Music from the '20s and '30s at Lanterman House

Soprano Teresa Parente and tenor Kris Wittry will perform ballads by Gershwin, Cole Porter, Rogers & Hart, Jerome Kern and other composers of the 1920s and 1930s on Sunday, Jan. 21 in the Lanterman House ballroom, 4420 Encinas Drive, La Cañada. The program will also include dancers from the Pasadena Ballroom Association.

The event will be held in conjunction with an exhibit of sheet music from the collection of the late Frank Lanterman. More than 5,000 scores were collected by Lanterman during his years as a theater organist and are housed in the Lanterman Archives.

As a teenager in New York City, Teresa Parente established herself as an actress and singer, performing music from Broadway to swing to classical. Moving to Los Angeles in 1992, Parente transitioned into film and TV, appearing in several major TV series. A La Cañada resident, she is a featured soloist with the Towne Singers and the Sisters of Swing.

Kris Wittry has served as tenor soloist and section leader in many church choirs, including those of Crescenta Valley United Methodist Church, Lutheran Church in the Foothills and Glendale Presbyterian Church. The Pasadena resident has sung with the Pasadena Chorale and the Redlands Opera and has been a featured soloist with the Towne Singers for the past 12 years.

The duo will be accompanied by Sean Paxton, a graduate of USC with a major in jazz performance. In Los Angeles, he has pursued a career in composing and directing music for theater and film. In 2005, the Montrose resident received the Harold Arlen Award form the ASCAP Film Scoring Workshop for a young composer who shows promise in the field of film music.

Tickets for the event are $12 and will be available at the door. Refreshments will follow the performance. For further information, call the Lanterman Historical Museum Foundation at 790-1421.