MUSICALS 101

MUSICALS 101 are FREE educational revues for you to learn more about the music and lives of "great" composers, lyricists and styles presented in song & word. Each revue features singers, an accompanist and host Scott Ashton Swan.
Past Musicals 101 Revues have included:

  • Irving Berlin 101
"Irving Berlin (May 11, 1888 – September 22, 1989) was an American composer and lyricist, widely considered one of the greatest songwriters in American history. His music forms a great part of the Great American Songbook." [Wikipedia]

  • Leonard Bernstein 101
"Leonard Bernstein August 25, 1918 – October 14, 1990) was an American composer, conductor, author, music lecturer, and pianist. He was among the first conductors born and educated in the U.S. to receive worldwide acclaim. [Wikipedia]

  • Cole Porter 101
"Cole Albert Porter (June 9, 1891 – October 15, 1964) was an American composer and songwriter. Many of his songs became standards noted for their witty, urbane lyrics, and many of his scores found success on Broadway and in film." [Wikipedia]

  • Betty Comden & Adolph Green 101
"Betty Comden and Adolph Green,  (respectively, born May 3, 1917 - November 23, 2006 & December 2, 1915, - October 23, 2002) were an American musical-comedy team who wrote scripts—and often the lyrics—for many Broadway shows and Hollywood film musicals. They were paired together longer than any other writing team in the history of Broadway." [Encylopedia Britannica]

  • Cy Coleman 101
"Cy Coleman (June 14, 1929 - November 18, 2004) was an American composer, songwriter, and jazz pianist. Born Seymour Kaufman to Eastern European Jewish parents and raised in the Bronx, Coleman was a child prodigy at the piano; starting at the age of six, he was giving recitals at Steinway Hall, Town Hall, and Carnegie Hall. He studied composition, conducting, and orchestration at New York City’s High School for the Performing Arts and at the New York College of Music, but instead of devoting himself to classical music as expected, he turned to jazz." [Official Masterworks Broadway Website]

  • Celtic Themed Musicals 101
Join us as we explore musicals and showtunes with a Celtic theme. We will look at such hit shows as Finian's Rainbow, Brigadoon and Once but will in APPLAUSE! style be dusting off rare shows like Donnybrook, Irene, Maggie Flynn, The Pirate Queen, A Man of No Importance and the Canadian musical Rob Roy. Lots to explore packaged together with singers, a piano, and a storyteller. 

  • Richard Rodgers & Oscar Hammerstein II 101
"Rodgers and Hammerstein refers to the duo of composer Richard Rodgers (1902–1979) and lyricist-dramatist Oscar Hammerstein II (1895–1960), who together were an influential, innovative and successful American musical theatre writing team. They created a string of popular Broadway musicals in the 1940s and 1950s, initiating what is considered the "golden age" of musical theatre." [Wikipedia]

  • Richard Rodgers & Lorenz Hart 101
"Rodgers and Hart were an American songwriting partnership between composer Richard Rodgers (1902–1979) and the lyricist Lorenz Hart (1895–1943). They worked together on 28 stage musicals and more than 500 songs from 1919 until Hart's death in 1943." [Wikipedia]

"Jerome David Kern (January 27, 1885 – November 11, 1945) was an American composer of musical theatre and popular music. One of the most important American theatre composers of the early 20th century, he wrote more than 700 songs, used in over 100 stage works." [Wikipedia]

  • Alan Jay Lerner 101
"Alan Jay Lerner (August 31, 1918 – June 14, 1986) was an American lyricist and librettist. In collaboration with Frederick Loewe, and later Burton Lane, he created some of the world's most popular and enduring works of musical theatre both for the stage and on film. He won three Tony Awards and three Academy Awards, among other honors." [Wikipedia]

  • Musicals Based on Books Vol I & Musicals Based on Books Vol II
APPLAUSE! explores musicals and showtunes all based on books. In APPLAUSE! style be dusting off rare shows like Baker Street (Sherlock Holmes), Scarlett (Gone With the Wind), Camelot (The Once and Future Kind), Man of La Mancha (Don Quixote), Big River (Huckleberry Finn), Phantom (Phantom of the Opera). Lots to explore packaged together with singers, a piano, and a storyteller. 

  • Stephen Sondheim 101
"Stephen Joshua Sondheim (March 22, 1930) is an American composer and lyricist known for his work in musical theater. One of the most important figures in 20th-century musical theater, Sondheim has been praised as having "reinvented the American musical"with shows that tackle "unexpected themes that range far beyond the [genre's] traditional subjects" with "music and lyrics of unprecedented complexity and sophistication" [Wikipedia]