By Marilyn Lester***How do you condense decades worth of music into 90 minutes and do it justice? Why, you call multiple Tony Award winner Kathleen Marshall, of course. Helming the latest Lyrics & Lyricists production at 92NY, Stardust: From Tin Pan Alley to Broadway, the director-choreographer succinctly traced the foundation of 
American popular music from the end of the 19th century to the start of the 20th, via 31 songs neatly delivered by the talented cast of: Krystal Joy Brown, T. Oliver Reid, Ana Villafañe, John Cardoza, Zachary Noah Piser and Sarah Stiles. Marshall hosted, appearing from time to time to present key information. Under her direction, the pace was swift, and the choreographed movement of the performers, poetic.
With sheet music backdrops, through song and narrative, the excitement of the period was inescapable: at the turn of the 20th century a confluence of rhythmic styles—blues, ragtime, klezmer—converged, yielding a new kind of syncopated music. In the south, in New Orleans, jazz was born; in the north, songwriters of the new popular music converged on West 28th Street and environs, dubbed Tin Pan Alley. This marvelous new music was brought to life during the show through fresh orchestration and arrangements by music directors Greg Anthony Rassen an
d David Chase, demonstrating how music 100+years old remains fresh and meaningful. The masterful band, drumless, was led by pianist Rassen, with bassist George Farmer and Aaron Heick playing a variety of woodwinds, plus violinist Robin Zeh, who provided color and trombonis Taja Graves-Parker, whose low-note features added zest.
In the early 20th century, when most homes had pianos and commercial radio wasn’t yet a reality, sheet music was vital to disseminating the latest tunes (sheet music covers became an art form unto itself). The key to culture back then was print media—magazines and newspapers—and in live performance at the many vaudeville houses throughout the land and in New York City on the burgeoning Great White Way—Broadway. Thus, it was the way the opener, 1914’s “Play a Simple Melody,” by newcomer
Irving Berlin, would have been heard. Berlin, of course, went on to be a giant among songwriters, but those whose names are fairly forgotten today lived again in this production of Stardust: Nat D. Ayer and Seymour Brown (“Oh, You Beautiful Doll”), and Gus Edwards and Edward Madden (“By the Light of the Silvery Moon”), among others.
The contributions of African Americans was duly represented in Scott Joplin’s “Maple Leaf Rag” and in Bert Williams, the Black superstar of vaudeville and the Ziegfeld Follies, with his hit tune “Nobody” (lyric by Alex Rogers). The hugely successful team of Fats Waller and Andy Razaf were in te spotlight with “Honeysuckle Rose and “Keepin’ Out of Mischief Now.” A few women broke the glass ceiling of Tin Pan Alley songwriters, and among them was Kay Swift who wrote “Can’t We Be Friends” with lyrics by Paul James, introduced on Broadway in 1929 in The Little Show, sung by a star of 
the day, Libby Holman.
It was given to the “father of American musical comedy,” George M. Cohan, to close the show; Cohan wrote, composed, produced and starred in more than 50 Broadway shows and published over 300 songs. It was a fitting finale for Stardust: From Tin Pan Alley to Broadway, to have “Give My Regards to Broadway” as a rousing all-cast send off.
The music of America, born at the turn of the 20th century, laid the melodic and harmonic foundation of all that was to come—even for today’s hip hop artists. Learn more at the Tin Pan Alley American Popular Music Project, a bountiful resource of information about America’s gift to the world.
Photos by Richard Termine
