About this Artist

• Biography

Editorial Reviews

At the time that he took the stage of the Kaufmann Concert Hall at the 92nd Street YMHA in Manhattan in February 1971 as the third performer in the "Lyrics And Lyricists" series, 46-year-old Sheldon Harnick was the only lyricist with two shows running simultaneously on Broadway, Fiddler On The Roof, which had opened more than six years before, and The Rothschilds, which had opened the previous October and would be the last of the seven Broadway musicals he wrote with composer Jerry Bock. Harnick turned out to be a funny man with a good voice, but he adopted an essentially serious theme for his performance: Rather than simply singing his best-known songs and telling his life story, he traced his development as a lyricist in nearly psychoanalytic terms as a journey to the clear expression of feeling. He did manage to sing some of his better known songs, notably Fiddler standards like "If I Were A Rich Man" and "Sunrise, Sunset," but his presentation was more concerned with tracing his evolution from a college student enamored of Gilbert and Sullivan and E.Y. Harburg to a writer of "off-beat songs" for revues to an accomplished lyricist of book musicals. Some of the song examples he chose to illustrate his journey were admittedly not among his best, but they were funny even when they weren't good. Harnick was accompanied by pianist Richard Leonard and, on occasion, on vocals by Mary Louise and his wife, Margery Gray, who, as he said, performed a version of "Do You Love Me?" with him that rivaled Steve Lawrence and Eydie Gormé. It may not have been "The Best Of Sheldon Harnick, " but it was a fascinating glimpse into what one of the most successful Broadway lyricists of the late 1950s and early 1960s thought about his work. (Unfortunately, the CD reissue by DRG Records had no track cues, making it difficult to locate individual songs.) William Ruhlmann, All Music Guide

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