Inspired by Broadway: American “Story Songs”

For the last three or four years, I’ve dreamed of presenting a scholarly paper at an interdisciplinary music conference, and my focus was to talk with other scholars about the influence of Broadway on the music of composer Morten Lauridsen. Last summer a renowned scholar of the American musical theater, Dr. Geoffrey Block, Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Music History at the University of Puget Sound, encouraged me to submit a proposal to the Society for American Music, and I was thrilled when I got the news a few months later that my proposed paper had been accepted. Below is the abstract of the paper I completed for the March 2023 conference in Minneapolis, and at the very bottom is the recorded video presentation.

Baritone Jeremy Huw Williams singing Morten Lauridsen’s Where Have the Actors Gone?, Wheaton College Conservatory of Music, Wheaton, Illinois, March 25, 2022. Copyright © James Arthur Bond, 2022.