Ruth Leon is a leading performance and documentary filmmaker who has won numerous awards in the United States and Europe including the Prix Italia. She directed American Rhapsody, a celebration of George Gershwin starring Mark Nadler and KT Sullivan, that won a MAC Award (Manhattan Association of Cabarets & Clubs) for Revue of the Year. Together, Ruth Leon and Howard Weinberg produced and directed New York in Song, a 90-minute special featuring 30 great cabaret stars paying tribute to "the city that never sleeps" to benefit the educational needs of the children of the victims of the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

The Great American Songbook is a series of special television programs that will celebrate the breadth and depth of the musical heritage known as American Popular Song. The songs of Irving Berlin, Cole Porter, George and Ira Gershwin, Jerome Kern, Harold Arlen, Rodgers and Hart, Rodgers and Hammerstein, Lerner and Loewe, Jule Styne, Leonard Bernstein, Frank Loesser, Stephen Sondheim, Kander and Ebb, and Dietz and Schwartz, among others, like jazz, are a unique contribution to world culture and a continually developing art form.Those composers and lyricists wrote for the Broadway, Hollywood, and cabaret.

Singers of American popular song concentrate on communicating the meaning of words. Frank Sinatra said that by listening to the great Mabel Mercer, he learned sing lyrics. Mabel Mercer said, "Songs tell a story. They are like life, only more so."

Performance-based, simply but elegantly executed, The Great American Songbook will focus on the songs and their interpreters. Many of the performers appeared in our special New York in Song which shows our style and approach to producing cabaret for television. To enrich the historical context, we will intersperse photographs and film footage into the presentation of these composers and lyricists.

In the venue of the small room often called cabaret, performers make the audience feel that they are singing directly to them. We plan to convey that feeling to the viewer.

Andrea Marcovicci is the preeminent cabaret singer of our day. She is an actress who sings. She brings an emotional and thoughtful commitment to musical theatre material and has a finely developed comic sense. She speaks charmingly, affectingly, and knowledgeably about the songs, their composers and lyricists, and their historical significance. Andrea Marcovicci takes her audience on a magical tour of the known, the unfamiliar and the rediscovered gems of this uniquely American treasure trove of popular song.

Other Performers in the Series
All of the wonderful singers and musicians listed below have expressed their desire to participate in
The Great American Songbook. They represent the best of New York's rich cabaret world.
Most have done solo shows devoted to the composers we are featuring.

Michael Feinstein Mary Cleere Haran Karen Akers Phillip Officer KT Sullivan Liz Callaway Christine Ebersole Barbara Carroll Karen Mason Barbara Cook Malcolm Gets Christine Andreas
	David Campbell Heather Mac Rae Tovah Feldshuh David Staller Larry Woodard	Mark Nadler Eric Comstock Billy Stritch Craig Rubano Jeff Harnar

Consultants

Donald Smith, the impresario who founded the Mabel Mercer Foundation in 1985 to revive cabaret and celebrate American popular song, will serve as artistic advisor to the series. Since 1989 he has produced yearly Cabaret Conventions at Town Hall in New York, and also produced similar events in San Francisco and London.

Sheridan Morley, the noted London drama critic, theatrical biographer, director, broadcaster and frequent presenter at New York's Cabaret Convention will contribute his considerable knowledge and talent to each program, sometimes as writer, occasionally as narrator.