Music historian Michael Lasser will celebrate one of the most popular and influential songs in the history of American music with the help of three performers. Irving Berlin's "Alexander's Ragtime Band" is 100 years old in 2011, and yet thousands of people can still sing every word. Berlin, a Jewish immigrant from Russia, had a genius for America, and his song contributed to an expansion of personal freedom, the liberation of women early in the twentieth century, and a new vision of a melting-pot country.
Michael Lasser is the co-author (with Philip Furia) of
America's Songs: The Stories Behind the Songs of Broadway, Hollywood, and Tin Pan Alley. He is well known as the host of the nationally syndicated public radio program Fascinatin' Rhythm, winner of the 1994 George Foster Peabody Award. The Peabody citation praised the show for letting "our treasury of popular tunes speak (and sing) for itself with sparkling commentary tracing the contributions of the composers and performers to American society."
Sara Holliday(soprano), a graduate of the Oberlin Conservatory of Music, is the Library's Events Coordinator.
Shad Olsen(baritone) is a graduate of the American Musical and Dramatic Academy. He has performed in many operas, musicals, and plays Off-Off Broadway as well as in his native Minnesota.
A native Oregonian, Brenna Sage(piano) is a multi-instrumentalist, music director, composer, and performer. Off-Broadway, she has director or performed with Big Apple Circus, American Girls Revue, and Elektrafire; Off-Off-Broadway she has participated in Chess, The Full Monty, Bachelorette, 4Play, Nunsense, Torch Song Trilogy, Croatoan, Puck'd (a punk rock adaptation of A Midsummer Night's Dream) and the 2007 IT Award-winning production of Urinetown. Most recently she music directed a preview of The Zegend of Lelda for the West Side Musical Theater Festival, winning Best Musical in its series, and the premiere production of Trouble: The Musical, at the Midtown Theatre Festival.
This event is generously supported by the estate of Marian O. Naumburg.
