January 12, 2014 On Friday our last family member arrived: guitar/ukelele/banjo-player Greg Utzig who’d done the show with Hal and me thirteen years ago. I love making music with Greg, but when he reports for work my flower-child days are over. You see, all week long I’ve been playing like a wild-man, reharmonizing chord progressions, […]
Read MoreJanuary 9, 2014 There was a blessed event today. No, no one had a baby. But at around 4 PM I heard a voice in my ear murmuring “Hey, Stevie!” in an insinuating way, and I turned around to see that Hal Cazalet had slipped into the chair behind me. I knew he was due […]
Read MoreJanuary 8, 2014 Today was one of those days that could have been unpleasant. We had six hours of rehearsal in a room that was wildly overheated, as if to compensate for the ghastly cold outside. We took just one half-hour break, and later a ten-minute breather. In that time we staged four big group […]
Read MoreJanuary 7, 2014 There are things you just wouldn’t know about your students until you work with them. For example. Joe Eletto cannot do the shimmy. On the other hand, Alex McKissick can shake his, um, upper torso like an overachieving Maytag washer-dryer set on “Shred.” This came to light yesterday when we were staging […]
Read MoreJanuary 6, 2014 All Iast semester I had been feeling uncharacteristically lazy about this year’s NYFOS@Juilliard show—a program of Jerome Kern songs with lyrics by P. G. Wodehouse called The Land Where the Good Songs Go. I had a fall season filled with fascinating (read: stressful) projects and I contented myself with preparing the songs […]
Read MoreOctober 14, 2013 Facebook is a strange, algorhythmic companion. Today it invited me to wish a happy birthday to my friend Patricia Scimeca. The reminder brought me up short. You see, Tricia died three weeks ago. She was in that special category of beloved-friend-of-friend. I met her through Amy Burton and John Musto, and we […]
Read MoreA strange dress rehearsal. There is a fancy dinner in the hall tonight and I was given to understand that that the staff wanted to start their setup around 6. But they were actually chomping at the bit to start rolling tables in at 4, which made it hard for me to concentrate or play […]
Read MoreI am no techno-geek, but I admit to a fascination with Spotify. I love old opera recordings, and am at my happiest flossing to Elizabeth Grümmer singing the Freichütz aria or taking out my lenses as Miliza Korjus warbles a Strauss waltz, complete with insane cadenza and vibrato-less high F-sharp. If at the age of […]
Read MoreI am pleased to report that we had a great success yesterday–the real deal, not just a rosy blog report. Something quite astounding happened in the hall, the thing I most wanted but was aftraid to hope for. No, I was not surprised that the concert went well, nor that the hall was full. I […]
Read MoreWe had our first runthrough Friday. Praise the Lord, the program works just fine. No major snags, everyone in decent if not transcendent voice—high notes ringing out like crazy but a little huskiness in the lower part of the voice. If that’s fatigue, it’s the good kind. The piano in the hall is not, shall […]
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