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4 unusual facts about Great American Songbook


Jason Danieley

Danieley launched his solo recording career with the self-titled album Jason Danieley & The Frontier Heroes, combining Americana music from the Great American Songbook and Broadway repertoire.

Oregon Festival of American Music

Since 2002 the festival has focussed more specifically on a systematic annual treatment of the Great American Songbook, with a deemphasis of art music in favor of musical theater and concerts that focus on various treatments of the Songbook, ranging from straight vocal interpretations to standards-based jazz.

Produced by The John G. Shedd Institute for the Arts, OFAM (as it is referred to locally) has, throughout its history, explored American music in all of its forms, but in recent years has focused its attention specifically on the Great American Songbook and related genres.

Teresa Parente

Teresa is currently singing jazz at Los Angeles venues, as a featured soloist with Concert Choirs (most recently with the Hollywood Master Chorale), and gives private performances featuring jazz gems and selections from the Great American Songbook.


The Valentino Orchestra

The Valentino Orchestra—named after Rudolph Valentino—bases its repertoire of “sophisticated swing” on the standards of the golden age of American popular music—compositions by Jerome Kern, George Gershwin, Cole Porter, Hoagy Carmichael, and the many others who in the Jazz Age established what is often called the Great American Songbook.


see also

Deborah Kass

These works combine stylistic devices from a wide variety of post-war painting, including Ellsworth Kelly, Frank Stella, Jackson Pollock, Andy Warhol, and Ed Ruscha, along with lyrics by Stephen Sondheim, Laura Nyro, and Sylvester, among others, pulling from popular music, Broadway show tunes, the Great American Songbook, Yiddish, and film.