Arts & Entertainment

A Triumvirate Of Legendary Broadway Composers

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Jack Viertel (far right) with musicians at the JCC

November 29, 2024

By Barrett Seaman–

When the last notes of Sunday in the Park with George ended, a packed house audience at The Ark, the Shames JCC on Hudson’s new theater, rose from a robust round of applause to a full-blown standing ovation. They had just heard four vocalists and a seven-piece orchestra play 90 minutes-worth of Stephen Sondheim’s most memorable show tunes, ranging from Company and Follies to A Little Night Music, Sweeney Todd and Into the Woods. Interspersed between songs were recollections of the great composer and lyricist’s career and life delivered by veteran Broadway producer and Tarrytown resident Jack Viertel, whose accounts had an intimacy that only comes from personal knowledge. He and Sondheim had been friends for decades.

The November 17 production was the JCC’s only staging of Stephen Sondheim: An Afternoon of Song and Story, but it was also the first of a three-part series on Broadway’s legendary composers. Viertel and the musicians who performed will return again on January 12 to perform Gershwin: An Afternoon of Song and Story and on March 30 for Rodgers: An Afternoon of Song and Story. As was the Sondheim show, these two will be afternoon events starting at 3:00 p.m.

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Viertel could not have known the great George Gershwin, who died in 1937, and while his career included revivals of a couple of Richard Rodgers musicals, the two never met. But Viertel, who was the creative director of JuJamcyn Theaters for 35 years as well as Artistic Director of New York City Center’s Encore Series for two decades, knows the Broadway Theater scene from the inside. In addition to his work as a producer and dramaturgist, he has written the non-fiction The Secret Life of the American Musical, as well as a novel, Broadway Melody, which, while a work of fiction, nevertheless captures the American musical scene in granular detail. (see: https://thehudsonindependent.com/a-fictional-tip-of-the-hat-to-broadways-glory-days/).

Tickets can be purchased online at https://www.thearkevents.org/upcoming-events. The Shames JCC on Hudson is at 371 South Broadway in Tarrytown.

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