A Cole Porter centennial? Let’s do it!

Yale University Library Manuscripts & Archives

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Composer Cole Porter graduated from Yale College a hundred years ago this spring, and a number of people at Yale who think he’s the top—the Colosseum! the Louvre museum!—have plans to celebrate all year. The beguine begins on January 19, with a concert performance of Kiss Me Kate at the University Theatre. Details for the rest of the year are still being worked out, but they will include a Yale Jazz Ensemble performance on February 25, a film festival, and a gala concert in the fall at the Shubert Theater. All this for a guy who, according to his yearbook entry, intended “to enter the Harvard Law School, after which he will go into either mining, lumbering, or farming.” None of those panned out. Fortunately for the rest of us, he had music to fall back on.