City Center Announces 2008-2009 Encores! Season

The Jerome Kern-Oscar Hammerstein II musical Music in the Air and
the musical Finian’s Rainbow by Burton Lane, E. Y. Harburg, and Fred Saidy have been added to City Center Encores! 2008-2009 season. Rob Berman will music direct and conduct all three productions in the season.

As previously announced, Encores! will present On the Town, by Leonard Bernstein, Betty Comden and Adolph Green, November 19-23, as part of a citywide celebration of Bernstein’s birthday.

Music in the Air, which will run February 5-8, has not been seen in its original form since its premiere Broadway engagement at the Alvin Theatre in 1932. Set in Bavaria and Munich, it tells of an aging rural music teacher, his naively charming daughter and their misadventures trying to break into the cynical, world-weary theatre scene in the big city.

Finian’s Rainbow, scheduled to run March 26-29, is the story of the Irishman Finian McLonergan, his daughter Sharon, a stolen pot of gold, and a leprechaun. Songs include “How Are Things in Glocca Morra?,” “When I’m Not Near the Girl I Love,” and “If This Isn’t Love.”

Encores! current season concludes on May 12 with the final performance of No, No, Nanette, starring Sandy Duncan, Beth Leavel, Charles Kimbrough, Michael Berresse, and Rosie O’Donnell, and will present a Summer Stars! presentation of Damn Yankees starring Jane Krakowski, Sean Hayes, Cheyenne Jackson, Ana Gasteyer, and Randy Graff, July 5-27.

For more information, visit www.citycenter.org.