Lecture Series – The Great American Songbook: What Makes it Great? Rodgers & Hart Edition

Brent Wagner, Host
Tyler Driskill, Pianist
with University of Michigan Musical Theatre students Aaron Syi & Sage Taylor

Kerrytown Concert House is honored to bring back the enormously popular lecture series, The Great American Songbook: What Makes it Great? featuring the incomparable Brent Wagner (University of Michigan Emeritus Professor of Musical Theatre) with pianist Tyler Driskill (U-M Asst. Prof of Musical Theatre).

This installment of the 2025-26 lecture series centers around the writing team of Richard Rodgers & Lorenz Hart. Before composer Richard Rodgers teamed with Oscar Hammerstein Il and revolutionized the American musical, he had a monumentally successful, yet very different, collaboration with lyricist Lorenz Hart, from the mid-20s to the early 40s. Hart was at home with witty critiques and sly sexual references (“The Lady is a Tramp,” “Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered,” “I Wish I Were in Love Again”), and yet he could just as easily portray heartbreaking vulnerability (“My Funny Valentine,” “Where or When,” “Falling in Love with Love”). Rodgers’ music tempered Hart’s lyrics with swinging rhythms on one hand and breathtaking elegance on the other. Though the two men were opposite in almost every way, their differences gave us some of the most compelling songs of all time. We sigh and catch our breath at the same time.

This event is generously supported by Ensemble Concert Sponsors
Ann Arbor Area Community Foundation