Tin Pan Alley At Gardner Museum

A series of two Sunday concerts, Tin Pan Alley at the Gardner (January 28 & February 4 at 1:30p.m.) features standards and lesser-known songs by some of America's greatest songwriters, including George Gershwin, Cole Porter, Harold Arlen, Jerome Kern, Irving Berlin and Richard Rodgers.

Baritone Randall Scarlata, soprano Jennifer Aylmer and pianist Laura Ward will perform highlights of this "Great American Songbook," recreating an era when widespread music-making in the home resulted in a boom for music publishers and, in turn, fostered a generation of great American songwriters.

"The songs of Tin Pan Alley have been and continue to be a huge part of American life," says Scott Nickrenz, Music Director at the Gardner Museum. "It's about more than just wonderful tunes. Tin Pan Alley was the genesis of a new, distinctly American musical vocabulary. I like to say that these songs are every bit as great and important as Schubert lieder"¦except the lyrics are even better! And to hear them in a historic place like the Gardner Museum, built while the music was being written, really puts the songs in context."

Tin Pan Alley was the name given to a particular stretch of 28th street in New York where most music publishers based their headquarters around the turn of the century. The name was likely inspired by the pervasive sound of dozens of tinny upright pianos, all playing different tunes, heard up and down the street. These publishing houses fed a tremendous popular demand for sheet music; more than 25,000 new pianos were being sold each year, and over 500,000 children studied the instrument in their homes. Songs published in this era were played and sung in homes throughout the country, and remain ingrained in American culture to this day.

Baritone Randall Scarlata and soprano Jennifer Aylmer, the featured performers in Tin Pan Alley at the Gardner, are accomplished classical singers. Aylmer recently sang Papagena in the Metropolitan Opera's production of "The Magic Flute," an acclaimed performance broadcast to 100 movie theatres around the world; Scarlata has sung lieder throughout the U.S., Europe and South America. Yet, as for many Americans, the songs of Tin Pan Alley hold a special place in the lives of these two classical musicians.
"I've always loved this music, and I've been listening to it and singing it for as long as I can remember," says baritone Randall Scarlata. "I remember hearing my mom singing these songs when I was growing up, as well as my dad-always in the car! We never seemed to have the radio on; we'd just sing together."

For these concerts, Randall wants to remember those beloved American standards, but he and soprano Jennifer Aylmer also wanted to show audiences some new sides of Tin Pan Alley. "Some of the pieces are new to us, pieces we discovered as we looked at literally hundreds and hundreds of songs. There will be many songs that people will know and love, but we also wanted to show unusual political songs, songs about inventions, popular dances-even popular drinks of the time,"-evoking not just a moment in music history, but the whole culture of a bygone era.

"Back then, so many homes had pianos. People would gather together and sing, entertaining themselves by making music," says Nickrenz. "Isabella Stewart Gardner herself was an amateur pianist, and she had music in her home all the time, and often it was informal and participatory, whether in her salon on Beacon Street or in the Tapestry Room at the museum, where we hold concerts today."

Gradually, the tradition of gathering around a piano for an evening of singing faded, supplanted first by the advent of recordings, and then by other forms of entertainment like television. "With these concerts," says Nickrenz, "we hope to resurrect that earlier era of American musical life, if just for a few hours."

TICKETS: $23 adults, $18 seniors, $15 members, $10 college students, $5 children ages 5-17 (children under 5 not admitted). -- www.gardnermuseum.org