced in the decade, compared to the 453 all-singing, all-dancing extravaganzas churned out in the 1930s.
Be entertained throughout an evening which features dazzling film clips of your favorite stars and a historical narrative by American music specialist, Robert Wyatt. Enjoy the emergence of Barbara Streisand, witness Julie Andrews transform from a nanny to a nun in only a year, and reserve a front row seat while drifting back to a time when admission to a movie house equaled a six-pack of beer!

The Hollywood Musical: Four Decades of Magic! Part 1
2021-02-09 14:00 - 15:30 | Residence at Otter Creek, 50 Lodge Road, Middlebury, VT, 05753

A Tribute to a King: Elvis Presley
2021-01-12 16:30 - 18:00 | Florida Atlantic University Jupiter Campus, 5353 Parkside Drive, Jupiter, FL, 33458, United States

The Beatles
2020-12-10 19:00 - 20:30 | Florida Atlantic University, Barry and Florence Friedberg Auditorium, Boca Raton Campus, Boca Raton, FL, United States
The Beatles were an English rock band formed in Liverpool in 1960. With members John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr, they became widely regarded as the foremost and most influential music band in history. Rooted in skiffle, beat and 1950s rock and roll, the Beatles later experimented with several musical styles, ranging from pop ballads and Indian music to psychedelia and hard rock, often incorporating classical elements and unconventional recording techniques in innovative ways. In 1963, their enormous popularity first emerged as “Beatlemania”; as the group’s music grew in sophistication, led by primary songwriters Lennon and McCartney, the band were integral to pop music’s evolution into an art form and to the development of the counterculture of the 1960s.

Andrew Lord Webber: A Master of Marvels
2020-12-09 19:00 - 20:30 | Florida Atlantic University Jupiter Campus, 5353 Parkside Drive, Jupiter, FL, 33458, United States
British composer Andrew Lloyd Webber has created a global empire unrivaled in the history of musical theatre. In 1983, he was the first composer to have three musicals simultaneously on Broadway and in London’s West End, a feat he duplicated five years later. The New York production of The Phantom of the Opera, which opened in 1988, is now nearing 13,000 performances and was joined this last season by a Broadway revival of another of the composer’s megahits, Cats.
Lloyd Webber’s phenomenal successes can be attributed to a particular blend of showmanship and superb craft—the genesis of which began in childhood. The son of professional musicians, he also possessed passions for architecture, history, mechanics, and staging, which fostered in him an ability to envision productions of astonishing complexity and grandeur.
Join music specialist Robert Wyatt as he raises the curtain on a lively afternoon that examines and celebrates Andrew Lloyd Webber’s theatrical artistry, filled with clips and recordings that cover the full range of his career from his earliest to most recent works.

The Musical Genius of Cole Porter and Irving Berlin
2020-11-14 10:00 - 16:30 | Smithsonian S. Dillon Ripley Center, 1100 Jefferson Dr SW, Washington, D.C., 20560
Irving Berlin, a Russian immigrant, had no formal musical training and could not read or notate music. Cole Porter was wealthy and privileged and had extensive musical training. Berlin spoke to the American heart in sentimental ballads with infectious rhythms. Porter reflected the social elite with witty, fashionable, and often cynical lyrics and elegant melodies. Both wrote the music and lyrics to their works, and they dominated musical theater and popular song for 40 years.

The Sound of Music
2020-11-13 14:00 - 15:30 | Goodwin House, 4800 Fillmore Street, Alexandria, VA, United States
The original Broadway production of The Sound of Music, starring Mary Martin and Theodore Bikel, opened in 1959 and won five Tony Awards, including Best Musical, out of nine nominations. The first London production opened at the Palace Theatre in 1961. The show has enjoyed numerous productions and revivals since then. It was adapted as a film musical starring Julie Andrews and Christopher Plummer, which won five Academy Awards. It is the most popular film musical ever produced. The Sound of Music was the last musical written by Rodgers and Hammerstein; Oscar

Gershwin, by George!
2020-10-29 13:30 - 15:00 | University of Vermont, 115 Eastern Avenue, St. Johnsbury, VT, 05819, United States

Steps in Time: Fred Astaire
2020-08-19 19:30 - 21:00 | Heatherwood, Route 6A , Yarmouth Port, MA , 02675
Light on his feet, Fred Astaire revolutionized the movie musical with his elegant and seemingly effortless dance style. He may have made dancing look easy, but he was a well-known perfectionist, and his work was the product of endless hours of practice.
Astaire started performing as a child, partnering up with his older sister Adele. The two toured the vaudeville circuit before making it to Broadway in 1917. Among their many productions the brother-sister team starred in the 1927 George and Ira Gershwin musical Funny Face. For all his early success, though, career in the movies eluded Astaire. He had done a screen test, but he failed to attract any interest. A studio executive wrote at the time, “Can’t sing. Can’t act. Slightly balding. Can dance a little.” He eventually appeared in 36 musical films.

Gertrude Lawrence: The Ghost of the Cape Cod Playhouse
2020-08-17 18:30 - 20:00 | Olde Colonial Courthouse, 3046 Main Street, Barnstable Village, MA, 02630, United States
Gertrude Lawrence Gertrude Lawrence was one of Great Britain’s brightest theatrical stars during the first half of the 20th century. A lifelong friend and colleague of Noel Coward, Lawrence ‘s forte was sophisticated musical comedy, where she exuded a lively, charismatic stage presence that easily overcame her shortcomings as a singer. She was sometimes criticized for a small vocal range and a tendency to sing flat, but her emotional commitment and flat-out star power earned her the approval of most of the musical legends she worked with: the Gershwins, Cole Porter, Kurt Weill and Rodgers & Hammerstein. Her connection to Cape Cod came later in her career when she married producer and aficionado Richard Aldrich in 1940. Their life together was dear and rewarding and, fifteen years after her death, Aldrich published Mrs. A: An Intimate Biography of a Great Star, the definitive book on Lawrence’s life and career.

Gertrude Lawrence: The Ghost of the Cape Cod Playhouse
2020-08-16 18:30 - 20:00 | Olde Colonial Courthouse, 3046 Main Street, Barnstable Village, MA, 02630, United States
August 17 @ 6:30 pm – 8:00 pm

Gertrude Lawrence Gertrude Lawrence was one of Great Britain’s brightest theatrical stars during the first half of the 20th century. A lifelong friend and colleague of Noel Coward, Lawrence ‘s forte was sophisticated musical comedy, where she exuded a lively, charismatic stage presence that easily overcame her shortcomings as a singer. She was sometimes criticized for a small vocal range and a tendency to sing flat, but her emotional commitment and flat-out star power earned her the approval of most of the musical legends she worked with: the Gershwins, Cole Porter, Kurt Weill and Rodgers & Hammerstein. Her connection to Cape Cod came later in her career when she married producer and aficionado Richard Aldrich in 1940. Their life together was dear and rewarding and, fifteen years after her death, Aldrich published Mrs. A: An Intimate Biography of a Great Star, the definitive book on Lawrence’s life and career.

Lerner & Loewe: Musical Champagne
2020-05-15 15:00 - 16:30 | Residence at Otter Creek, 50 Lodge Road, Middlebury, VT, 05753
In temperament and background, Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe were wildly dissimilar, but the two accommodated their often tempestuous relationship to generate brilliantly crafted musicals such as Brigadoon, Paint Your Wagon, My Fair Lady, Gigi, and Camelot.
Learn the origins of enduring songs like Almost Like Being in Love, The Night They Invented Champagne, I Could Have Danced All Night, If Ever I Would Leave You, and They Call the Wind Maria; enjoy clips from the film adaptations of the stage productions; explore personal correspondence; and probe the dual genius of this Viennese composer and silver-spooned New York lyricist in a lively evening led by pianist and American music specialist Robert Wyatt.

All That Jazz!
2020-04-18 10:00 - 12:00 | Falmouth Academy, 7 Highfield Drive, Falmouth, MA, 02540, United States
Jazz has been, from its very beginnings at the turn of the 20th century, a constantly evolving, expanding, changing music, passing through several distinctive phases of development. Spend a Saturday morning with George Scharr and Robert Wyatt exploring its history and sampling its history. Life music will flavor the story.

Gershwin, by George!
2020-04-07 14:00 - 15:30 | University of Vermont, Nolan-Murray Center, 10 Pleasant Street, Springfield, Vermont, 05150

All That Jazz!
2020-04-07 09:00 - 10:00 | WCAI – 90.1 FM

Steps in Time: Fred Astaire
2020-03-27 15:30 - 17:00 | The Gables at East Mountain, 200 Gables Place, Rutland, VT, 05701, United States

A Tribute to a King: Elvis Presley
2020-03-23 00:00 - 2020-05-22 14:00 | Project Independence, 112 Exchange Street, Middlebury, VT, 05753

The Cotton Club
2020-03-07 13:00 - 14:30 | Florida Atlantic University Jupiter Campus, 5353 Parkside Drive, Jupiter, FL, 33458, United States
The Cotton Club, favored by the city’s elite, was dubbed “the Aristocrat of Harlem.” Its patrons included British royalty and celebrities like George Gershwin, Cole Porter, Paul Whiteman and Marlene Dietrich. Duke Ellington and Cab Calloway conducted their innovative jazz bands and great black entertainers like Ethel Waters, Bill “Bojangles” Robinson, Lena Horne and Josephine Baker played the room to the delight of the all-white audience.
Feel the magnetic attraction of the Cotton Club in this lecture/recital presented by Robert Wyatt. Film and sound clips will partner with colorful stories which illustrate the musical and social life of New York in the 1920s and 30s.

Music in the Movies
2020-03-05 19:30 | Coral Lakes, 12751 El Clair Ranch Road, Boyton Beach, FL, 33437, United States
Beginning with The Jazz Singer in 1927, music has been an integral part of the motion picture films. While stimulating emotion, broadening the plot, creating drama and intrigue, the correct song at an opportune moment projects incredible power. Musical films have bequeathed us many of the finest songs of all time. Enjoy them with memorable clips combined with live piano performance.
