On Saturday, Hempstead House at Sands Point Preserve will be transformed into a cabaret club. The music? Numbers sung by Broadway performers led by composer Steven Lutvak. Patch caught up with Lutvak to learn more about his work, and the upcoming performance.

How did you select the music for Saturday night's performance?  Were the singers involved in the selection?

It was very much a group effort: I've worked with each of these singers for years, and basically said, "What would you love to sing from the Broadway repertoire, past and present?" Some of the songs were almost requirements, meaning shows they had great personal successes in on Broadway, and some were things that they love, and I love. And we put it together from that. And they've sung music of mine, so the choices were pretty clear. 

In addition to the classic cabaret songs, will any of your original music be performed at Hempstead House?

Well, we'll be doing two songs from "A Gentleman's Guide to Love and Murder," [a musical written by Lutvak], and I'll be doing two of my stand-alone songs. Plus I'll even sing something I didn't write, which is one of the privileges of being the guy who gets to make the song list.

Tell us about "A Gentleman's Guide." What inspired this title?

Well, our musical – I wrote it with Robert L. Freedman, the Emmy-nominated writer of "Life with Judy Garland: Me And My Shadows" – is based on a rather obscure novel called "Israel Rank," written in 1907 by a writer named Roy Horniman. It tells the story of a man who, upon learning that he is in line to inherit a title and a great fortune – we're in England in 1907 – decides to murder all of the family members who stand between him and his inheritance. The novel is written as his memoir, from a prison cell where he is awaiting his verdict, and he writes, as it were, "A Gentleman's Guide to Love and Murder." I should mention that it's a comedy. [Editor's note: both Lutvak and Freedman were members of the first graduating class of New York University's musical theater program.] 

How did you begin in music?  

I began playing the piano – I think I was six, and I studied with the most remarkable teacher, a woman named Gilda Nelson – whose 90th birthday I was at last summer. She was the perfect teacher for me in many ways – witness the fact that we're still in touch – and was enormously influential in how I think about music, even now. 

How did you train to compose musicals and movie scores?  

After finishing my undergraduate studies in music, at the State University of New York at Binghamton, I spent some time at the Manhattan School of Music, after which, I was a member of the first graduating class of NYU's graduate musical theater program, where our teachers included, and I'm not kidding, Leonard Bernstein, Betty Comden and Adolph Green, Arthur Laurents, Jule Styne – they were all still alive, and eager to be there. And as you might imagine, fascinating teachers.  I mean, here were all the giants of the musical theater, and it was a remarkable place to be.