Jeff Harnar Sings Dietz, Schwartz, Styne, Porter, Coleman and More on New CD "Dancing in the Dark"

By Kenneth Jones
August 12, 2005

Cabaret artist Jeff Harnar will get a new solo album, "Dancing in the Dark," on PS Classics Oct. 4.

The 14-track disc features Harnar performing classics of the Great American Songbook (along with a few obscurities), backed up by a full orchestra. Alex Rybeck serves as music director and arranger, and co-produced the recording with Harnar.

Twice honored by the Manhattan Association of Cabaret Award (MAC) as Best Male Vocalist and three-time winner of the Back Stage Bistro Award, Harnar has appeared at Carnegie Hall in the Cole Porter and Noel Coward Centennial Galas, in his one-man show at Weill Recital Hall, and in solo engagements at the Algonquin, Rainbow & Stars, and the Russian Tea Room.

TV audiences know him for his PBS specials "The 1959 Broadway Songbook" and "Remember: Songs of the Holidays."

Philip Chaffin, who co-founded PS Classics with Tommy Krasker, told Playbill.com, "We were really flattered when Jeff and Alex came to us with this album; they'd been working on it for a number of years, and helping them complete it and launch it has been a great pleasure. It was certainly the most ambitious of all their projects together, not just in size — in that it includes a full orchestra — but in scope too. Jeff and Alex wanted to create an album that celebrated New York City through the Great American Songbook — sometimes directly, sometimes obliquely. When they first came to me and Tommy a few years ago, and we heard what they were up to, Tommy remarked that it was very much a 'tone-poem to Manhattan,' and we knew we wanted to be involved."

The track list for "Dancing in the Dark" is:

1. Dancing in the Dark (Arthur Schwartz & Howard Dietz)
2. Taking a Chance on Love (Vernon Duke & John Latouche)
3. You Can Do No Wrong (Cole Porter)
4. I Walk a Little Faster (Cy Coleman & Carolyn Leigh, 1958)
5. Lonely Town (Leonard Bernstein, Betty Comden & Adolph Green)
6. How Little We Know (Hoagy Carmichael & Johnny Mercer)
7. Put 'Em in a Box (Tie It With a Ribbon) (Jule Styne & Sammy Cahn)
8. Love, Look Away (Richard Rodgers & Oscar Hammerstein II)
9. I Say Hello (Harold Rome)
10. By Myself (Arthur Schwartz & Howard Dietz)
11. On a Clear Day (You Can See Forever) (Burton Lane & Alan Jay Lerner)
12. East Side of Heaven (James V. Monaco & Johnny Burke)
13. Blue Skies (Irving Berlin)
14. Shall We Dance? (George & Ira Gershwin>

*

The Grammy-nominated record label PS Classics was founded in 2000 and has released solo albums ranging from jazz (Jessica Molaskey's "Make Believe") to pop (Luba Mason's "Collage") to pure Broadway (Chaffin's own recently-released "Warm Spring Night"). Its cast recordings include Stephen Sondheim's Assassins, The Frogs and Pacific Overtures, as well as the current revival of Fiddler on the Roof.

PS Classics is distributed by Image Entertainment. For more information, visit www.psclassics.com.