No Song is Safe From Us

No Song Is Safe From Us - The NYFOS Blog
 |  Paul Gruber

Soon after Samuel Barber was commissioned by soprano Eleanor Steber to compose a work for her, he stumbled upon a long prose poem by James Agee, published in The Partisan Review. “Knoxville: Summer of 1915” was a deceptively simple piece that, as its author later said, expressed “a child’s feeling of loneliness, wonder, and lack of identity in that marginal world between twilight and sleep.”




 |  Paul Gruber

Lena Horne developed into one of America’s most unique singers, but she didn’t start out that way. From her Cotton Club debut (at the age of 16) through her galley years as one of MGM’s first black stars, Horne was required to be glamorous and unexpressive, a sort of cocoa Dinah Shore. A tough childhood and unrelenting racism also contributed to her desire to repress her feelings in performance, and her refusal to play either servants or prostitutes shortened her Hollywood career. With the help of her second husband, the arranger Lenny Hayton, she eventually developed a kind of toughness in her performances, which became another way to protect her from her emotions and isolate her from her audiences.




 |  Paul Gruber

Shortly after the 1940 Nazi invasion of France, Francis Poulenc was asked to write incidental music for a light drama by Jean Anouilh, Léocadia. It starred the celebrated French actress and singer Yvonne Printemps, and Poulenc took advantage of her presence in the cast to add to his instrumental score a “valse chantée”, called “Les Chemins de l’Amour.”




 |  Paul Gruber

When Mary Martin died in 1990, the headline of her New York Times obituary called her “the first lady of musicals.” Probably now unknown by anyone younger than 40, Martin was, in her time, one of the most famous performers in the United States, and the creator of two classic Broadway musical roles (Nellie in “South Pacific” and Maria in “The Sound of Music”). But her fame was enhanced by her characterization of Peter Pan, in a musical version that she performed on Broadway in 1954, before televising it a number of times. It’s safe to say that nearly every American child of the 1950s and 60s knew that Peter Pan flew, crowed, and was played by an exuberant lady who, like her character, never grew old.




 |  Paul Gruber

Ella Fitzgerald sang the way the rest of us breathe. Her vocal production, phrasing, diction and interpretive choices were so natural and effortless that it’s easy to take her work for granted. A natural talent who had little if any formal musical training, she was blessed with a seamless voice of great beauty, and an instinctive ability to get to the core of both the music and the lyrics of every song she sang.