Starring a Tony-nominated Brian Stokes Mitchell as Coalhouse Walker, Jr., Ragtime world-premiered in Toronto on Dec. Of course, there were some who couldn’t make it because they now have real jobs and couldn’t get out of work.” They were replaced by actors who had played their parts on tour or during the show’s marathon run (it put in 839 performances on Broadway). “They came from Canada, England and Australia to do it again. “Most of the Ragtime cast who were still alive showed up,” she says. It was billed as a reunion concert, and, to a major degree, it was. It was a perfect collaboration because we felt we were supporting one another.” Everybody brought their A Game and their best ideas to the room. Graciela Daniele is a choreographer as well as a director. Santo Loquasto, who did our costumes, was a great set designer. We had a lot of very smart people in that first production-people who had done much more than what they were credited for. He was the ultimate collaborator, very much into the group effort and the idea of ensemble. I remember the immigrant section where they’re coming through Ellis Island- Frank devised that through improvisation in one afternoon. When we got Audra McDonald to join us very early on, I began to write for her, so hearing her sing ‘Your Daddy’s Son’ brought me back to the day we had written that song for her in Toronto. Seeing the original performers we’d written them for reinforced that. I remembered when we had written these individual songs. I was telling myself that I should just try to be in the present-but I was always in the present and in the past at the same time. Jenny Andersonįlaherty seconds the emotion: “It was mind-blowing. It was like lightning in a bottle-you know, an explosion of joy.” Audra McDonald performs at the ‘Ragtime’ reunion concert. “So you’ll get to see it, thank goodness. “They filmed it,” Ahrens is proud, and relieved, to report. That was just celebrated March 27 as a benefit for the Entertainment Community Fund (nee The Actors Fund). Their 40 th anniversary as a songwriting team coincides with the 25 th anniversary of their biggest hit, Ragtime. The latter doubles as director and performer. The selections range from their earliest Off-Broadway effort (1988’s Lucky Stiff ) to their latest, which is still winding its way to Broadway (2022’s Knoxville ), and they’ll be rendered by the likes of Brian Stokes Mitchell, Liz Callaway, Lea Salonga, Quentin Earl Darrington, Courtnee Carter, Christy Altomare, A.J. “It’s sort of a smattering of 40 years of career,” she promises, “and I think it’ll be a fantastic evening.” ” Also expected to be represented is their work on 1992’s My Favorite Year and the 1997 Disney animated film Anastasia, which brought them a couple of Oscar nominations. “We’re still shuffling songs right now,” says Ahrens, “but I can tell you there’ll be something from Ragtime, of course, several numbers from A Man of No Importance, something from Once on This Island. Classic Stage Company, which presented the most recent Ahrens-Flaherty musical ( A Man of No Importance with Jim Parsons), is marking this occasion with a one-night-only-benefit evening of their music, titled after a big number from Ragtime, “Make Them Hear You,” Monday, April 17, at 7 p.m. Their song, indeed, was called “Village Voice.” Stephen Flaherty and Lynn Ahrens Courtesy of Stephen Flaherty and Lynn Ahrens Their first song was a class assignment, a duet of two people trying to communicate with each other via ads in the Village Voice. It suddenly occurred to him to “ shake things up a bit and work with somebody for the first time in my life, so I hollered after her down the street, ‘Do you want to write a song together?’ She was surprised since-according to her-I’d never expressed any interest in collaborating before. Enter Flaherty, who-at the time and “primarily by default”-was struggling with all three chores: music, lyrics and book. Already an established writer, composer and singer, working mostly in commercials and children’s television ( Schoolhouse Rock), Ahrens was shopping around for a composer, Ahrens was shopping around for a composer. It was a room full of 32 other composers or lyricists or book-writers, one of whom was Lynn Ahrens. A chronic completist even then, Flaherty stayed the course until he graduated in 1982, then rushed to New York and enrolled in Engel’s famous school for songwriters. Impressed with the 20-year-old’s musical gifts, he advised Flaherty to quit college immediately, high-tail it to New York and join the BMI Lehman Engel Musical Theater Workshop. Stephen Flaherty, who wrote his first musical score at 14, was a sophomore at University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music before Broadway conductor-composer-arranger-teacher Lehman Engel caught up with him. The cast of the ‘Ragtime’ reunion concert.
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