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Probably not pianist/singer and raconteur Michael Fein-
stein, who might very well consider the aforementioned
“ingredients” the perfect recipe for an evening of incomparable
music and storytelling.
He should know. For nearly all of his -year career, Fein-
stein has been celebrating, championing, and archiving the
so-called Great American Songbook—those unforgettable and
impossibly perfect tunes made famous from the early
s
through the late
s. e composers: Cole Porter, Irving
Berlin, Jerome Kern, Johnny Mercer, Harold Arlen, Richard
Rodgers, among others—including, of course, the brothers
Gershwin, George and Ira, who would impact Feinstein’s life in
ways even he could not have imagined.
A chance meeting with Ira Gershwin, who would hire a
-year-old Feinstein to catalog the brothers’ body of work,
began a lifelong friendship between the two and changed the
trajectory of Feinstein’s career. Consider: He serves on the Li-
brary of Congress National Recording Preservation Board. He
is director of the Jazz and Popular Song Series, which returned
in March for its eighth incarnation as part of New York City’s
Jazz at Lincoln Center programming. He is also the artistic
director of the Center for the Performing Arts in Carmel, IN.
e Ohio-born Feinstein established the Great American
Songbook Foundation within e Palladium, the majestic
concert hall at Carmel’s Center for the Performing Arts, whose
campus also includes a pair of intimate theaters. It is home to
a research library, archive/reference library, listening library,
and the entire catalog of Gershwin material both published
and unpublished. In a video on the Center’s website, Feinstein
explained the reason for selecting the Indiana town, “the heart-
land of America,” rather than the tonier New York for the per-
manent site of this treasure trove of the music genre. (Feinstein
and his husband, Terrence Flannery, also reside in Indiana, one
of three homes the couple shares.)
“I wanted to bring the initiative to a place that shows this is
the music of everybody,” Feinstein begins. “ is is not exclu-
sive to New York or even Los Angeles. is is the music of the
people. e songs that I wish to preserve came from all over
our country.” He cites vocalist Willard Robison (from Ala-
bama), composer Richard Whiting (from Detroit), and lyricist
Gus Kahn (from Chicago)—“people from Brooklyn and Loui-
siana and Florida. You name it. e people from Indiana, who
of course are [among the] best-known, are Hoagy Carmichael
and Cole Porter, so there is an extraordinarily rich heritage and
legacy of American popular song here.”
It’s that legacy that Feinstein, a ve-time Grammy nominee,
is tirelessly working to preserve for generations to come. To
that end, each year he hosts the Great American Songbook
Vocal Academy and Competition for high-school students.
It is an opportunity for the next generation of music makers
to study, learn from the best in the business, and compete for
scholarships.
“ e Great American Songbook Foundation is very import-
ant to me because I rst started it out of my concern for the
survival of music that I love, which was largely created before
my time,” Feinstein said in a recent interview for
Ravinia
GILLES TOUCAS
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