American Classics
Bradford Conner and Benjamin Sears, Artistic and Producing Directors
American Classics is the Boston area's only organization devoted solely to the performance of American music, giving voice to forgotten gems and newly discovered musical treasures in concerts of vocal and instrumental music.
American Classics was founded in 1996 by The Camptown Ladies (Mary Ann Lanier & Sylvie Stewart), Benjamin Sears & Bradford Conner and Margaret Ulmer as a summer concert series at the Swedenborg Chapel in Cambridge. Concerts for American Music Week in November and a Christmas concert soon were added to the schedule. In 1999 American Classics moved to the Longy School of Music in Cambridge. At Longy the group began a regular Fall/Winter seasons of three programs, eventually adding second performances in the suburbs, currently in Bedford.
American Classics has been a leading presenter of classic musicals in concert format. Irving Berlin's first two Broadway scores, Watch Your Step (not seen in Boston since 1915) and Stop! Look! Listen!, along with an overview of his four Music Box Revues were among the group's early productions. The first revival of Berlin's World War I shows, Yip! Yip! Yaphank! was given in 2010, with a second production in 2019 for the show's one hundredth anniversary.
Other Broadway musical rarities have been Peggy-Ann was the 2003 entry of Musicals in Concert by Rodgers & Hart; and another Boston area premiere with the original 1927 version of the George S. Kaufman and George & Ira Gershwin show Strike Up the Band. From Cole Porter was the first Boston revival of his 1930 show Fifty Million Frenchmen.
In 2001, American Classics gave the first revival of the classic Howard Dietz, George S. Kaufman, and Arthur Schwartz revue The Band Wagon as part of the 2000-2001 Schwartz centenary. This production received a special 2001 IRNE (Independent Reviewers of New England) Award for Musical Theatre.
Other programs by American Classics have featured salutes to songwriters, among them Jerome Kern, Alan Jay Lerner, Frank Loesser, Johnny Mercer, E.Y. "Yip" Harburg, and a special centenary salute to Sammy Cahn in 2013 (recorded in concert for CD release). Fred Astaire, Bing Crosby, and Ethel Merman are among the great performers celebrated in concert.
On March 18, 2011 American Classics gave a gala celebration for Irving Berlin’s "Alexander's Ragtime Band," which had been registered for copyright on exactly one hundred years earlier on March 18, 1911. In attendance for this exciting event were Berlin’s eldest daughter Mary Ellin Barrett, her daughter Katherine Swett, Ted Chapin, President of the Rodgers & Hammerstein Organization/Irving Berlin Music and R&H Vice President Bert Fink. A cast of 19 celebrated Alexander in song and story to a sold-out house at the Pickman Concert Hall of the Longy School of Music.
In recent seasons audiences have heard programs dedicated to a variety of topics. Human foibles took center stage with a season of Vices – Money, Drink, and Smoking. The Civil War, presidential elections, a centennial salute to Fenway Park, and the years after World War I are among other concert themes. Songs from the many musical settings of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz started our first season after the pandemic.
Every program in each season has two performances, one in Cambridge and one in Bedford. For information on our current season, click on Current Season.
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"American Classics has been a particularly welcome newcomer to the summer scene, in delightful programs of historical American popular music." (Richard Dyer, Boston Globe)
"What American Classics does is document people's dreams, and the way they've manifested themselves in the humble popular song over the generations. Nobody does it better." (Richard Buell, Boston Globe)
" ... Summer allows the talented performers of American Classics to celebrate the music of good times [with] delightful concerts of American light music. The members of American Classics are connoisseurs of the unusual, so there were many rarely heard pieces of the program. Margaret Ulmer, at her best, plays with a dappled variety of touch that must make the others want to sing all that much better. Benjamin Sears has a sunny baritone and a theatrical temperament counterweighted by an ironical self-awareness. Mary Ann Lanier's soprano soars and she boasts excellent diction. Sylvie Stewart has a voice to match her outsize personality. Bradford Conner knows how to put patter across. The secret of light entertainment is that the standards of execution are no less demandingly exact than in the other musical arts. The best work by the American Classics performers demonstrated that they know this." (Richard Dyer, Boston Globe)
"American Classics offered audiences a fascinating look into the time capsule of the Broadway musical." (Ellen Pfeiffer, Boston Globe, review of Peggy-Ann)
"The music is glorious. The performances are riotously screwball and you will leave humming the tunes. What's not to love? If I didn't have expensive opera tickets for Sunday, I'd see it again." (Beverly Creasey, TheatreMirror, review of Strike Up the Band)
"Pure delight." (Lloyd Schwartz, Boston Phoenix)