Chris Lewis
The Man at the Helm of Michael Feinstein’s
The Great American Songbook Foundation
April 9, 2026
By Lynn Timmons Edwards
Once upon a time, I referred to my volunteer job as a writer for the Great American Songbook Association and was quickly reminded that Cabaret Scenes is published by the American Songbook Association and that the Great American Songbook Foundation is a completely separate entity. I learned that Michael Feinstein founded the latter and there was a collection of Gershwin “stuff” in Carmel, Indiana. That summed up my fledgling knowledge until I had the opportunity to travel to Carmel to see for myself just what’s up.
I spent the better part of an afternoon with Chris Lewis, Executive Director of the Foundation, the offices of which are housed in the gorgeous Allied Solutions Performing Arts Center. The Foundation has a small exhibition space there. The Library and Archives where we met for a tour occupies a separate building and is a working warehouse of memorabilia, sheet music, scripts, and recordings. They house everything from Irving Berlin’s piano to Bring Crosby’s traveling trunk to the full collection of Andy Williams’ and Natalie Cole’s arrangements, to the Emmy that Steve Lawrence and Eydie Gorme won for their Irving Berlin Special in 1979.
Lewis grew up loving the Great American Songbook and moved to New York City after college to pursue a career as a singer. “I grew up wanting to be Bing Crosby and Frank Sinatra.” He landed a job as a singer with a vocal jazz group Pieces of Eight and also studied with the Cabaret Symposium at the O’Neal Center with Julie Wilson and Margaret Whiting, among others. He lived in New York for over fifteen years where he met and married his wife and became a father. He went back to school and earned a master’s degree in education, using music every chance he got in his classroom.
His wife grew up in the Indianapolis area and his in-laws urged the young family to make the move around the same time that Michael Feinstein founded the Great American Songbook Foundation. Feinstein’s husband Terrence Flannery is from the area, and ultimately Carmel won out as the most viable home for the new non-profit. Lewis had crossed paths with Feinstein over his years in NYC and fell in love with what he saw as his dream job. He pitched the idea of creating an education component for the Foundation, and even though they had no resources to hire him at the time, he sent them lesson plans and stayed connected.
Lewis secured a teaching job in Indiana and decided to make the move, making one last call to Doris Ann Sadler, the founding Executive Director, saying “we are coming either way, but I would rather work for you, and I think I could really be a help.” His persistence paid off and he began at the Foundation as a Program Coordinator. He oversaw one of their signature programs, The Songbook Academy, which offers an intensive week of study for young singers in the summer. Feinstein, who tours hundreds of dates a year, is always in residence as a Master Teacher for the summer program. It grew from exposing young people to the music to actually training and mentoring them. They now have alumni on Broadway and in films, which broadens the network of artists who give back. The Foundation also operates Perfect Harmony, which Lewis described as “a program in box for care partners and busy activity directors at senior living facilities.” It creates opportunities for local singers to perform, including Lewis.
Lewis rose to Executive Director and now leads eight staff members. The Foundation has 25 board members who come from around the country. They also have an affiliation agreement with the Arts Center to share human resources and finance staff. He pursued and helped coordinate the piece that ran last year on CBS Sunday Morning featuring Feinstein and the Foundation that received over 300 million views.
We talked about the differences between the American Songbook Association and its efforts to preserve the art form of cabaret and the Foundation which curates thousands of tangible pieces, so much so that plans are in the works to open a museum next door to the performing arts center, hopefully by 2030-31. Flannery and Feinstein have a home near the Center, and even though he is on the road nearly 200 dates a year, Feinstein serves as Artistic Director of the Allied Solutions Performing Arts Center. Along with a strong civic partnership (the City of Carmel provided the land) I left having no doubt that the American Songbook Foundation Museum would someday be a reality.
Unfortunately, I was unable to reach anyone from Feinstein’s at Hotel Carmichael, which opened in 2021 and is just across the pedestrian mall from the Center. I learned there is also The Cabaret in downtown Indianapolis. Maybe someone out there will step up and volunteer to cover Indiana for Cabaret Scenes, as there is a lot going on and I feel honored to have had an afternoon to meet Lewis and visit the Great American Songbook Foundation. For more information The Great American Songbook Foundation.
