John Pizzarelli
Shirley Andress
Show
Tunes
Oregon Festival of American Music
opens the great American Songbook .
T
he Oregon Festival of American
Music has spent more than a
decade proving that American
composers have nothing to be
ashamed of in their contributions
to the world’s orchestral, folk and chamber
music. Yet history will credit 20th century
American music most for three interrelated in-
novations: jazz, musicals and popular song.
Starting last year, OFAM began exploring
show tunes and musicals in a big way, starting
at the top with delicious Gershwin extravagan-
zas. This summer, along with Frank Loesser’s
popular musical, Guys and Dolls, OFAM
presents the music of some of history’s great-
est songwriters from the amazing eruption of
popular song in the 1930s, which fueled the
jazz explosion of the next two decades and
still radiates today; to cite just a few exam-
ples: last month at Luna, techno-chanteuse
Joy Askew winningly set Cole Porter’s
“I’ve Got You Under My Skin” and “I Get a
Kick Out of You” to an electro beat, and a
new Harold Arlen tribute album features
Blondie’s Debbie Harry, Rufus Wainwright,
and other contemporary singers.
The festival kicks off on Thursday,
August 7 at the Hult Center with music made
famous by Fred Astaire, whose acclaim as a
suave dancer has obscured the fact that his
movies introduced so many songs that be-
came classics: Irving Berlin’s “Cheek to
Cheek,” “Let’s Face the Music and Dance”
14 AUGUST 7, 2003
and “Change Partners,” Dorothy Fields
and Jerome Kern’s sublime “The Way You
Look Tonight,” and many more. Never the
most powerful of vocalists, Astaire had a rare
gift for conveying character songs’ vulnera-
bility and nuance. They’ll be performed by
the OFAM jazz orchestra led by pianist Dick
Hyman and the great clarinetist Ken
Peplowski, whose deep experience in this
repertoire prevents OFAM from being just
another nostalgia trip.
Rita Moreno
Dick Hyman
Ian Whitcomb