January 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 […]
Read MoreI guess it was inevitable. Wednesday was come-to-Jesus time, and on Thursday we welcomed Mary. Not the Sainted Mother, but stage director Mary Birnbaum, our Guest Artist this week. We’d all wanted some help staging the two group numbers and the two boys’ duets. I also nurtured a hidden desire that Mary might do a […]
Read MoreThe fourth day of rehearsal is always the come-to-Jesus moment; it’s the last day you can really work in depth, get to the fundamentals, take on the big issues. There is something I want each cast member to focus on as we head towards Sunday’s performance, but by tomorrow they’ll be very focused on memory, […]
Read MoreToday was notable for two things. One: Meredith managed to charm Frank, the owner of the best ice cream store in Greenport—it’s called D’Latte—and showed up at rehearsal with two pints of world-class sorbet and a bag of gluten-free biscotti. The mint-lemon sorbet almost derailed rehearsal, when I had a momentary delusion that I would […]
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