Anyone who knows me well knows that I am a Francophile and that French is my favorite foreign language to sing. I have visited and performed in France almost yearly since the 1990s. On my first trip to Paris, Tobé Malawista, my beloved friend and colleague in The Mirror Visions Ensemble, introduced me to her longtime coach Irène Aïtoff, who taught me everything I know about singing in French.
Read MoreNoël Coward said it best: Mr. Irving BerlinOften emphasizes sinIn a charming way. Mr. Coward we knowWrote a song or two to showSex was here to stay.Richard Rodgers it’s trueTook a more romantic viewOf this sly biological urge.But it really was ColeWho contrived to make the wholeThing merge. My respect for Cole Porter has only increased […]
Read MoreIt was crucial to include Benjamin Britten (1913-1976) in Manning the Canon. He was not only one of the twentieth century’s most significant musicians, but also one of the first out-gay composers in history. He lived with his longtime partner, the tenor Peter Pears, for whom he wrote most of his songs and many of […]
Read MoreI am delving this week into the playlist of Manning the Canon: Songs of Gay Life. Much of the program focuses on scenes from contemporary life, but I also wanted to give some airplay to gay composers from the past. Many of them had to keep their same-sex affairs on the down-low, due to their […]
Read MoreHaving just finished the NYFOS season in New York with our Lorca program, tossed off a Gershwin concert for our gala a couple of weeks later, and presided over my twentieth-fifth anniversary concert at Wolf Trap with music ranging from German Lieder to Cuban rumba, I am now in the throes of preparing a revival of Manning the Canon: Songs of Gay Life.
Read MoreUpcoming Birthday Boy Walt Whitman simply looms too large to appear only one day this week. But for our final post, we’ve selected not a Whitman text, but a Whitman tribute. “Walt Whitman in 1989”, a breathtaking poem by Perry Brass, imagines Whitman, who had visited and volunteered in hospitals during the Civil War, doing the same at the height of AIDS Crisis.
Read MoreAre you ready for Walt Whitman’s birthday next weekend? We hope you got him something nice, because he’s turning 200 — kind of a big one. Dear Walt is such a big part of our American cultural fabric, especially in NYC, and we’re so happy to see so many artists and organizations celebrating his year.
Read MoreEvery five years or so, we at 5BMF like to go all out and commission twenty composers to write a new song each about this wild, wonderful, gritty, overwhelming city we call our home. For our Five Borough Songbook, Vol. II we were delighted to have the amazing Laura Kaminsky on the roster
Read MoreThis week’s Song of the Day is hosted by Jesse Blumberg and Donna Breitzer, the Artistic Director and Executive Director, respectively, of Five Boroughs Music Festival. A drag song! There had to be one, and Steve B. sure picked a winner. Much to my regret, I had never heard of John Wallowitch until Steve introduced […]
Read More“Amid the din of the ball” was one of the first songs I learned after my first lessons in Russian diction at CCM with Ken Griffiths. I was drawn to its dreamlike waltz feel, its incredibly vivid images from strophe to strophe, and the way Tchaikovsky spins his gorgeous melodic gifts from a noisy ballroom into a solitary bedroom.
Read More