Connie Converse in Greenwich Village

The trailblazing polymath Connie Converse lived in Greenwich Village, on Grove Street, in the early 1950s, when she was actively revolutionizing American song. The only problem was, nobody knew it, outside of a small circle of friends and admirers. It wasn’t until decades after Converse’s mysterious disappearance at the age of 50 that the music she was making then, hidden away on musty old tape reels in a filing cabinet, found an audience at last.

Today, Converse has been recognized as a pioneer of the singer-songwriter that would explode in the Village a decade later and has acquired a legion of fans who see her as a new reference point in the history of 20th-century song.

Join Converse’s biographer Howard Fishman (author of To Anyone Who Ever Asks: The Life, Music, and Mystery of Connie Converse) in conversation with actor/director Paul Lazar, as they discuss the songwriter’s legacy.  Fishman and Lazar collaborated on the play “A Star Has Burnt My Eye,” a theatrical treatment of Converse’s life and work that had its world premiere at the BAM Next Wave Festival, and was a New York Times Critics Pick.