Coralville Center for the Performing Arts will pay tribute to Irving Berlin

“Cheek to Cheek,” “Alexander’s Ragtime Band,” “Easter Parade,” “I’m Dreaming of a White Christmas,” “There’s No Business Like Show Business,” “Play a Simple Melody,” “God Bless America.”  

Are these song titles familiar? They’re from the glory days of Hollywood and Broadway, and all of them were written by one man, Irving Berlin.

A dedicated workaholic, Berlin wrote the music and the words for more than 1,500 songs — not bad for a Russian-born immigrant who came to this country at the age of 5. And not bad for a composer who could scarcely read sheet music.  (He did all his composing on a specially made transposing piano.  By moving a lever he could sound the music in any key, even though he could only play on the sharps!)  He died in 1989 at the age of 100.

Berlin not only wrote timeless Broadway musicals such as “Call Me Madam,” “White Christmas” and his biggest hit, “Annie Get Your Gun,” he also wrote for the Hollywood films “Top Hat,” “Follow the Fleet,” “On the Avenue,” and others.  His first big hit, “Alexander’s Ragtime Band,” written in 1911, brought him instant fame and is credited with starting a craze for ragtime that swept America and a good part of Europe.  Not everyone was happy about that.  One stiff-necked critic called the song a “public menace” that left unchecked would produce idiocy.  But Variety called it “the musical sensation of the decade.”

The song for which Berlin will always be remembered is “God Bless America,” often called America’s unofficial national anthem.  It was immortalized by singer Kate Smith in 1938.

The Coralville Center for the Performing Arts will pay tribute to this great American Songster with “An Evening with Irving Berlin,” a concert of his music with the CCPA Orchestra and guest soloists, on Friday. Sept, 9 at 7:30 p.m. Soloists will be soprano Allison Holmes-Bendixen, heard recently at the CCPA in John Lake’s new opera, “The Machine Stops”; mezzo-soprano Mary Denmead, who has sung in all the composer concerts produced by the CCPA, and who never fails to stop the show; the golden-throated baritone David Raim, also a regular in the composer concerts; and internationally known U of I School of Music baritone Steve Swanson.

The CCPA Orchestra has been presenting these popular yearly composer concerts since 2016, starting with George Gershwin and followed by Leonard Bernstein, Rodgers and Hammerstein, and Jerome Kern.  We were planning this Berlin concert for 2020, but COVID struck and we put our plans on hold.  But things are better now (or as Berlin would put it: “Blue skies, smiling at me”), and the orchestra, soloists and I are looking forward to bringing this concert of favorites by America’s Songster to you.

Tickets can be purchased from the CCPA website, https://www.coralvillearts.org, in person at the box office, or by calling 319-248-9370 between noon and 4 p.m.  We hope to see you there.

Ed Kottick is the conductor of the CCPA orchestra.

This article originally appeared on Iowa City Press-Citizen: Coralville Center for Performing Arts to pay tribute to Irving Berlin