Ben & Brad Celebrate Sterling Silver Memories

"It took me while to figure out what was going on."

The conversation I'm having with Benjamin Sears & Bradford Conner sparks back and forth over the phone so rapidly that I can hardly tell who's who.

"This is Brad by the way." Fortunately, they clarify this often.

"Ben was singing and watching this whole thing happen," Brad continues, "but I was sitting at the piano and I didn't know what was going on until I saw a shadow flit across the sheet music."

"We just kept going," adds Ben.

"As Irving Berlin says in 'There's No Business Like Show Business,' 'The show must go on,'" continues the pianist, Brad.

"We could write a book on weird things that have happened during a performance," Ben, who does most of the singing, interjects.

"What do you do with a bat in the middle of a show?" Brad asks. "So we just let Mr. Bat fly around everyone's heads until a member of the staff batted him out of the window with a broom or something. And we went on singing as though nothing had ever happened."

One would think Ben and Brad to be pretty close. After all, they've had a 25-year partnership in art, in domesticity and in an almost fanatic impulse to research and perform the early drafts of nearly forgotten show tunes.

Now they will celebrate their Silver Jubilee as a song duo with two special performances on September 26 (7:30pm) at Follen Church in Lexington and September 28 (3pm) at Club Cafe's Napoleon Room in Boston. Tickets are $25. For September 26 tickets visit amclass.org or call 617-254-1125 and for tickets on September 28 visit clubcafe.com.

"First and foremost we want to be known for being entertaining," says Brad, "but we also like to tell the story of the song, the history behind it and details about the person who wrote it. You might consider that boring, but our audiences love it."

"We specialize in Tin Pan Alley, Broadway and film music from the first part of the [Twentieth] Century," Ben adds. "And we love to dig up unusual or forgotten songs." This includes, for example, George & Ira Gershwin, Cole Porter, Irving Berlin, Richard Rodgers & Lorenz Hart and The Great American Songbook.

Since their first live performance at Follen Community Church in Lexington, they have become well-known recording artists with a significant discography featuring many previously unrecorded songs by Irving Berlin.

"Latching on to what Ben just said," continues Brad, "our repertory - immodestly - is huge."

"And we love programming," chimes-in Ben. "Give us any theme in the world and we can create a program around it."

Ben and Brad 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.

For American Classics, Ben and Brad have reconstructed a number of early Broadway shows for first revivals, including Irving Berlin shows "Watch Your Step," "Stop! Look! Listen!," "Yip! Yip! Yaphank!," and the Dietz/Schwartz/Kaufman revue "The Band Wagon."

"We like to sing the verses of popular songs that people have never heard before," says Brad. "For example, absolutely nobody knows the verses of 'You're a Grand Old Flag,' but they're very sophisticated and tell the entire story of what the chorus is all about."

"We love doing research, it's one of the highlights of doing the type of performance we do," says Ben. "We love to uncover the 'Why?' behind the songs and how they originated."

"[Doing research] gives us the opportunity to get to know the families of the songwriters," injects Brad. "They always have stories to tell and give you a lot of information that comes directly from the source."

Irving Berlin became a favorite of the duo early on. Their most recent album continues their Berlin series with "Reaching for the Moon - Irving Berlin Songs from 1925 to 1935." For this they have teamed up with award-winning Boston singer/actress Leigh Barrett.

"We were performing the original version of one of Irving Berlin's classic songs," says Ben, "'Mandy,' you know it from 'White Christmas,' but it was originally called 'Sterling Silver Moon.' So we were singing this song the way it was first done in the show 'Yip-Yip-Yaphank,' and sitting in the audience was one of the original Ziegfeld Girls from 1919."

Doris Eaton Travis was actually more of a Ziegfeld woman, about 97, at that point.

"The next thing we knew," continues Ben, "she came up on stage and started dancing. So we've performed with a real Ziegfeld Girl."

"She was recreating the original dance," explains Brad, "because - immodestly, she told us afterwards - 'I was sitting in the audience and thought, This is exactly how the song was back then. I wanna dance to this.' We had a moment when we were creating something on stage exactly as it was in 1919, with someone who was there in 1919."

Ben adds, "This doesn't happen to us a lot."

"To be honest she totally upstaged us," says Brad. "If she weren't an original Ziegfeld Girl we would have been irritated, but it made sense for her to be there."

This November, the team will stage a one hundredth anniversary performance of Irving Berlin's first Broadway show, "Watch Your Step." With this show, Berlin became the first Tin Pan Alley songwriter to move to Broadway with a complete score.

The music in "Watch Your Step" was based on the then-current craze: "ragtime." The script came from a French farce in which an eccentric millionaire leaves his money to any heir "who has never been in love." As you can imagine, true love finally wins the day and Berlin's score enlivens a flimsy plot, featuring his first counterpoint song "Simply Melody."

Likely the biggest highlight of "Watch Your Step" is the second act finale, "Opera in Modern Time," in which Berlin parodies "Aida," "La Boh�me," "Carmen," "Faust," "Rigoletto," and "Il Trovatore," all as the Ghost of Verdi strenuously objects, begging them "please don't rag my Rigoletto".

"We've never been heckled," Ben considers, "but we have our share of people who sit on the front row and scowl through the whole performance. Well, we've done our share of performing for assisted living..."

"For retirement communities," interjects Brad.

"And we often do Alzheimer's units," resumes Ben, "which is actually quite wonderful - but we have our share of entertaining..."

"...of unexpected entertaining..."

"We've had our share of the unexpected," continues Ben. "It's kind of like the bat."

He explains: "Once a woman came up on stage and kept trying to kiss us. In that case, it was a problem, because I couldn't get the attention of a member of the staff."

"In my favorite Alzheimer's story," laughs Brad. "Ben got done singing Cole Porter's 'Night and Day,' and all of a sudden this woman in the front row says, 'You've lost weight.' I put my head down on the piano and laughed for five minutes while Ben had to wait for me."

Ben groans a little and moves the conversation away from that particular story. "We love Alzheimer's, because music reaches those people in a way that nothing else does."

"Speaking of that..."

"Oh, no..."

"We went to a performance of George Gershwin's youngest sister."

"Okay," Ben sighs, considering Brad's story. "That one's alright."

"And when she came out to perform," continues Brad, "she had no idea why she was on stage. She turned to the pianist and said, 'Now, why are we here.'"

"But when the music was playing..."

"When the music was playing, she remembered every single word and gave a lovely performance," resumes Brad. "But when the song stopped she looked around and was like, 'Who are all these people?'"

"The point is, we got to meet and shake hands with George Gershwin's youngest sister after the performance," clarifies Ben. "And it was amazing."

"Yes, absolutely," Brad agrees wholeheartedly. Then after a moment of thought he adds, "Though, I doubt she would remember us..."

Ben and Brad's quadranscentennial celebration

For more information about Ben & Brad, visit their website www.benandbrad.com and for American Classics visit amclass.org.