[Capdist-announce] Fort Salem Mercer Show

[Jay Kerr]

Joyce Nolen, Juliet Ewing, and Bambi Jones in Echoing Back: The Songs of Johnny Mercer


Rehearsal at the Actors' Temple in New York City, with Broadway choreographer Karin Baker rehearsing performers for Fort Salem's production of Echoing Back: The Songs of Johnny Mercer

ECHOING BACK THE SONGS OF

JOHNNY MERCER

 

FOR RELEASE WEEK OF JUNE 23

 

SALEM – Fort Salem Theater once again provides a launching pad for new musical material as Broadway dance guru Karin Baker (42nd Street, Me and My Girl) introduces to the world-at-large her new concert salute to Broadway and Hollywood songwriter Johnny Mercer, for one weekend only, June 27-29, in Echoing Back: The Songs of Johnny Mercer.

 

Born in 1909 in Savannah, Georgia, Johnny Mercer wrote lyrics prodigiously from the 1930’s to the 1970’s, winning four Original Song Academy Awards and scoring dozens of recognizable hits. His Oscar songs, “On the Atchison, Topeka, and the Santa Fe” (1946), “In the Cool, Cool, Cool of the Evening” (1951), “Moon River” (1961), and “The Days of Wine and Roses” (1962) only begin to document Mercer’s lasting effect on pop music in the twentieth century. Whether it was his early Hollywood lyric collaborations with Richard Whiting (“Too Marvelous for Words” and “Hooray for Hollywood”) or his bi-coastal collaborations with Harold Arlen (“Blues in the Night,”  “Old Black Magic,” “One for My Baby,” “Come Rain or Come Shine”), or his own music and lyrics in “Dream,” “I Wanna Be Around,” and “G.I. Jive,” his songs illustrate how an era’s music could reflect a smoldering sensuality that bespeaks a romanticism unequaled in our modern era of blatantly obscene lyrics.

 

Karin Baker has taken these songs and more written by Johnny Mercer and woven them into a performance of song and dance with three Broadway performers and Fort Salem’s own artistic director, Jay Kerr, featuring Granville CSD music teacher Tim Patrick on bass. Ms. Baker was dance assistant and tap dance consultant to Gower Champion in 42nd Street, taught the tap dance that helped dramatic actress Maryann Plunkett win her Tony Award in the musical Me and My Girl, performed in the original casts of Coco and George M!, and is represented in local productions across the country as the author of The Melody Lingers On, a revue of the songs and life of Irving Berlin.

 

Broadway performers appearing in Echoing Back include Juliet Ewing (Footloose), Bambi Jones (Nunsense), and Joyce Nolen (Stop the World, with Sammy Davis). They have workshopped elements of the Fort Salem production in benefit performances for the professional organization Dancers Over Forty and for the Actors’ Temple in Manhattan. Their musical arranger, David Hancock Turner, unable to work in Salem this year due to prior commitments, has graced several Fort Salem productions, both as musician (Getting My Act Together with Benita Zahn and Forever Plaid with Jerry Gretzinger) and actor (Corn! The Musical).  Carrying on in his stead, Jay Kerr, who has not performed on Broadway since 1971, accompanies on piano and sings along with the gals.

 

The Broadway singing and dancing comes to Salem for three performances, Friday and Saturday, June 27-28 at 8 PM, with a Sunday (6/29) matinee at 2 PM. More information is available on the Fort’s website (fortsalemtheater.com) or by calling the theater’s box office at (518) 854-9200.

 

 

Jay Kerr
Artistic Director
Fort Salem Theater
jay at fortsalemtheater.com
(518) 854-9200




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