Our attention-deficit Broadway music concert

 

My memories of Broadway music go back to the time my dad brought home the “South Pacific” album from the library. Then I remember buying my own album of “My Fair Lady” and eventually visiting New York as an adult to see “The Sound of Music” and the long-forgotten “Ben Franklin in Paris.” As a senior adult, I performed in six musicals in the Prizery Summer Theater and sang in the Washington Men’s Camerata’s Broadway concert at the Kennedy Center twice.

So it is no surprise that I was thrilled when the Danville Area Choral Arts Society decided to do a medley of “100 Years of Broadway” on March 23. As a chorus member, I thumbed through the music in January, struck by the volume.

What’s this? There are over 50 songs in the 45-minute medley? Just a whiff of each song from most of the greatest Broadway hits.? this made for an audience of  ADHD people?

“If you hear a song you don’t like, you’ll get a different one in less than a minute,” quips Christopher Swanson, the choir director.

At the first rehearsal, the younger people seemed puzzled by some of the old songs. Doesn’t everyone know “Button Up Your Overcoat” or “We’ll Take Manhattan?” Don’t they remember when Jerry Lewis made a revival hit of “Rockabye Your Baby to a Dixie Melody?”

Pretty soon they were more familiar to everyone. “Oh What a Beautiful Morning,” “Tomorrow.” There wasn’t much music newer though than songs from “Phantom of the Opera” and “Les Miserables.”

We were allowed to sign up for the numerous brief solos. I got “On the Street Where You Live” and “I’m a Yankee Doodle Dandy.” What? I’m a lullaby singer, not James Cagney! Swanson threatened to give me an Uncle Sam costume. Hey, no, but I am going to wave a little flag I got from Dollar General.

I like how Swanson goes back over difficult passages and drills us on them until we get them right.

I asked him what it was like directing so many songs together. “It’s a particular challenge with all of the key changes and time signatures,” he said. When he cut out several, he had to find new ways to transition from one to the other.

I asked him why he was doing Broadway music. “We wanted to do a program on the light side of things, to balance with ‘Messiah,’ a heavier work, which we did in January. Some people in the audience will know most of it. Everybody will know at least a few songs. “

When he is not directing choirs, he is a professor of music specializing in voice, at Longwood University. He drives more than 60 miles to the rehearsals and performances from Farmville to Danville. Three members of the five-piece band Sunday are also Longwood faculty.

The concert also includes the Danville Area Choral Arts Society Children’s Choir and the DACAS Ringers handbell ensemble.

I think you’ll enjoy this show at 3 p.m.  Sunday March 23 at St. Luke’s United Methodist Church, 3090 North Main St.