tonight at Carnegie Hall: MasterVoices presents STRIKE UP THE BAND

The classic Gershwin - Kaufman - Ryskind show in a rare concert performance

my NEW YORK SUN preview story:

First of all, special thanks to the New York Sun for letting me write a preview of this unique presentation. You can read it here. (if the link does not work, write & ask me for the PDF.)

The MasterVoices version, which combines aspects - book-wise and songs - from both the 1927 production (which closed out of town) and the successful 1930 Broadway production, was masterminded for MasterVoices by our buddy, the masterful musical theater scholar Laurence “Broadway to Mainstreet” Maslon, who share the following with us:

Larry Maslon:

The 1927 Strike Up the Band, which closed out of town in Philadelphia, has gone into the public domain.  As the co-trustee of the George S. Kaufman Literary Trust, I thought it was time to get a version out there that could bring forward the best elements of both versions; I approached Ted Sperling of MasterVoices (as they did such a good job with the other two Gershwin/Kaufman/Ryskind shows) to see if we could premiere something with them.  It occurred to me that Kaufman wrote Strike Up The Band right after he wrote The Cocoanuts and right before he wrote Animal Crackers; the show had a very specific Marxian quality to it; just as Ryskind reimagined the show in 1930 for a specific comic team--the extremely dated Clark and McCullough--I thought of the material as tailored for the Marx Brothers; if not them exactly, in their spirit (as you point out, Duck Soup is very much like Strike Up The Band).  In coming up with a more structured plot--still lunatic, but structured--Ted and I were able to incorporate some songs which work within this structure--"I've Got a Crush on You," "The Man I Love," 'Meadow Serenade"--while others had to be jettisoned:  "Soon," "I Mean to Say".

It's worth mentioning the original plot-- that we stuck to--which concerns a megalomaniacal businessman, a cheese magnate in this case, who goes to war against the Swiss over an imposed tariff, as long as the war is branded after his name.

So we'll have fun.

Tuesday, October 29, 2024 at 7 PM
Isaac Stern Auditorium / Ronald O. Perelman Stage

Strike Up the Band

Music and Lyrics by George and Ira Gershwin
Book by Laurence Maslon and Ted Sperling
Based on the original books by George S. Kaufman (1927)
and Morrie Ryskind (1930)
Restored by Tommy Krasker
Orchestrations by Russell Warner, William D. Brohn, William Daly, Dick Hyman, Sid Ramin, Larry Wilcox, and Donald Johnston

Ted Sperling, Conductor and Director Alison Solomon, Choreographer

MasterVoices MasterVoices Orchestra

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Victoria Clark, Christopher Fitzgerald, and other principals and dancers in rehearsal for tonight’s performance. (Photos by John Van Antwerp)

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This counts as an “original cast recording” of the 1930 production, by the original bandleader, trumpeter Loring “Red” Nichols and his Strike-Up-the-Band Orchestra

Per Stanley Green (via Dan Dietz) the musicians in the Red Nichols pit orchestra included Jimmy Dorsey, Benny Goodman, Gene Krupa, Glenn Miller, and Jack Teagarden (probably not all playing every night, but maybe!)

“Two Men About Town” Bobby Clark and Paul McCullough with Chorus Girls. Clark had a solo career that included a stint as a second banana comic on one of Sinatra’s early radio shows and into early TV: he hosted an early extant episode of the (pre-Colgate) Comedy Hour with the beloved Julie Wilson.

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