One of the highlights of each holiday season in Kansas City is Quality Hill Playhouse’s annual New Year’s Eve Cabaret, which executive director J. Kent Barnhart and friends have been performing for 18 years. This past New Year’s Eve, Kent was joined by vocalist Molly Hammer and double bassist Brian Wilson for a program they called Back on Base. “It really was magic,” Kent says. “We discovered that Molly and I have a real rapport together as performers, and the three of us had a great time. Brian is an incredible musician, with a unique mixture of abilities like no other bass player I’ve worked with.” Alas, the New Year’s Eve special could only be performed twice that day, December 31st, and that was that. So fortunately for those who missed it, Back on Base will be revived and runs from July 12th through the 22nd at the Playhouse. It includes “Broadway and cabaret,” Kent says, “a mixture of all different kinds of styles.” There will be favorites such as “The Way You Look Tonight” and “Ain’t Misbehavin’” as well as some of Molly’s signature songs “Can’t Help Lovin’ Dat Man” and even some country-flavored songs. “Molly has done all different kinds of music,” Kent says, “so I kind of wanted to show off her versatility.” Also included, of course, is “Back on Base,” the song from Richard Maltby’s and David Shire’s musical revue Closer Than Ever that features a sort of intimate banter between double bassist and vocalist. “The title has two meanings,” Kent adds. “He is playing the bass and she is ‘back on base,’ i.e., centered and happy when she is with her guy. It’s a double entendre.” The show is “very informal,” he says. “There’s a lot of banter, it’s more of a club-style atmosphere. It’s great fun and a chance to show off two performers who are at the top of the talent pool in Kansas City.”

The Playhouse has recently announced its 2012-2013 season, and it is one of the more ingenious lineups in its history. The Songs That Wrote America: Celebrating the Music That Defined Our History is like a miniature history of (largely) American song from the 1930s through the present day, and it features programs devoted to the Great Depression, World War II, the Doo-Wop sounds of the 1950s, the social-consciousness songs of the 1960s and 1970s, and the rise of the Big Broadway Musical in the 1980s and 1990s. “I’ve always been fascinated by the way that music, more than just about anything except maybe smell, can instantly bring back memories,” Kent says, “or can bring back a certain time or take you to a particular place.” He uses as an example “I’ll Be Seeing You,” a song that struck a chord for GI’s and their loved ones during World War II (“I’ll find you in the morning sun; and when the night is new, I’ll be looking at the moon, but I’ll be seeing you”). Kent explains its impact: “I’ve had people say to me, my husband had left for World War II and that was our song, and we would each be halfway across the world but we’d both be looking at the same moon and thinking of each other.”

You’ve Got a Friend, a program of Baby Boomer favorites, is aimed less at the raucous, revolutionary sounds of the time than at the “almost folk, social aspect of that period,” Kent says, “songs that were more substantive and more socially aware.” Carole King, James Taylor, Peter, Paul and Mary and songs like “Blowin’ in the Wind,” “Shower the People,” “Abraham, Martin and John,” and “You’ve Got a Friend.” “I have distinct memories of ‘Abraham, Martin and John,’ ” Kent says. “I can actually remember exactly where I was sitting when I first listened to it.” It was a song that expressed something deep, he says, during a turbulent time in our history. “What a hideous time that was, and for a song to reach out to people in so many different places is amazing to me … that music could diffuse all of the anger and conflict that was going on, and bring people together.” Likewise Kent says he remembers when Carole King’s 1971 Tapestry album hit the stands, and the way it became a solace and refuge for a nerdy kid having a rough time in high school. “There I was, an angst-ridden youth, and here was this great song, ‘You’ve Got a Friend,’ and it hit me in a way that has stuck with me.”

If there’s a common thread in songs through history, Kent says, it’s that “just about every song is about love or about surviving, using music to help you cope.” All great pieces of art are either love stories or tragedies, he says. “There’s something about a song that is so compact and complete that absolutely captures an emotion or a time or an event in a way that we can carry around with us.”

Quality Hill Playhouse 2012-2013 Season: The Songs That Wrote America 



September 21st through October 21st: On the Sunny Side of the Street: Music That Made the Depression Great
November 23rd through December 24th: Christmas in Song
January 18th through February 17th: I’ll Be Seeing You: The Songs of World War II
February 22nd through March 24th: Sh-Boom Sh-Boom: The Doo-Wop Sounds of the 1950s
April 19th through May 19th: You’ve Got a Friend: Music That Raised the Baby Boomers
May 31st through June 30th: Great Big Broadway: The Rise of the BIG Broadway Musical

SPECIAL ENGAGEMENT:

October 26th through November 4th: Marilyn Maye, vocalist, in a program of jazz standards and contemporary favorites.

The Quality Hill Playhouse season is now on sale at 816-421-1700 or at qualityhillplayhouse.com.