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He said he had discovered the secret of writing hits,” Richard Rodgers famously wrote of his first meeting Cole Porter in Venice in 1926, “As I breathlessly awaited the magic formula, he leaned over and confided, ‘I’ll write Jewish tunes.’ I laughed at what I took to be a joke, but not only was Cole dead serious, he eventually did exactly that…his minor-key melodies are unmistakably eastern Mediterranean.” In an evening that contemplates the broad influence of European musical traditions on American popular music, Chuck Redd and friends explore at length the extraordinary impact of Eastern European musical traditions on the Great American Songbook with especial focus on the work of the Irving Berlin, Kurt Weill, Gershwins and Cole Porter. [more info]