Jeannie Waygar and Marcy Harriell will perform together Sunday night, a concert they're calling Broadway, Bacharach and Bossa Nova. Though this is their first public concert together, they've enjoyed musical careers that have taken them to stages and screens all over.
Marcy's Broadway performances include "Rent," "In the Heights" and "Lennon." She's worked with Stephen Sondheim, Athol Fugard and Jerome Robbins. She was directed by Quentin Tarantino as a character named Marcy in "Death Proof."
Jeannie was conductor of the North Arkansas Symphony Orchestra for nine years and has conducted symphonies in Thailand, Mexico and Croatia, to name a few. She's also served as principal guest conductor of the Women's Philharmonic in San Francisco.
Here's the thing. They lived close to each other in New York for a few years, but they never met there. Now they live on the same block in Fayetteville. Jeannie and Marcy came to the Carver Center for Public Radio for a conversation about their Sunday night concert, and when they got here, they asked if they could also perform. The answer: yes.
First, a discussion about the Sunday night show, Broadway, Bacharach and Bossa Nova.
Kyle Kellams: Those are the right order, but not necessarily in that order of preference and not necessarily any preference. I don't know, maybe.
Kyle Kellams: The alliteration. I love the alliteration. Was that a combo consideration?
Harriell: We were thinking about calling it the Killer Bees or Beauty and the Bees, but I didn't really like what that said about, you know, whose beauty. No. Yeah, it came about because Sarah Jones wanted a cabaret and she wanted a Broadway cabaret, knowing my Broadway credits. And I said, well, I'm recently working with this amazing pianist right down the street. And couldn't we do some bossa nova? She said, "Oh." I said, and then couldn't we do some Bacharach? And she said, "Oh, oh."
Harriell: And you said, "Yes, yes, yes."
Kellams: And you literally live just a few doors down from each other.
Waygar: Yeah, 75 feet.
Kellams: Did you know each other before you lived in Fayetteville?
Waygar: No.
Kellams: But you've performed all over the world separately.
Waygar: Yeah. Well, here's the interesting thing is that in New York, my late partner and I lived in Westbeth, which is in the West Village. And we were there for about 20 years. Marcy and Rob were always there during the exact same period that we lived there. And so we never ran into each other because I was the classical music nerd. And Eleanor was a classical music nerd. They're Broadway, jazz, acting. But we could have run into each other. We could have walked past each other right on the street. We could have been in the same — all the time. This is for 20 years.
Kellams: Yeah. So what led you to — when did you finally meet in Fayetteville?
Harriell: Well, my husband actually was born here. We moved back to Fayetteville to be closer to family. And we moved to this beautiful little bungalow in the historic district. And my friend, our friend Diane Knight, who is the mother of one of my best friends, Liz, from Crisis — you know Crisis?
Kellams: Yes, I know. Oh, yes.
Harriell: She said, "You know what? I really think that you need to meet my dear friend Jeannie. I feel like you guys would hit it off." And I said, "Sure, you know, I'd like singing still. I'll sing some more." She drives by my house and picks me up to drive me to Jeannie's. And I'm a little nervous because I've never met her. She drives 20 feet — if that — parks the car. I said, "Are we here?" We get out of the car and I can see Jeannie's house from our house. It's very Diane.
Kellams: So you start working together on the May 17 show. How did you pick what would be performed?
Waygar: It was totally mutual. And it also kind of started from the first night we met. So we had a couple glasses of wine, we were laughing and having a good time. And this piece of music was on the piano, and I hadn't been looking at it much — you know, "So Many Stars" — and so we walked over to the piano and Marcy goes, "Oh, that's one of my favorite songs, I love that." And we played it. And all of a sudden there was this connection. And you don't find this connection very often. It's just the connection. I go, "Oh my God, this is fantastic."
Harriell: I mean, we can look at each other and know where the other person is going. And you really — to have that, to have two musicians that can do that, that can lock eyes and know what's coming next, is so rare, and it's so wild that we found it three doors down from each other in Fayetteville — moving to a town from New York where we never ran into each other. It's — yeah.
Kellams: I've always admired musicians, the ones that can do that and can read each other and know where each other is going. It reminds me of a really good basketball team. The bounce pass to the guard who's moving. But what do you think it is? How does that — is it —
Harriell: I have an idea.
Waygar: Well, I do too. It's — there's, with musicians, there's this just kind of this aura and this vibe and this sense of time and breath. And you can have a lot of people that have a different sense of that, but we're just on the same — I know this sounds corny — the same kind of breath, vibrations, whatever. It just matches. It's kind of a soul thing, a musical soul thing. And it's rare.
Harriell: I think this fits that. I think there's an openness that we both have because we've both been big fish in a big pond. We've both been little fish in a big pond. We've both been big fish in a little pond. We've experienced all these levels of success and what others would consider failure. I mean, we've experienced all these levels and we don't care anymore. We don't care if we're a big fish in a little pond or vice versa. All we care about is creating the music together and having a beautiful time while we're doing it. And because all of those sort of things are stripped away, we're able to just look at each other and connect and have a beautiful time.
Waygar: And that's it, that's it. You nailed it. Besides what I just said, it's total — it's like the Zen state of no ambition. Oh my God.
Kellams: OK, now let me — I think I have a small part of the theory. You called yourself a classical music nerd. We know your history with classical music, but you go beyond that. You were in the studio a year ago talking about your last CD project, which I think goes beyond conventional.
Waygar: It goes way beyond.
Kellams: And Marcy, your career is many different styles. So I wonder if the fact that you both embrace all of musicality is another reason that you can find commonality when performing together.
Harriell: Absolutely. Yeah. I don't think we're stuck. There's no genre that we frown upon. We love music. We love exploring music. We love playing with it. You're going to hear bossa nova, but it might not be the way that you think bossa nova should be played. It's the way that we want to play it. It's the path that we find to it.
Kellams: You have performed Burt Bacharach's music. Yes? Here?
Harriell: Yeah, yeah.
Kellams: What is it about his music that's just so comfortably sophisticated and wonderful?
Harriell: He's a magician, because he will write a song and you think it's all about love. "And what a beautiful song, I love it so much." And really, every lyric is telling you this person is dying, this person has lost love, this person will never find it again. And that's the beauty of singing Bacharach. You have this juxtaposition of how is this person going to survive? Oh, they're going to survive with music. They're going to survive with this beautiful tune that he wrote and this beautiful melody that everybody's tapping their feet to, while this person is crying.
Kellams: "What do you get when you fall in love?"
Harriell: I mean, a guy with a pin to burst your bubble.
Kellams: That's right. So was the challenge, when you're dealing with Broadway, Bacharach and bossa nova, was the challenge narrowing down what you want to perform?
Harriell: Mhm.
Waygar: Well, the challenge was finding the flow of how these all work together. And there are more commonalities than you would think.
Harriell: Oh, yeah. Right. Oh yeah. Definitely.
Waygar: So we've sort of arranged these so that they kind of flow. Even though they're very different styles, we've sort of done something that works and has a thread with the arrangements that flow through the whole thing. So you're not going to have an abrupt change. And it's more of a Latin feel to the entire thing.
Harriell: Yeah. And you might be surprised how much Broadway does come from Latin music and from bossa nova. Yeah.
Kellams: And cabaret — there's just something about cabaret. And we're in a part of the country where we don't get that many opportunities to experience cabaret. It's usually in a bigger city, in a smaller club. What's the atmosphere going to be like?
Harriell: Well, you're going to get some stories, because I am a Broadway kid, I can't help it. I grew up on jazz, but of course I had Broadway. I'm going to be wearing a gown that I designed myself. I'm going to probably be talking about that because people who make their own clothing, they always say, "I made this!" and they yell about it. We're going to be telling stories about how we met. I'm probably going to be talking to people in the audience, and I'm probably going to have a drink, and I think everyone else should too.
Kellams: What is it like to be an accompanist?
Waygar: I love accompanying. Are you kidding? As a conductor, I was accompanying a lot. And then right now, I have a gig as a pipe organist. I'm a church organist. And so every Sunday I'm kind of transcribing orchestral scores or piano scores and playing them on the organ and accompanying the choir or accompanying one of the church singers. So that's all I do as accompanist and I love it. I just love it. But then I'm composing. So that's me, that's my voice. I have another album that's just about to come out.
Harriell: But I will say, with me it's less accompanying and more of a partnership.
Kellams: Don't give anything away. But how did you decide what will be the final song?
Waygar: We haven't decided.
Kellams: Oh, so we can't give anything away because we don't know ourselves.
Harriell: And we don't know what the first one will be. So we're still working out the order.
Kellams: It's all right, it's all right. It's only a handful of days away. And here's the thing that I imagine — and granted, I grew up in the rural Ozarks, so I didn't grow up going to cabarets — but I always imagine cabaret was a bit of, not impromptu, but not necessarily in stone what you might do. It has the mood.
Harriell: Yeah. Because it's about the audience, too. You can't have everything set in stone because you don't know what the audience is going to feel like and how they're going to be responding to things. And you have to be able to connect with the audience. In a setting like this, I feel like you have to want to connect with the audience no matter what the setting is, right? But cabaret is wonderful because they're right there, so intimate.
Waygar: And we have to give a shout-out to Garrett. He's going to be the bass — Garrett Jones. Come on. And Steve Wilks will be on drums.
Kellams: Oh my God. Does he play bass?
Waygar: Oh oh, he kills bossa.
Kellams: I know for a fact because I've known Steve for 35 years. Yeah. I know he loves brushes. Oh, does he get to play the brushes?
Harriell and Waygar: All the time. All the time. This is going to be a hell of a show. It really is. There are times when we're rehearsing together, and then the brushes — I'm like — I mean, we're just imagining it. We're rehearsing, of course, but I can't help it.
Kellams: All right, so this is one night. Yeah. One night, at the end of the Strawberry Festival.
Harriell: Right. You go to the festival, you come in at 6, you have a drink, we have a little cabaret, you see a little fashion, you hear a little story, we all have two drinks after.
Kellams: Yes you will. OK, but I'm already — I mean, you haven't even decided the order of the songs — I'm already getting a little nostalgic. Like, oh, and then it's over.
Harriell: So maybe there'll be a — I don't know, maybe it will evolve into more. Maybe "girl next door" will become a thing.
And thanks to our technical director, Wai Kay Carenbauer, who walked by at just the right time, we were able to set up the mics around the Mary Baker Rumsey Steinway in the Firmin Garner Performance Studio.
Harriell: So when Jeannie and I first met, this was the song sitting on her piano, ready to go, unbeknownst to her. It's one of my favorite songs because it's one of my mom's favorite songs. And this is the first thing that we ever played together.
[Marcy Harriell, voice, and Jeannie Waygar, piano, perform "So Many Stars" in the Firmin Garner Performance Studio.]
Marcy Harriell and Jeannie Waygar will perform Broadway, Bacharach and Bossa Nova Sunday night in the Star Theater at Walton Arts Center. It's part of the Artosphere Festival 2026. The show comes on the day of the Strawberry Festival in Fayetteville. Music begins at 6 p.m. Tickets begin at $10.
Ozarks at Large transcripts are created on a rush deadline and edited for length and clarity. Copy editors utilize AI tools to review work. KUAF does not publish content created by AI. Please reach out to kuafinfo@uark.edu to report an issue. The audio version is the authoritative record of KUAF programming.
