The husband-and-wife cabaret and songwriting team of David Alpher (pianist/composer) and Jennie Litt (singer/lyricist) started performing together on their very first date, which they spent singing and playing great songs by Gershwin, Berlin, Rodgers, and Porter in a cabin in the New Hampshire woods. Since then, they have appeared in numerous venues in the

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northeast and beyond, including the 2005, 2006, and 2007 seasons of The Chamber Arts Festival of Marbletown (with Jay Ungar & Molly Mason; Poets of Tin Pan Alley author Philip Furia; and Celtic powerhouse trio Ferintosh, respectively), the Rockport Chamber Music Festival, Bard College, Harvard University, The Albany Institute of History & Art, The People's Voice Café (NYC), The MacDowell Colony, and The Millay Colony. They headlined the 2007 Dissident Folk & Arts Festival's "Tribute to Bertolt Brecht," at the Howland Cultural Center, and have been featured at the Music at Marist concert series, the West End Theatre, and St. Giles Church (Oxford, UK), as well as on WAMC/Northeast Public Radio's popular "Dancing on the Air."

Recently hailed as "among the premier cabaret acts," and a "perfect musical ensemble," Litt and Alpher have delighted audiences with cabaret shows that offer in-depth explorations of the Great American Songbook. The Elegant & The Immigrant: Cole Porter & Irving Berlin Together presents works by two songwriting greats in matched pairs; the duo delves even deeper into obscure Berliniana with Another Serving of Irving Berlin (with folksinging cantor Robert Cohen). Rodgers with Hart & Hammerstein, another matched-pairs concept, celebrates the multifarious work of Richard Rodgers who, with his two greatest collaborators, defined the sound of American musical theatre for four decades. Sixties Cabaret traces the history of the 1960s as it was reflected in song, as well as the tumultuous change in popular music itself - from Tin Pan Alley to Abbey Road. People's Cabaret, a witty and loving musical history lesson, surveys a century's worth of songs of the political left, and Something Borrowed, Something Due may be the only library-themed cabaret show on the books. Alpher and Litt are also songwriters: their revue Smart-Alecky Songs for Serious Times offers an hour of songs in the great comic tradition of Tom Lehrer, Allan Sherman, and Flanders & Swann, with lyrics by Litt and music by Alpher. Jennie and David can be heard on the CD Americana, a live concert with Jay Ungar and Molly Mason, recorded during the Chamber Arts Festival of Marbletown's 2005 debut season. Jennie and David's daughter, Mirabelle Jasmine Alpher, was born June 25, 2008.

Internationally acclaimed composer, pianist, and recording artist David Alpher has enjoyed an active musical career for almost four decades. He co-founded, and for its first 10 years co-directed, the Rockport Chamber Music Festival (RCMF) in Massachusetts, now well into its third decade. At Rockport's 20th-anniversary celebration, David received a special citation for "enriching the cultural life of New England." In 2005, he founded The Chamber Arts Festival of Marbletown, where he serves as Artistic Director.

David has had a highly successful career as a pianist, collaborating with such distinguished artists as Marilyn Horne, Dawn Upshaw, Harolyn Blackwell, and Christopheren Nomura. An extended collaboration with Thomas Hampson, Jay Ungar, and Molly Mason produced the perennially popular 1992 CD, American Dreamer: Songs of Stephen Foster (Angel), as well as a series of concerts and broadcasts at venues such as Lincoln Center, Tanglewood, and Town Hall.

David's classical compositions have had multiple performances worldwide - notably his multimedia work Las Meninas: Variations, inspired by Velázquez and Picasso paintings, and The Walrus and the Carpenter, a jazz-influenced setting of the Lewis Carroll poem. His "listener-friendly" music has been compared to Bernstein's for its melody and "jazzy bite." Land of the Farther Suns, an idiosyncratic journey for narrator, four flutes and piano through ten Stephen Crane poems, has been recorded by Garrison Keillor and Flute Force on the Innova CD Eyewitness, with David at the piano. He appears as pianist and composer on Never Broken (Center Stage) with baritone Christopheren Nomura and the Gainsborough Trio, and on Classic Lullabyes with soprano (and RCMF co-founder) Lila Deis (Alexxandra). American Reflections: David Alpher Chamber Music (Ongaku Records) contains five other Alpher works. His compositions are published by Brixton Publications, New Boston Editions, Kripplebush Publishing Company, Michigan State University Press, and Friedrich Hofmeister Musikverlag.

A graduate with of Indiana University School of Music and New York University, David maintains a professional association with Vassar College.

Jennie Litt has been singing since junior high school, but she came to lyric-writing through the proverbial back door. A graduate of Harvard College and the well-known Iowa Writers Workshop, Jennie had been publishing short fiction while laboring for over a decade to complete a novel. Her favorite way to blow off steam was singing at NYC piano bars. Then she met composer-pianist David Alpher at the MacDowell Colony. Their first date was spent playing and singing highlights from the great American songbook in David's studio deep in the woods. In short order, Jennie and David got married, took their cabaret act on the road, and started writing songs together. The fact that she could finish a lyric in well under a decade convinced Jennie that songwriting beat fiction writing all to hell.

Jennie's award-winning fiction has appeared in The Sun; Indiana Review; Columbia: A Journal of Literature and Art; The Blue Moon Review; the MAG; Prima Materia; Speak; and Fireweed. Her works for theater have been produced by Circle Repertory Company (New York City) and the American Repertory Theater (Cambridge, Mass.)

An ASCAP member since 2006, Jennie studies voice with Joyce Hall. "Jennie Litt's lovely voice is perfectly suited to her repertoire," say the critics, ". . . and her diction and phrasing are superb. She can really sell a song, like Barbara Cook can sell a song."