[naviga:h2 class="sbodycopy" style="text-align: center;"]Steve Dorff Planning A Night Of Stories, Songs

DANBURY - Chances are good that at some point in the past few decades, you've sung along or tapped your feet to a melody - albeit sung by one of a diverse range of popular voices from Barbra Streisand, Kenny Rogers and Whitney Houston to George Straitt, Celine Dion, Cher, The Carpenters, and even John Travolta.Steve Dorff

Mr Dorff will be at the on Saturday, October 1, playing a number of his popular hits and melodies, as well as sharing stories about writing for and working with some of the most renowned talents in the music, television, and motion picture industries.Danbury Palace Theater

The three-time Grammy nominee has been honored with a Nashville Songwriters Association International Songwriter of the Year award, along with more than 40 BMI, and 11 Billboard #1 awards. His dossier includes nine #1 film songs and 15 Top Ten hits, including the Kenny Rogers classic "Through The Years," a BMI 3 million performance song, as well as "I Just Fall In Love Again," the Anne Murray record that captured Billboard's #1 Song Of The Year honors.

An Emmy Nominee for six television compositions, his credits also include the theme songs to Murphy Brown as well as Murder She Wrote, and Growing Pains, Alien Nation, Spenser: For Hire, Major Dad, Columbo, Reba, and the ABC hit Rodney.

Mr Dorff also penned material for the Emmy-nominated CBS miniseries Elvis, the Hallmark Hall of Fame Rose Hill, the animated Christmas classic Annabelle's Wish, Babe Ruth, The Quick and The Dead, Moonshine Highway, and The Defiant Ones. His many movie songs and scores have been featured in Bronco Billy, Blast From The Past, Rocky IV, Pure Country, Tin Cup, Michael, Dudley Do-Right, Dancer, Texas, The Last Boy Scout, Curly Sue, and Honky Tonk Man.

In a call to The Newtown Bee ahead of his Danbury show, Mr Dorff also briefly discussed his most ambitious move to date: indulging his first love, musical theater. He currently has two projects making their way to the stage: Josephine (The Josephine Baker Story) and Pure Country (The Musical).

"We're debuting Pure Country in Dallas next spring, and my other show Josephine is going to New York next year, and I just signed a book deal - a memoir - that will be answering a lot of questions that people have about the songs I've written and the people I've had the pleasure to work with," he said.

The artist said that while some of his creations find their way into the popular mainstream because they are picked up and recorded by other artists, when it comes to many of his catchy theme songs and soundtrack material, movie and program development teams come looking for him.

"Most of those come after calls from production companies. I'll take a meeting, look at the show or film concept and they ask me to come up with a theme," he said. "The producers are usually pretty good at describing what they want. These are some of the fun stories I'll be telling during my show in Danbury. Some of these have come about in really comical ways."

For example, the Murphy Brown theme was unique because the song is performed a cappella (sans instruments) with the vocal group Take 6.

"I don't think that had ever been done before," he said. "I think I was lucky enough to get a lot of those television gigs because I came from the pop record world. And a lot of TV themes were not being sung by big recording artists. They were either done by studio singers or unnamed artists. So I was able to take some of these theme songs to the artists I had recorded with, and they were excited at the opportunity to do something for television."

Almost every film Mr Dorff has been hired to score has featured a combination of background music that is played under and between scenes, as well as tentpole compositions that may play under opening or closing credits or key scenes, like in the case of "Every Which Way But Loose," from the Eastwood film, and the monster country hit "I Cross My Heart," from Pure Country, which he co-wrote with Eric Kaz.

"I've written a song or the song for particular films that has become a huge hit," he said. "There are not very many composers who are hit song writers, and not many hit song writers who are successful film composers - who can develop an orchestral score. I'm talking Henry Mancini, Marvin Hamlisch, or Burt Bacharach. Those guys could do both.

"Most people knew me first as a songwriter, and it was hard for them to recognize that I could do orchestral scoring. So when there was an opening for a song, I'd bring one to the director and 'bingo,' that was the case with Pure Country and all of the Eastwood movies I did that became hits," he added.

Mr Dorff said while he has often developed scores and singles from his film and TV work, when it comes to songwriting for recording artists, "it's like exercising two different sets of muscles."

"Writing songs comes from having a good idea," he said. "I rarely have an artist in mind when I'm creating a song. And if I hear someone is looking, or I have a relationship with an artist, I can pick up the phone and ask if I can send it to them.

"The beauty of that is there is no timeline to that, and that song can be about anything. Where with TV and movies," he added, "there's usually a strict timeline and deadline to produce material that is typically based on somebody else's concepts or ideas."

For tickets to the Steve Dorff show, October 1 at Danbury Palace Theater, call 203-794-9944 weekdays between 1 and 5 pm, or visit .tickets.thepalacedanbury.com

[naviga:h2 class="sbodycopy" style="text-align: center;"]Dar Williams Performing

Mortal City

RIDGEFIELD - This fall, Dar WilliamsMortal City, and will be performing the album in its entirety for the first time. The dates give Ms Williams an opportunity to reconnect with the inter-generational fans that were among the first to embrace her back in the mid-1990s. will celebrate the 20th anniversary of her breakthrough album

Ms Williams is hitting The Ridgefield Playhouse stage Thursday, October 6, and promises to supplement Mortal City with a variety of other songs from more than two dozen albums and EPs she has released since her debut. She has also handpicked notable authors, writers, and poets to open with readings on select dates, and has selected author Michael Cervas to accompany her for the Ridgefield show.

In a chat with The Bee, Ms Williams explained that she selected Mr Cervas because he was a former colleague.

"Michael is a teacher up near Simsbury, and I've taught at his school and at Wesleyan University. So I got a good sense of the state," she said. "Every state has its own pride and identity and it was really important for me to have a Connecticut poet open the Ridgefield show. I think people in Connecticut, and in every state, value their state artists.

"The cross pollination between musicians and artists has always been very strong, and it's a community that has influenced my work - we influence one another. So I wanted this setup with Mortal City to show the strength and fragility of how we choose to be civilized, how we choose to live as civilized people," she continued.

Ms Williams said that the people who are out there writing about communities, life, and civilization are the poets, essayists and novelists she has chosen for this tour.

"Like Michael, they are really good ambassadors," she said. "He showcases a unique talent for observation of life in his poetry - people who witness life that closely are essential to the way we get through our daily lives, in my opinion."

Never one to shy away from reflecting the high points and challenges of democracy and diversity in the many mortal cities where she has appeared over the last quarter century, Ms Williams said that democracy is something that has always been one of the driving inspirations behind her creative output, even beyond the world of songwriting.

"I've got a book coming out that I may even finish today," she said. "Its working title is It has to do with the may successful ways that people have built working democracies within their towns and cities as I have encountered them," she said.A Wayfaring Minstrel's Guide To Urban Planning.

"One of the towns I've been to experienced an industrial collapse in the 80s, which coincided with the development of suburban malls. So this one town lost like 14,000 jobs overnight with the closing of a huge steel mill. And there were only about 3,000 other jobs in the rest of the local economy.

"So I asked an urban economist what happened to the other 11,000 people, and he didn't have an answer. And I think there are many pockets of this country that not only have 11,000 people who lost their jobs, but who were told it was their fault - unless they blamed their lack of employment on minorities for changing social values. And I see that disenfranchisement rearing its ugly head right now."

Seeing the glass half full, she recognized that it is a problem to fix on every level.

"And the book is talking about how people are building those social bridges to making our democracy even stronger showing leadership, optimism, humor, and ingenuity," she said. 

Mortal City concept.

Ms Williams said that along with performing her seminal album, she went about selecting the balance of her sets by plowing through her catalog looking for other songs that support the

"Things that grew out of writing that album," she said. "By doing songs like 'As Cool As I Am,' 'The Ocean' and 'Mortal City,' I felt more confident about taking on other themes, so those other songs will show what happened next."

The Ridgefield show will be a "blow out," she said, featuring Ms Williams accompanied by a drummer, keyboard player and a string player.

For tickets to the 8 pm performance October 6 ($40), visit the Ridgefield Playhouse box office at 80 East Ridge, call 203-438-5795 or go online to ridgefieldplayhouse.org.