By Kevin McLaughlin
On Saturday at the Maltz Performing Arts Center, the Cleveland Jazz Orchestra and The Musical Theater Project offered a timely reminder: Hoagy Carmichael wasn’t just the composer of “Stardust.” He was one of America’s great musical storytellers — a songwriter with a midwestern plainness that could turn suddenly tender, funny, or wise in the space of a single line.
Star Dust: The Songs of Hoagy Carmichael, part of the two organizations’ tenth season of collaboration, folded biography and performance into a single leisurely program. The format has become a signature of these shows: songs set in context by narration, supported by projected slides and film excerpts. Here those visuals — Carmichael portraits, footage of Carmichael in motion, stills from To Have and Have Not (1944) and The Best Years of Our Lives (1946) — were discreet, and perhaps too few. But they reinforced the point that this music came from a particular life, and a full one.
On Sunday, October 26, The Musical Theater Project will present its dynamic new production, Mary Martin: America’s Sweetheart, in Mixon Hall at the Cleveland Institute of Music, in cooperation with CIM. Hosted by Bill Rudman under the musical direction of Nancy Maier, two identical programs at 2:00 and 7:00 pm will feature Ursula Cataan and Sandra Simon, each performing as Mary Martin during different stages of her career. (Note: the 2 pm performance is already sold out.)