Mary-Mitchell Campbell and Jessica Vosk want to rewrite what many people adoringly call the Great American Songbook — that unofficial roster of pop tunes, mostly from the first half of the 20th century, that have been a staple of vocal performance for decades now.
Everybody knows the music — or at least they used to — the songs of Irving Berlin, Cole Porter, George Gershwin and composing teams, such as Rogers and Hart. Think of Frank Sinatra crooning Porter’s “Anything Goes” or Ella Fitzgerald singing Gershwin’s “Embraceable You” and the whole canon of memorable American tunes might start to unfold in your head like the recordings on an old 33 rpm album.
But the songbook is stuck in time and that time is fading. Audiences who heard that music when it was new, or who have nostalgia for they way their parents and grandparents kept it vibrant, are, to put it gently, going away. Replacing them are generations of music fans who never heard of writers like Johnny Mercer, Hoagie Carmichael or Jerome Kern.
So, how to update it? To keep up the quality of the songbook, but move the calendar forward and bring in a fresh group of listeners?
Campbell and Vosk are betting on the 1970s, and the chart-topping hits created by group of laid-back, rock-and-pop artists who made their mark in the second half of last century when Los Angeles was the music capital of the country. The names include Joni Mitchell, Neil Young, The Eagles, Linda Ronstadt and The Mamas & the Papas.
The pair developed a concert around an idea they debuted at the iconic “Lyrics & Lyricists” music series at New York City’s 92nd Street Y, a performance space very much dedicated to the Great American Songbook.