Over There — The Songs That Won The War (WWI)

Benjamin Sears & Bradford Conner will present the songs of World War I in a delightful concert at St. Kieran Arts Center.

They have been performing together since 1989. They are among those rare performers who combine entertaining performances with outstanding historical research and who can claim Irving Berlin and George & Ira Gershwin premieres. In 1997 they made music history with Oh Kay, Oh George, a first-time concert pairing of songs and music by romantic and musical colleagues Kay Swift and George Gershwin, featuring many rarely heard Swift songs along with premieres of two unpublished George & Ira Gershwin songs. Their reputation as Gershwin performers was honored by the selection of their recordings to be part of the Interactive Kiosk at the new George & Ira Gershwin Room at the Library of Congress.

Sears and Conner are the first cabaret act to be featured at Boston’s Emerson Majestic Theatre, and at Boston’s Wang Centre for the Performing Arts they revived a show-biz tradition by presenting a pre-show concert of Irving Berlin songs for a showing of Berlin’s classic film, White Christmas.

Sears and Conner are Producing Directors of American Classics and are founding members of the Boston Association of Cabaret Artists (BACA), an organization promoting awareness and performance of cabaret in the Boston area. They are known for their research in the music and lyrics of Tin Pan Alley, Broadway and Hollywood. In 1996 they rediscovered a long-lost Irving Berlin song from 1916, “Santa Claus: A Syncopated Christmas Song,” which they subsequently gave its modern premiere and first recording.