Name: Snazzy Productions presents A TRIBUTE TO TOM LEHRER
Start: 2024-11-24T19:30:00-08:00
Location: Kuumbwa Jazz

On Sunday, November 24 Snazzy Productions presents a tribute to Tom Lehrer as a fundraising benefit for music in local public schools. The show begins at 7:30 at the Kuumbwa Jazz Center in Santa Cruz with various tunes by the renowned satirist and UCSC mathematics professor Tom Lehrer performed by a number of local singers including Dylan Music, Ralph Anybody, Michael Gaither, Mike Parks, Christa Taylor, and Dave Täht.
Advanced admission can be reserved at (831) 479-9421
The 1950s are often remembered as a cultural war zone, with Eisenhower and suburban conformity on one side, and the wildness of rock 'n' roll and beat poetry on the other. Lehrer stood firmly against both, and against decency, compassion, and virtually the whole range of human virtues. His songs, crafted with the care of the great Broadway tunesmiths, were studiedly intellectual and fiendishly irreverent. His idea of a cheerful ditty was "Poisoning Pigeons in the Park.'' His idea of nostalgic sentimentality was an ode to "The Old Dope Peddler.'' His idea of romance was "I Hold Your Hand in Mine,'' a paean to the woman he has killed, but whose hand he has kept as a souvenir.
Today, at 96, Lehrer is neither a performer nor a demonstrator of songs. He was a math teacher at the University of California at Santa Cruz one quarter of the year, and a cheerful layabout the rest ("I'm laid back, as we say in California, or lazy, as we say here''). Today he lives in a pleasant house near Harvard Square in Cambridge Massachusetts. "I learned 50 years ago that you didn't have to shovel snow,'' he says. "You didn't even have to see snow, and that was a great revelation to me.'' But today Lehrer quietly occupies his residence on the East Coast.
He has not given a public performance since 1972, when he performed some benefits for "losing political candidates and hopeless causes'' (When one of those candidates, Robert Drinan, actually won an election, Lehrer says that it scared him). He has not appeared professionally since 1965, when he briefly emerged after a five-year retirement to play an engagement at San Francisco's Hungry i and record his classic topical album, "That Was the Year that Was.''
Lehrer has turned is music over to public domain and shuns the limelight.
The proceeds from the tribute evening will be distributed to Santa Cruz County public schools for their music departments.