Hail, Cryer & Ford! I met Gretchen and Nancy in the summer of 2017 in New York. Over brunch on the Upper West Side I persuaded them to co-host a docu-concert of their songs with Nancy Maier and me here in Cleveland. I had known and loved their work since I was 16 and bought the LP of their first New York show, Now Is the Time for All Good Men. Still have it…

How is it possible that none of Lerner & Loewe’s five major musicals—each so far removed by date and distance from the America of its own time—has ever sounded unfashionable or untruthful, corny or clichéd? Emily Altman, President of the Lerner & Loewe Foundation, answers this question.

Growing up, my home was filled with music of all sorts—music that echoed from the radio and flickered from the television screen. Our local AM radio station played top 40 tunes, and I would memorize every word of every song as if it were my job. On the television, my family would watch and listen to the smooth rhythms of Lawrence Welk, cry over Elvis performing on a TV special, and dance to the groovy vibes of Soul Train and American Bandstand. Music was a constant companion in our home. This is how my love for musical theater blossomed…

At The Musical Theater Project’s special Members’ event in October, we screened the live TV musical Hans Brinker, or the Silver Skates (1958). It was fascinating — not only because of the primitive (by our standards) technology, but also because it was an original musical created for television. Which got me thinking about the 13 live musicals done on TV since 2000…

I was a youngster of five or six when I first became aware of musical theater. I was a freakish child of five voraciously reading about all things historical and presidential. One summer, my mother took me to see 1776 at the movie theater. Seeing the signing of the Declaration of Independence and being captivated by our singing and harmonizing founding fathers made me giddy. I would sing “Sit Down, John” and “The Egg” with a passion my neighborhood friends just didn’t understand. In junior high, the opportunity to PERFORM in the musical You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown gave me a new passion that I’ve enjoyed for most of my life.

There were so many written tributes paid to Burt Bacharach, who left us February 8 at the age of 95, that I would feel no need to add my own words now were it not for the paucity of space given to one of his finest projects: his only Broadway score, Promises, Promises (1968), with lyrics, as usual, by the agile and underrated Hal David.

Everybody who knows more than a dozen musicals knows that at 21 Barbra Streisand became a Broadway star as Fanny Brice in Funny Girl. And nearly everybody knows that two years earlier, she stole the show in I Can Get It for You Wholesale, wildly swiveling in her office chair as the sexually frustrated Miss Marmelstein.

The Musical Theater Project just closed its 15th annual “Christmas Cabaret” with sold-out performance at Edwin Too on Shaker Square—and once again audiences were surprised to hear an often-forgotten fact revealed by NANCY MAIER, NATALIE GREEN and JOE MONAGHAN.

November 26 marks the first year of Stephen Sondheim’s passing, and like you, I have been thinking a lot about the loss of this great artist. No doubt there have been hundreds of us—men and women who found the confidence to make a career in musical theater thanks to Sondheim’s generosity of spirit and dedication to teaching.