THEY’RE playing our songs – all of them. Once again, Lincoln Center’s “American Songbook” pushes be yond the standards, dishing out a musical mulligatawny that actually features Stew.
The rocking star of “Passing Strange” wraps up the series March 6, capping off 17 nights of cabaret, country, pop, rock, R&B, Broadway and the impossible-to-categorize – like an evening of music commissioned by the Andy Warhol Museum to accompany the otherwise silent unspooling of his four-minute “Screen Tests” (of people famous and not) from the ’60s.
It all kicks off Wednesday night with David Hyde Pierce and Victoria Clarke (“The Light in the Piazza”) singing Cole Porter, arranged and directed by Encores! whiz Rob Fisher.
While Hyde Pierce is no stranger to Broadway – he won a Tony for “Curtains” – he’s never done a “Songbook” before.
“Rob approached me and said, ‘I want to do an evening of Cole Porter. Would you do it?’ ” Hyde Pierce says.
“I said, ‘The whole idea terrifies me, so yes, I’ll do it.’ ”
He’ll even play a little piano: “Due to popular request, very little.”
Another “Songbook” first-timer is Alan Cumming. Just don’t expect anything from “Cabaret.”
“I feel hugely pressured to sing it because they told me it would be really weird if I didn’t,” says the erstwhile “Cabaret” star, “but these are just songs I like – good acting songs.
“I talked to Liza [Minnelli] about it when we were both in Glasgow. She told me that in every song she sings, she thinks: Who is this person? What are they wearing? What kind of magnets are on their fridge?”
Expect songs by Cyndi Lauper, Dolly Parton and others when Cumming performs two sets Feb. 7 in the Allen Room of Frederick P. Rose Hall, overlooking Central Park.
“It’s really great,” Cumming says in his Scottish lilt (“really grit”), “because if you’re not good, at least the audience has something nice to look at!”
Other highlights:
* “The American Beauty Project: The Music of the Grateful Dead.” Catherine Russell, Larry Campbell, Ollabelle and other performers channel their inner Jerry Garcia on Friday.
* Country’s Rodney Crowell sings about the women in his life – including his ex, Rosanne Cash, who’ll join him Jan. 23. Talk about civilized!
* Hunky baritone Paolo Szot, who shot to fame in “South Pacific” last year, waltzes in on Jan. 24. Expect some enchanted evening of songs from both the American and Brazilian songbooks.
* You know Phylicia Rashad can act, but did you ever hear her sing? You will Feb. 4, when Rashad, Chuck Cooper, Adriane Lenox and other Broadway stars perform “Soul Deep: An Anthology of Black Music.”
* The unsinkable Sutton Foster takes a break from “Shrek” to sing selections from her first album, “Wish,” on Feb. 19.
For tickets, visit LincolnCenter.org or call CenterCharge at 212-721-6500.