David Alpern Keeps the Great American Songbook Singing | Music & Nightlife

Fans of live cabaret music are accustomed to seeing their favorite performers at familiar Manhattan haunts like Don’t Tell Mama and 54 Below. But all this season, lovers of the genre are enjoying a wide variety of cabaret at LTV Studios in Wainscott as part of the Hamptons Summer Songbook by the Sea.

The series, which was created in 2024 by cabaret producer Donna Rubin and Josh Gladstone, LTV’s executive director and creative director, is now back for its third season. Coming up on Saturday, July 25, at 7:30 p.m. will be “Beyond Blue Moon (And Before the Broken Hart),” starring pianist Eric Yves Garcia and singer Maria Abous.

The show will highlight the music of lyricist Lorenz Hart, writing partner of famed composer Richard Rodgers who later created some of the biggest Broadway musicals in history after he teamed up with Oscar Hammerstein.

This particular show is produced and hosted by Sag Harbor resident David Alpern, a former correspondent for United Press International, and a reporter, writer and senior editor at Newsweek magazine. For three decades, Alpern also hosted a weekly radio show “Newsweek On Air,” which later evolved into the independent nonprofit program “For Your Ears Only.”

But beyond his professional bonafides, Alpern is a major lover of the cabaret art form and since the inception of the Summer Songbook series, he has brought a show each season to the LTV stage.

“I’m a devotee and great fan of the music,” Alpern confessed during a recent interview at his Sag Harbor home. “Cabaret is more engaging and less expensive than Broadway.”

Over the years, Alpern’s love for music has led him to develop a close relationship with The Mabel Mercer Foundation, a New York City-based nonprofit that advances public appreciation for the art of cabaret and the American Songbook. Alpern serves on the foundation’s advisory board and is a past recipient of its Julie Wilson Award. He also participates in the foundation’s annual Cabaret Conventions and hosts cabaret showcases at venues in Manhattan.

So, of course, he knows many of the performers that Rubin and Gladstone brought to LTV for the first season of Hamptons Summer Songbook by the Sea.

“Josh said, ‘Oh, you know these people?’ I said, ‘Yeah, I’m a great fan,’” Alpern recalled. “Josh said, ‘Why don’t you put on a show?’”

Alpern thought that was a fine idea and set out to do exactly that on the LTV stage. In the summer of 2024, Alpern produced and hosted “Best of the Versed: Celebrating the Opening Lyrics You May Not Know to Tunes You Thought You Did,” starring cabaret singers Steve Ross and Karen Murphy.

As the subtitle implies, the show was designed to spotlight the “verses” — that is, the often-skipped, little-known lyrics that theater and film composers once used as intros to the famous Great American Songbook melodies we all know and love. Based on the success of the show at LTV, in October 2024, Alpern took it to Manhattan’s Don’t Tell Mama.

“I asked Steve Ross and we came up with the ‘Best of the Versed,’ which was songs you didn’t think you knew,” Alpern explained. “Then in 2025, we did ‘Versed Two.’”

Officially titled “Best of the Versed Strikes Back,” Ross and Murphy returned to LTV for that show last summer, this time joined by vocalist Maria Abous.

Now, Abous will be back at LTV on July 25 to sing the songs of Lorenz Hart in “Beyond Blue Moon,” accompanied by Eric Yves Garcia on piano.

“For this year’s show, I was going to do ‘Ira after George Gershwin,’” Alpern explained of the theme. “Then we saw the film ‘Blue Moon,’ and I thought we ought to make that a hook for it.

The film Alpern refers to is director Richard Linklater’s 2025 biographical portrait of lyricist Lorenz Hart (played by Ethan Hawke). “Blue Moon” is set in Sardis, the legendary New York theater-district restaurant, on March 31, 1943 — opening night of “Oklahoma!,” the new Broadway hit. As the musical’s composer Richard Rodgers, Hart’s former writing partner, celebrates his success with friends, family and his new lyricist partner Oscar Hammerstein, a brooding Hart remains at the bar, deep in despair and drowning himself in an increasing number of cocktails.

While the film highlighted some of the ups and many of the downs Hart experienced in his later career, Alpern felt it neglected to tell the complete story. The diminutive Hart (he stood just 5 feet tall) was closeted, conflicted and an alcoholic. But he was also prolific and wrote more than 500 songs with Rodgers — including “Falling in Love with Love,” “Isn’t It Romantic?,” “My Funny Valentine,” “Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered” and, of course, “Blue Moon.”

“In the film, the whole song is never heard, nor are some of the other lovely Hart songs,” Alpern said. “And ‘Oklahoma!’ was not the beginning of Rodgers and Hammerstein — and it was not the end of Hart — in 1919 Rodgers wrote with both Hart and Hammerstein.

“But these songs are copyrighted. There’s a maximum they could do without buying rights to the songs,” Alpern said. “I appreciate the music. I’ve always thought the cleverness of Hart is fabulous. I figured it was good business to do a show ‘Beyond Blue Moon.’”

It will be up to cabaret veterans Garcia and Abous to fill in the musical gaps as they present a performance filled with Rodgers and Hart treasures. And, yes, promises Alpern, there will be one song by Oscar Hammerstein on the program as well. In addition, lyric sheets will be distributed to the audience so they can sing along “for better and verse.”

“That should be fun,” Alpern said. “I know a lot of this stuff, but 500 songs are a lot to choose from. My hope was to do songs people know, but not so well that they’d still be surprised.”

Other surprises may come from Alpen himself who, as host of the show, will take on the job of sharing the backstory about the songs that are being performed.

“I’m delighted to be in the audience. But it’s been fun to be on the other side and appreciate the work that others do,” Alpern said. “At LTV, I talk song by song, or I talk about a couple of songs together.”

Among the topics he will introduce at the July 25 show will be Rodgers and Hart’s 1919 collaboration.

“There was one Rodgers and Hart show that was clearly so bad that, as it opened, Ziegfeld, the producer, put out a call to have other songwriters contribute to it. The show was ‘Betsy,’” said Alpern of the 1926 Broadway musical that ran just 39 performances. “No one’s heard of it, but one song in the show was ‘Blue Skies’ by Irving Berlin.”

Alpern delights in sharing lesser-known tidbits and stories about songs that are now such an integral part of American musical theater. But he also wouldn’t be surprised if some folks would prefer to let the music do the talking.

“I’m ready to be told to present a little less text,” he admitted. “But my hunch is people know these songs and are delighted to learn more about them and have a chance to sing along.”

When asked about his own musical prowess, Alpern admits that his career ended when he failed to master “Song of the Volga Boatman” on the piano as a youngster.

“My mother worked with me for a month on that song, and that was it,” he said. “I don’t read music.”

“Renting piano players for parties would have been cheaper if I had learned.”

Which is a shame, because his mother was very musical, and in fact had been a girl singer, circa 1939.

“She was on the road and at two radio stations in New York,” Alpern noted. “At one of them she met a guy whose uncle was a bandleader at the station. He got a job there and became my dad.

“She had great anecdotes and stories. When we cleaned out her apartment, we found two different airchecks of her singing, and she was really good,” he added. “She played the piano. We sang Gilbert and Sullivan together, but she didn’t do the stuff she did as a girl singer.”

And in terms of his own singing ability?

“I’m a big Rodgers and Hart fan … in the shower.”

“Beyond Blue Moon (And Before the Broken Hart)” starring Maria Abous and Eric Yves Garcia and hosted by David Alpern will be presented on Saturday, July 25, at 7:30 p.m. at LTV Studios, 75 Industrial Road, Wainscott. Tickets are $80 for general admission, $120 for a VIP reserved cocktail table seat with a drink ticket, and $240 for front row cafe table seating with bottle service included. Visit ltveh.org to purchase.