Songs She Wrote: 40 Hits by Pioneering Women of Popular Music at Ceres Gallery – New York, NY

Michael G. Garber, author of Songs She Wrote: Forty Hits by Pioneering Women of Popular Music, illuminates the history of women who created the Great American Songbook in the musical worlds of Tin Pan Alley, ragtime, jazz, Broadway, and Hollywood.

In the nonprofit feminist Ceres Gallery, surrounded by the scintillating artworks of Marcie Bernstein and Carlyle Upson, Michael will celebrate women songwriters who laid the foundations for American popular music during the jazz decades.

Songs She Wrote: 40 Hits by Pioneering Women of Popular Music celebrates women’s contributions to popular music by looking at dozens of well-known figures like Billie Holiday, Peggy Lee, and Dorothy Parker as well as unearthing more unknown women who made major contributions. In this talk and his book, Michael Garber explores the style and artistry of female songwriters, lyricists, and composers in the first half of the twentieth century and provides intriguing backstories and analysis of forty hits. Learn about Maria Grever (“What a Difference a Day Makes”) who was the first female Mexican composer to achieve international acclaim and the fascinating story of African American lyricist Lucy Fletcher (“Sugar Blues”), among many others in this book.

Michael G. Garber is an internationally respected historian of Tin Pan Alley and the American musical on stage and screen. He is an award-winning college teacher and has been a research fellow of the University of Winchester and the University of London, Goldsmiths College. He is also the author of My Melancholy Baby: The First Ballads of the Great American Songbook, 1902-1913.

Jazz Age artistes Miss Maybell and Charlie Judkins will bring Tin Pan Alley music to life, as Michael takes us inside the struggles and triumphs of our songwriting foremothers.

The nonprofit Tin Pan Alley American Popular Music Project commemorates and continues the legacy of Tin Pan Alley, the culturally rich and diverse birthplace of American Popular Music on 28th Street between Broadway and 6th Avenue in New York City.