Concert Themes for 2025

Every song tells a story

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VintageMusicConcerts trace musical, historic and romantic ideas with clever lyrics, memorable tunes and amusing anecdotes. Folks say their favorite tunes are graced with wit and warmth, while hosts say themes are easy to promote. We've developed these Concert Themes for 2025.

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Louis Armstrong's  Hot Five
Exclusive on Okeh Records
Chicago — 1925

The Roots of American Jazz — With story and song, this concert offers some of the great tunes first heard in the late 1920s and early 1930s in saloons, clubs, juke joints and speakeasies, in live, on-the-air radio broadcasts, and in the 78 rpm discs produced by a nascent record industry for the era's sweetest, hottest jazz cats.

Crooners, Swingers, Idols — Concert of hit tunes popularized by heart-throb crooners, Rat Pack swingers and TV-dinner idols in the 1950s and 1960s  —  all memorable songs to folks who loved their music played on transistor radios, 45 rpm records, drugstore juke boxes, Friday night sock hops or Saturday movies.

Canadian folksingers Sylvia Flicker and Ian Tyson on
the cover of the 1963 LP album, "Four Strong Winds."

Poets of the Prairie — Concert explores the words, music and cultural impact of the most talented and most successful recording artists   of the 1960s and 1970s — the generation of folkies and singer-songwriters from the North American Prairie, such noted Midwesterners as Bob Dylan, Johnny Cash, Buffy Sainte-Marie, Jimmy Webb, Phil Ochs, Michael Merchant as well as the Canadians Ian Tyson, Sylvia Flicker and Gordon Lightfoot.

 

Vintage Guitar Roadshow — Concert offers syncopated ragtime, early jazz, hokum & swing tunes of the 1920s, 1930s & 1940s played on vintage acoustic guitars from the same era — tunes first heard when musicians sang the tunes when new and played the guitars when new.

Moon, Stars and You — This concert summons the moon, the stars, moonlit trysts & the heavens above for romantic insights from such memorable tunes as Blue Moon, Fly Me To The Moon, Moonglow, It's Only A Paper Moon, Stars Fell On Alabama, Pennies From Heaven, Moon River, Carolina Moon, Allegheny Moon, As Time Goes By, Stardust, Dream A Little Dream Of Me, How High The Moon, Moonlight in Vermont, and I'll See You In My Dreams.

MidCentury Melodies — Concert of pop music from heart of the 20th Century — hit tunes by Rosemary Clooney, Tony Bennett, Frank Sinatra, Nat King Cole, Ella Fitzgerald, Peggy Lee, Jo Stafford, Eydie Gormé, Patti Page, Vaughn Monroe, Eddy Arnold and others.

Kingston Trio Redux — This concert offers some of the well-known, well-loved and well-played tunes by the most successful musical trio of the 1950s and 1960s, a group of musicians who kept stretching the pop-music industry's balloon with their brand of folk, folk-rock, singer-songwriter, calypso and show tunes that they played across the country in small clubs, coffee houses, on college campuses and on 21 hugely successful LP records.

Broadway Mementos — The tunes producers on the Great White Way used to push dramatic and comedic storylines, tout ingénues, spur media publicity or to hustle extra income from sheet music sales, radio airplay, jukebox cuts, feature movies and cast recordings.

Nashville songwriter, singer
& guitarist Penny Jay - 1940.

  Achy Breaky Heart —

  Concert offers some great

  tear-stained ballads, love

  struck laments and steamy

  pop standards from the

  1940s, 1950s and 1960s

  written by N.Y. City, Los

  Angeles and Nashville

  songwriters and record

  producers for the biggest

  fans of country, folk,

  movie and Broadway

  music. It's a well-known

  fact that, sooner or later,

  everyone deserves an hour

  of musical heartburn.

Great American Songsters — Songs and stories of 20th Century composers, vocalists & scamps who spawned the genres known today by music-marketers' labels: swing, jazz, Americana, folk, blues, boogie-woogie, country 'n western, folk-rock and Brill Building pop.

 

Vocalist, songwriter & recording
artist Miss Peggy Lee  —  1950

She Did It Her Way — With story & song, concert honors the lives, careers & hits of female vocalists, composers and recording artists active from 1925 to 1965. Program touts songs and talents of previously unheralded songwriters such as Cindy Walker, Dorothy Fields, Claire Rothrock, Peggy Lee and Sadie Vimmerstedt.

Hollywood Souvenirs — Concert of hit tunes that enabled Hollywood moguls to monetize the theme songs and background music of their celluloid dramas, torrid romances, show tunes and screwball comedies.

Band leader Cab Calloway, vocalist Ivie Anderson
and friends at an after-hours party in August, 1939.

Great American Cabaret — From the 1930s through the 1960s people dated, dined and danced to live music played in hotel ball rooms, restaurants, rent parties, cabarets, roadside juke joints and nightclubs. We offer some of the pop standards, ballads, hit tunes and favorite dance numbers played by the era's dance bands, jazz combos, saloon singers and pick-up musicians.

Folk Song Boomers — Concert of the folk, protest and traditional songs that were sing-along anthems, radio favorites and hit recordings for the post-WW II teenagers known as Baby Boomers.

Duke Ellington — Jazz Pianist + Composer + Band Leader
Exclusive on Victor and Bluebird Records
Ranked "Tops" as Swing Band Leader in 1944 Down Beat poll

He Did It His Way - Concert will honor the lives, hits, romances and careers of some of the greatest male singers, recording artists and composers active from the 1920s through the early 1960s. The show will tout several well-known and familiar names, but we plan to season the program with some of the lesser known male record makers, top vocalists and composers, such as Bart Howard, Ned Washington, Johnny Black, J. D. Loudermilk, Neil Moret, Joe Kosma and Richard Whiting. 

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© 2024 - Kenneth Lelen - All Rights Reserved

                  2024  Concert  Schedule

 

Date           Venue  /  Host                         Location                     Concert  Theme
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Jan     27          Pound Ridge Library                       Pound Ridge NY                    She Did It  Her  Way

Mar    19          Milltown Public Library                  Milltown NJ                           She Did It  Her  Way

Apr      7           Edison Twp Public Library             Edison NJ                               Vintage Guitar Roadshow

Apr    28          Edith Wheeler Library - FOL         Monroe CT                             Poets of the Prairie

May    23          Concordia @ Short Hills                  Pittsburgh PA                        Great American Cabaret

Jun       3          Cedarfield                                                Richmond VA                        MidCentury Melodies

Jun       4          Strickland  @ Arbor Acres               Winston-Salem NC              Juke Joint Jive

Sep     12           The Culpeper                                         Culpeper  VA                        She Did It  Her  Way

Sep     18           Grundy Memorial Library               Bristol  PA                             Folk Song Boomers

Oct     16           Monroe Twp Library - FOL             Monroe NJ                            MidCentury Melodies

Oct     20          Middlsesex Library - FOL                 Middlesex NJ                       Roots of American Jazz 

Nov      6           Cedarfield                                                Richmond VA                       The Moon, The Stars and You

Nov      8           Strickland  @ Arbor Acres              Winston-Salem NC             Great American Cabaret 

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                     _____________   2025   Concert   Schedule   _____________

Apr     10          Moravian Hall Square                       Nazareth PA                          Broadway Song Mementos

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                                                                                              ©  2024 — Kenneth Lelen — All Rights Reserved