To round out the week, I present to you the American propaganda song “I Paid My Income Tax Today” by Irving Berlin, written in 1942 to facilitate the “unprecedented” income tax collection efforts supporting World War II. The rights to the song are actually still owned by our esteemed Internal Revenue Service, which widely distributed […]
Read MoreWeill had brainstormed for years on ways to use his talents towards the American war effort. In 1941, he wrote, “Like everybody else, I have the ardent desire to serve the country in some capacity. I would take any job. But it seems to me I could really be of some help if I would be allowed […]
Read MoreOn a recent foray into the jazz realm here in Pittsburgh, I was introduced to “I’ve Got My Eyes on You” by Cole Porter. It struck me as a charming little number at first hearing, but Porter’s veneer is thin; he is, after all, the master of warping the seemingly innocuous. As I began to […]
Read MoreThis week, as I continue my preparations of the Weill and Blitzstein double-bill for NYFOS next month, I see the many parallels between the time in which these works were composed and our current era (and the reasons for which they were written). I would therefore like this week’s NYFOS Song of the Day to […]
Read MoreWith this final Song of the Day, I want to return to my deepest musical roots, and I have been agonizing about this selection, which could have been of any of the great classical composers. Mozart would have been an obvious choice, since his music has followed me throughout my personal and a musical life. […]
Read MoreSarah Vaughan’s voice became one of the objects of my jazz obsession in college, where I was spending far more time than was probably good for me singing jazz in an a capella group called Redhot & Blue. (The arrangements were great. Don’t judge.) With the high musical standards of this group (no, really!), I […]
Read MoreWhen a singer welcomes a child into the family, there are many nights of baby-rocking that put to practical use the collection of lullabies learned for the recital stage. De Falla’s “Nana” was a song I had performed only once as a student at Tanglewood Music Center, but it reemerged from my long-term memory early […]
Read MoreAfter discovering American popular music later in my childhood, my mind was also blown at the discovery of musical theater, which was sort of like the opera I had grown up with in Germany, but just so deliciously American. As a twelve-year-old, having lost my German accent and gained an American musical sensibility, I enrolled […]
Read MoreI arrived in the U.S. at nearly nine years old, speaking very little English and having no idea that there was anything to music beyond the classical composers to whom I had been exposed by my parents. I had cut my teeth on Mozart, Bach, Beethoven, Richard Strauss, and Wagner. Imagine how my mind was […]
Read More(from Sari Gruber) With this final Song of the Day, I want to return to my deepest musical roots, and I have been agonizing about this selection, which could have been of any of the great classical composers. Mozart would have been an obvious choice, since his music has followed me throughout my personal and […]
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