George Gershwin and Kay Swift: An Evening of Song and Television
Christine Ebersole, Klea Blackhurst and Jimmy Ray Bennett were at the Paley Center for Media on May 15th, 2008, to perform the songs of George Gershwin and Kay Swift. Artistic Advisor to the Kay Swift Trust Aaron Gandy provided commentary—interspersed with rare radio and television clips from the Paley Center's collection—on how the lives of these two songwriters intersected in the twenties and thirties. click here to see the performance
Clip provided by Paley Center for Media
Racey, Blackhurst Will Test Revision of Kay Swift Musical Fine and Dandy in Reading Kay Swift's 1930 Broadway musical Fine and Dandy — the same show that got a sparkling new studio recording by PS Classics in 2004 — will resurface in a May 8 Manhattan reading that features a new libretto, Playbill.com has learned. www.playbill.com/news/article/107884.html
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Fine and Dandy (1930), by Kay Swift and Paul James, was one of the biggest hits of Broadway's 1930 season, but until now has been all but forgotten. Fine and Dandy has been restored by music director Aaron Gandy and by orchestrator Russell Warner, who worked with Kay Swift herself during her final years, poring over thousands of manuscripts to reconstruct missing orchestrations, dance and vocal arrangements.
Recording commenced in June of 2003 with a 28-piece orchestra. The cast includes Carolee Carmello, Gavin Creel, Andrea Burns, Mark Linn-Baker, Mario Cantone, Deborah Tranelli, Jennifer Laura Thompson, and Anne Kaufman -- with special cabaret performance of songs from other shows by Ann Hampton Callaway, Jack Donahue, Natalie Douglas, and Jessica Molaskey & John Pizzarelli.
NEW! Downloadable ringtones for your cell phone! Click here. Allegro: “The First Lady” by Steven Richman Playbill: “Preserving Vintage Scores: PS Classics, Inc. Releases Swift's Fine and Dandy” On the Record (Playbill): “A Dandy Fine and Dandy” by Steven Suskin Broadway.com: “Let's Go Eat Worms in the Garden” review by Ken Mandelbaum Show Business: Fine and Dandy review by David Hurst |
In addition to the new Fine and Dandy recording from PS Classics, there is also a new Kay Swift biography published by Yale University Press: Fine and Dandy: The Life and Work of Kay Swift by Vicki Ohl.
The Kay Swift Memorial Trust has several projects in development including:
• Staging of an adaptation of Fine and Dandy, with a new book by Jimmy Ray Bennett
• Publication of a Kay Swift songbook
• Publication of Kay Swift's chamber music and other works
• A reissue of Kay Swift's 1943 autobiographical novel Who Could Ask For Anything More?
• Performance of the 1934 Balanchine ballet Alma Mater
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Purchase the Fine and Dandy CD from Amazon.com.
Purchase Fine and Dandy: The Life and Work of Kay Swift from Amazon.com.
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