MAN OF STANDARDS

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Michael Feinstein never aspired to be the point man for the entirety of music now known as the Great American Songbook— "When I started," he says, "I was just grateful to have a job playing the piano"—yet he has become precisely that. Universally recoqnized as one of the leading performers of the traditional canon of so-called standards, Feinstein is also a composer, impresario (his eponymous nightclub is a Manhattan cabaret fixture), producer, historian, compulsive archivist—and a general spokesman for the whole of popular culture before Elvis. His series of concerts this spring and next, exploring the roots of Song book-style music, specially curated for New York's Jazz at Lincoln Center, seems counter-intuitive at first blush. "In many ways I'm as far away from jazz as you can get," says Feinstein, 54, but he acknowledges the rich gumbo of melting-pot America that gave rise to the popular song. And he views his newly opened Michael Feinstein Foundation—a performing-arts and research center near his birthplace, in rural Indiana—as being vital to preserving and reclaiming history's backbeat. "We're losing our common ground. The lack of [support for the] arts has taken us to a point that is very dangerous. We must find a way to continue to nurture young souls and introduce them to this music so it can become a part of their lives."

Take it from the top.

WILL FRIEDWALD