It’s the big Bernstein year. Steven Blier and I have already done a passel of LB shows, with more to come this winter and next fall. But here’s a beautiful rarity from his Peter Pan. Most folks don’t know it, since it didn’t have a big run on B’way. He wrote half a dozen songs for Boris Karloff’s show (he was Hook, of course), but as always, Lenny delivered some keepers.
Read MoreJesu, meine Freude. Jesus, my Joy. Johann Sebastian Bach. It’s fair to say that classical musicians agree that Bach at the very top of creative geniuses. His music seems in a class by itself. And he wrote lots and lots of music. It seemed to just pour out of him. I’m amazed at how personal his music sounds to me. It’s full of emotional feeling, belief, hope, and tragedy. On a snowy day like this, when I hope to stay in, listening to Bach is like having a private religious ceremony. This is a church I actually want to attend.
Read Morethink most NYFOS folks know Charles Yang by now. He’s our young super star violinist and more recently, he’s carving out an important career as a songwriter and vocalist with an amazing group of three string players (two violins and bass) called Time For Three. They have been playing to much larger audiences than our normal NYFOS crowd (stadiums), and their music is getting deeper, better, and more beautiful every time I hear it.
Read MoreI met Johnny Green in the 1980s. He was well into his 80s and he was there at BAM for the Gershwin celebration concert and TV show to teach us about Gershwin, and about how his big band arrangements went. He took the band through a few numbers and what I most remembered was the sound he got out of them. “This should sound like velvet” he said. We all know velvet doesn’t make a sound, but of course every sax player instantly knew what to do, and they got breathy with their reeds, and the trumpets and trombones fell right in.
Read MoreI live near the East River in New York City. It gives me great pleasure to walk over to the park along its banks and watch the slow winter water flow out to the Atlantic Ocean, to see the reflections of the city lights on the surface. Those lights will have to do: in the city I never really see stars.
Read MoreNone of us will ever know the fullness of our impact on the lives of others. Similarly, it would be impossible for any one of us to trace all the ways that other people have transformed us. Lives may be lived in eras, but are experienced one at a time.
Read MoreI have always loved the old bible story about the three wise men following a star that leads them to a humble manger and the baby inside of it, trusting in wisdom of the universe, written in the language of the stars, to lead them to something far beyond anything they would ever expect. You can really imagine how much improvising, and how much trust, would be needed to start a journey like that, and believe that their humble destination was really what they had been looking for.
Read MoreThis season I am thinking a lot about the nature of time—how the evening seems to fall so soon (is it always so dark so early in the middle of December?), how the days can feel so long and yet the weeks so short.
Read MoreIt feels to me that 2017 has been a year of division and anxiety. There is a list of hurts as far as the eye can see across our beautiful nation, so many conflicting identities seemingly held together in name only. Living into this tension is draining, and I rely on the camaraderie of music. Sometimes I look for songs that serve as fuel, propelling me to do all the good I can with what I have. But sometimes I just want—just need—a little solace, a way to acknowledge the world as it is and still offer hope for a better tomorrow.
Read MoreThe last time I saw Hello, Dolly! I was twelve years old, and Carol Channing played Dolly. On the way out of the theater—no, it must have been later, at Sam Goody’s where its $4.95 price tag would have come down a whole dollar—my mother bought the original cast album for us. Well, for me. I was the obsessive music-listener in the house. I soon knew all the songs by heart.
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