The Howard County
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Michael Feinstein’s lucky break
At Gershwin’s Beverly Hills home, Feinstein met many of the legendary members
WIN TICKETS TO MEET Michael Feinstein! PHOTO BY GILLES TOUCAS
Learning from the masters
PHOTO COURTESY OF MICHAEL FEINSTEIN
By Carol Sorgen On a summer day in 1977, 20-year-old Michael Feinstein had a life-changing encounter: He was introduced to Ira Gershwin, the 80-year-old lyricist brother of George Gershwin, the famous American composer who had died years earlier at the age of 38. The present-day Feinstein, now 56, says he always felt like “an old soul,” even as a child growing up in the 1960s. From the time he was 5 and started playing piano by ear in his hometown of Columbus, Ohio, Feinstein began listening to his parents’ recordings of Bing Crosby, Al Jolson and Rosemary Clooney. “While I couldn’t tell you the names of the hit songs on the radio, I was a kid who could rattle off the name of every hit song written by George and Ira Gershwin, as well as many arcane facts about their lives and career,” he writes in his critically acclaimed memoir, The Gershwins and Me. Feinstein had met Ira Gershwin through June Levant, the widow of the concert pianist Oscar Levant, whom Feinstein calls “the greatest interpreter of Gershwin music of his generation.” Ira and his wife Lee asked Feinstein to start working with them, and he spent the next six years, until Ira’s death, taking care of their archive of Gershwin memorabilia. “Those formative years shaped the direction of my career and taught life lessons I never could have gotten in college, had I the grades to get in,” Feinstein told the Beacon in a telephone interview. Of course, today Feinstein himself is a world-renowned entertainer — a pianist and singer, not to mention author, known for his interpretations of what has become known as “the great American Songbook.” That Songbook comprises the best of American music — principally from Broadway, musical theatre and Hollywood musical film — from the 1920s to 1960. It includes dozens of songs of lasting popularity by such composers and lyricists as Harold Arlen, Duke Ellington, Jerome Kern and Cole Porter, to name just a few.
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ARTS & STYLE
Singer and pianist Michael Feinstein recounts working with Ira Gershwin in his recent memoir, The Gershwins and Me. He will share those stories and his enthusiasm for the songs of Broadway and film known as “the Great American Songbook” in a program on April 20 at the Music Center at Strathmore in N. Bethesda. He will perform at Baltimore’s Lyric Theatre on May 9 in a benefit for the Myerberg Center there.
of Hollywood’s old guard, such as Frank Sinatra, Elizabeth Taylor, Rosemary Clooney, Roddy McDowall, Henry Mancini and many others. A number of them became his friends as well. “It was as if I had arrived in Beverly Hills in the nick of time,” Feinstein recalled, “because only a few years later they were all gone....But they taught me much of what I know about performing, interpreting a song, and about why it’s important to pass on what we learn. “They planted the seeds that have bloomed into a lifelong mission of sharing the classic era of music and culture by
finding a way to make it relate to contemporary audiences.” Ira Gershwin, in particular, was a great teacher and mentor who shared much that otherwise would have been lost long ago, Feinstein said, adding gratefully, “I have a very strong career because of this music.” Many of the tunes are timeless, as seen by their continued popularity, even among today’s pop artists. “I gain such joy seeing the music go on and on,” Feinstein writes in his book. “Whether it’s Lady Gaga singing “Someone See FEINSTEIN, page 28
A reprise of Fiddler on the Roof at Toby’s Dinner Theatre; plus, winners of the annual Howie awards for the arts page 26
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