F. Scott Fitzgerald called the 1920s “the gaudiest spree in history” and this evening writer Denise Lanctot, conductor Marin Alsop and the Festival orchestra propose to recreate that spirit by taking you on a “musical bender” that will send you reeling into one sizzling night in Manhattan during the Great Jazz Age where music, dance and song pour from every pore – from low-brow joints to swank soirees, movie theaters to piano bars, ballrooms to Broadway, and from uptown cabarets to downtown speakeasies. The vitality in George Gershwin’s music and the sophisticated playfulness of Ira Gershwin’s lyrics mirrored the vitality and sophistication of Jazz Age Manhattan where at night the pulsating rhythms of the New American music wafted on the air. It was perpetually show time.
Your guide for the evening will be one Dutch Malloy, a rakish, out-of-work reporter with a hankering for hooch and a thirst for tunes. Through the course of the evening he’ll take you on a tour of Manhattan hot spots: a speakeasy, the Algonquin piano bar, a Broadway musical, a Park Avenue soiree, and a midnight show at the Rivoli. Not a bad night of it!