Rob Kapilow: What Makes It Great? The Music of Lerner and Loewe
About the Artists
Rob Kapilow
Emily Albrink
Ben Jones
For over 30 years, Rob Kapilow has brought the joy and wonder of music – and unraveled some of its mysteries – to audiences of all ages and backgrounds. Characterized by his unique ability to create an “aha” moment for his audiences and collaborators, whatever their level of musical sophistication or naiveté, Kapilow’s work brings music into people’s lives: opening new ears to musical experiences and helping people to listen actively rather than just hear.
Kapilow’s range of activities is astonishingly broad, including his What Makes It Great?® presentations (now for over 20 seasons in New York and Boston), his family compositions and Family Musik® events, his Citypieces, corporate programs, and residencies with institutions as diverse as the National Gallery of Canada and Stanford University. The reach of his interactive events and activities is wide, from Native American tribal communities in Montana and inner-city high school students in Louisiana to audiences in Kyoto, Istanbul, and Kuala Lumpur, and from tots barely out of diapers to musicologists in Ivy League programs.
In the 2025/2026 season, he returns to the Celebrity Series of Boston, Stanford Live!, Cerritos Center for the Performing Arts, Merkin Hall at Kaufman Music Center, and Music Toronto. What Makes It Great? programs include Anything but Standard: The Music of Ella Fitzgerald & Oscar Peterson, as well as new programs of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony, and The Summer of Love: The Music of Jimi Hendrix & Janis Joplin.
Mr. Kapilow’s large-scale choral/orchestral composition, We Came to America, based on inter-generational immigrant stories had its world premiere in January 2024 at the New Jersey Performing Arts Center in conjunction with the Thurnauer School of Music of the Kaplan JCC of the Palisades and the New Jersey Symphony.
Kapilow is an award-winning author of three books. All You Have To Do Is Listen, published by Wiley/Lincoln Center won the PSP Prose Award for Best Book in Music and the Performing Arts. What Makes it Great?, also published by Wiley/Lincoln Center, was the first book of its kind to be specially designed for the iPad with embedded musical examples. His latest book, Listening for America: Inside the Great American Songbook from Gershwin to Sondheim, published by Norton/Liveright received wide critical acclaim and was a finalist for the Marfield Prize. In June 2020, he signed a new, two-book contract with Norton/Liveright, and he is currently hard at work researching and writing both books, the first on the music of the Woodstock Generation.
Kapilow has appeared on NBC’s Today Show with Katie Couric; he presented a special What Makes It Great?® for broadcast on PBS’s Live From Lincoln Center; and he was the subject of a full-length PBS documentary as a composer entitled Summer Sun, Winter Moon. His What Makes it Great radio series was broadcast for more than a decade on NPR’s Performance Today.
Rob Kapilow dedicates his summer months to writing and composing new music. He was the first composer to be granted the rights to set Dr. Seuss’ words to music, and his Green Eggs and Ham has been called “the most successful piece written for families this half-century.” A CD featuring Nathan Gunn and Isabel Leonard in two more of his popular Family Musik® compositions, Chris van Allsburg’s Polar Express and Dr. Seuss’s Gertrude McFuzz, was released in 2014, and his work composed for the 25th anniversary of Ottawa Chamberfest based on Louise Bourgeois’ spider sculpture, “Maman.” received its premiere in August of 2019.
Kapilow’s career has been marked by numerous major awards and grants. He won First Place in the Fontainebleau Casadesus Piano Competition and was the second-place winner of the Antal Dorati Conductor’s Competition with the Detroit Symphony. He was featured on Chicago Public Radio’s Composers In America series and is a recipient of an Exxon Meet-the-Composer grant and numerous ASCAP awards.
Kapilow has conducted many of North America’s major orchestras, as well as new works of musical theater, ranging from the Tony Award-winning Nine on Broadway to the premiere of Frida for the opening of the Brooklyn Academy of Music’s Next Wave Festival, and premieres of works for the American Repertory Theater. At the age of 19, Kapilow interrupted his academic work at Yale University to study with the legendary Nadia Boulanger. Two years later, after graduating Phi Beta Kappa from Yale, he continued his studies at Eastman School of Music. After graduating from Eastman, he returned to Yale, where he was an assistant professor and conductor of the Yale Symphony Orchestra for six years. He lives in Montvale, NJ, and he is a Sensei and third-degree black belt in Shorin-Ryu Karate.
Soprano Emily Albrink's career has been graced by collaborations with such conductors as Robert Spano and Marin Alsop and composers such as Jake Heggie, Ned Rorem, and John Musto. Lauded by the New York Times as "delightful and vocally strong and versatile," Ms. Albrink continues to be heard in a wide array of operatic roles and concert works. She has appeared in leading roles with Kentucky Opera, Charlottesville Opera, Cincinnati Opera, Opera Boston, Indianapolis Opera, and Chicago Opera Theater and has been a featured soloist with orchestras including Orchestra of St. Luke's, the Boston Symphony, the Chicago Symphony, the Baltimore Symphony, the Phoenix Symphony, and the Louisville Orchestra.
A champion of new music, Ms. Albrink will be releasing her debut solo album with pianist Kathleen Kelly featuring world premiere commissions by Jake Heggie, Nailah Nombeko, Rene Orth, and Steve Rouse. She has performed the role of Tatiana Bakst in Cincinnati Opera's workshop performance of Jake Heggie's Great Scott and performed the West Coast premiere of Heggie's song cycle Rise and Fall with the composer at the piano. She played Evvy in the US premiere of Tod Machover's Death and the Powers: The Robots' Opera with the American Repertory Theater and Chicago Opera Theater. She has performed at Carnegie Hall in John Adams' Grand Pianola Music, the role of Nuria in Osvaldo Golijov's opera Ainadamar (with Dawn Upshaw and the Orchestra of St. Luke's under the baton of Robert Spano), and in the world premiere of Clarice Assad's Confessions, which served as her Carnegie debut. Ms. Albrink went on to perform Ainadamar with the Colorado Music Festival, Opera Boston, the Phoenix Symphony, and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra.
Early in her career, Ms. Albrink fulfilled a residency with the Washington National Opera (WNO) as a member of the Domingo-Cafritz Young Artist Program and has since then returned often to the company's roster. She performed in WNO's special gala concert featuring Nathan Gunn, the role of Gretel in Hänsel und Gretel, Sophie in Werther, and Susanna in Le nozze di Figaro, a performance which drew high praise from the Washington Post: "Soprano Emily Albrink's pert, pearl-toned Susanna may have been the liveliest, most affectionately detailed performance of the evening". Other roles with the company include Frasquita in Carmen, Second Niece in Peter Grimes, Echo in Ariadne auf Naxos, and Barbarina in Le nozze di Figaro.
Ms. Albrink's performances of works from the classical canon include her Alice Tully Hall debut performance of Knoxville: Summer of 1915 with the Philharmonic Orchestra of the Americas, Pamina in Die Zauberflöte with the Baltimore Symphony conducted by Marin Alsop, Despina in Così fan tutte and die Vertraute in Elektra, both under the baton of James Levine. A native of Louisville, KY, she has sung seven leading roles with the Kentucky Opera over the past ten years. Ms. Albrink made her international debut with the Indianapolis Symphonic Choir on a ten-day tour of China as the soprano soloist in performances of Brahms' Deutsches Requiem.
In addition to her operatic and concert experience, Ms. Albrink has a deep affinity for the American musical theatre tradition and has appeared as Magnolia in Show Boat (Kentucky Opera), Julie Jordan in Carousel (Charlottesville Opera), and Marian Paroo in The Music Man (Charlottesville Opera). She has also collaborated with pianist and composer, Rob Kapilow on his What Makes it Great? series devoted to songs from the American Songbook at The Celebrity Series of Boston, Stanford Lively Arts, and at the University of Louisville.
Ms. Albrink holds a Master of Music degree and a Professional Diploma from the Manhattan School of Music and a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Musical Theatre from the University of Michigan. She currently resides in Louisville, KY where she is an Associate Professor of voice at the University of Louisville School of Music. She and her husband, David, have two small boys.
Ben Jones is an award-winning singer and actor whose work spans musical theatre, jazz, cabaret, and classical music.
He holds a Master of Music from the San Francisco Conservatory, sang with Chanticleer, conducted the San Jose Youth Symphony, and spent a year skewering pop culture in Beach Blanket Babylon. He received the Bay Area Theatre Critics Circle Award for his Sid Sorokin in The Pajama Game, with further nominations for Thoroughly Modern Millie and Show Boat.
He has appeared as soloist with the San Francisco, Seattle, Pittsburgh, Indianapolis, and Oakland symphonies, and on stages from the Wiener Musikverein and the Royal Concertgebouw to the Mariinsky and the Edinburgh International Festival. He made his Carnegie Hall debut in 2021 as part of the Voices of Hope festival.
In New York he has appeared Off-Broadway with The York Theatre in Twist of Fate and Brooklyn's Bridge and at special events for Red Bull Theater, and he has performed more than 150 times at 54 Below, where recent concert leads include Sir Percy in The Scarlet Pimpernel and the title roles in Jekyll & Hyde. He tours nationally with I Hear America Singing alongside Nathan and Julie Gunn.
This is his fourth What Makes It Great? with Rob Kapilow. His duo album with Grammy-winning pianist Laurence Hobgood, recorded live at Skywalker Sound, was released in 2025.