BIOGRAPHY: ROBERT KIMBALLA historian of the American musical theatre, ROBERT KIMBALL is artistic adviser to the Ira and Leonore Gershwin Trusts and to the Cole Porter Musical and Literary Property Trusts. He has been a member of the advisory committee of New York City Center’s Encores! Great American Musicals in Concert series and a consultant on musical theater to the Library of Congress, the Packard Humanities Institute’s musical theater recording project, the estate of Irving Berlin, and the Goodspeed Opera House in East Haddam, Conn. He was a consultant to and participant in the Chicago Humanities Festival for 12 years. From 2008-2011, he served as a Tony Awards nominator.His has edited or co-edited six books in Knopf’s Complete Lyrics series: Cole Porter (1983); Lorenz Hart (1986); Ira Gershwin (1993); Irving Berlin (2001); Frank Loesser (2003); and Johnny Mercer (2009). He was the editor of two volumes in the Library of America’s American Poets Project: Cole Porter: Selected Lyrics (2006) and Ira Gershwin: Selected Lyrics (2009). His other books include Cole (with Brendan Gill; Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1971); The Gershwins (with Alfred Simon, Atheneum, 1973); Reminiscing with Sissle and Blake (with William Bolcom, Viking, 1973), and Reading Lyrics (with Robert Gottlieb, Pantheon, 2000).He has been the artistic director of six programs on the popular Lyrics and Lyricists series at New York City’s 92nd Street Y: “Serenade in Blue: A Celebration of the Songs of Mack Gordon” (2005), “Johnny Mercer at the Movies” (2006), “Say It With Music: The Songs of Irving Berlin” (2007), “Sunny Side Up: Roaring Through the Twenties With DeSylva, Brown & Henderson” (2009), “Makin’ Whoopee: Walter Donaldson, Gus Kahn and the Jazz Age” (2012); “Sweepin’ the Clouds Away: Boom, Bust and High Spirits” (2014)Born in New York City in 1939, he is a graduate of Yale College (BA, 1961) and the Yale Law School (LLB, 1967). After a year as a Carnegie Teaching Fellow in American History at Yale (1961-62), he became the Legislative Assistant to Representative John V. Lindsay of New York (1962-1963), and then served as Director of the Republican Legislative Research Association, an organization established by Charles Taft and Alfred Landon to assist Republican Congressmen in the deliberations on civil rights legislation during the presidencies of John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson. As a principal aide to the House Republican leaders, he was one of the architects of the key bipartisan compromise of October 1963 that led to passage of the landmark Civil Rights Act of 1964. After graduation from the Yale Law School, he pursued his long-standing interest in the American musical theatre when he was appointed Curator of Yale University’s Collection of the Literature of the American Musical Theatre. He held that position from 1967 to 1971, and during his tenure began to write extensively about the American musical.He has lectured on the history of American musical theatre at Yale, New York University, Brooklyn College of the City University of New York, and the Manhattan School of Music. He was a music and dance reviewer for the New York Post from 1973 to 1986, and the newspaper’s chief classical music critic from 1986 to 1988.In 1987, he received a Drama Desk Award for his rediscovery of lost musical-theatre manuscripts at the Warner Bros. Secaucus, New Jersey warehouse, including more than 200 manuscripts of Jerome Kern, among them songs from Show Boat. In 1992 he was nominated for two Grammy Awards for his work on the Indiana Historical Society’s comprehensive reissue project of Cole Porter recordings. He appeared as a commentator on the 2004 PBS series Broadway: The American Musical. He has lectured on the Gershwins, Cole Porter and Irving Berlin aboard Cunard, Holland America and Crystal Cruises ships.He and his wife, Abigail, are longtime residents of New York City and the parents of Philip Kimball and Miranda Kimball Swaffield. August 2015