Today is an auspicious double anniversary: the New York Festival of Song is thirty years old, and NYFOS’s Founding Advisor Leonard Bernstein is…well, nearly one hundred. He’ll officially round off his century mark on August 25, 2018. But centennial festivities are planned over the span of two full concert seasons, and NYFOS wanted to get in at the very beginning. It seemed appropriate to kick off our Pearl Anniversary by honoring one of our most important mentors. And his rousing bicentennial cantata Songfest seemed like the perfect vehicle—not just for our three-decade mark, but to raise the roof in celebration of our country’s cultural wealth and diversity.
Read MoreWhen I planned “Red, White, and Blues” I thought I was making a light summer entertainment: 10 French songs, 10 American songs, encore, done. A pitcher of musical sangria. Then I started working on the program, and got a little carried way with visions of sugarplums. “Wouldn’t it be great to do the aria from ‘Mme Chrysanthème’? Gosh, this is the time everyone needs to hear ‘Awaiting You’! Oh, we’re by the water, we should do ‘J’attends un navire’!” The result is that my light repast is more like a five-course meal catered by Lutèce.
Read MoreThursday is the last day I can really work on the songs and push the cast to take risks. On Friday our water breaks as we do our first work-through. Reassurance is the name of the game. On Saturday, contractions start as we have our dress rehearsal. We retreat to our corners. And we deliver the baby on Sunday.
Read MoreUnlike some coaches I’ve observed, I don’t tend to start my work by manipulating the surface of the music. Sure, I can be a maniac on the first day about language, because those kinds of errors do need to be nipped in the bud. They take days to repair. But I try not to pick away at musical minutia at the beginning.
Read MoreTuesday would normally be a day to lean a bit harder on the artists so that we could coast towards the weekend. But I proceeded with caution. You don’t push singers when they’re tired.
Read MoreThe first day of a project is always fraught with excitement and fear and questions—how prepared will everyone be? Is this program any good? Will all my practicing hang in there in the heat of the moment, or am I going to be a total klutz? But this year’s NYFOS@North Fork residency had more unknowns than usual because I’d hired two people I didn’t really know.
Read MoreWhen I was planning the FSH gala with Amanda Bottoms and Dimitri Katotakis, they both mentioned that they’d recently sung “Too Many Mornings” from Sondheim’s Follies. For some reason, I initially resisted. Too hackneyed? off-topic? I don’t know. About two weeks later I woke up and changed my mind. I am glad I did.
Read MoreI know of two perfect songs: Fauré’s “En sourdine,” and Hoagy Carmichael’s “Skylark.” Paul Verlaine was the poet for the first of them, and Johnny Mercer the lyricist for the second. Please don’t ask me to explain what makes them perfect, or even why I think they might be better than other wonderful songs. After all, there is plenty of “great” music I don’t enjoy, and even more non-great music that lifts my heart. Greatness and perfection aren’t really in my lexicon, except when it comes to “En sourdine” and “Skylark.” It’s something I feel in my hands and in my soul when I play them.
Read MoreArt, like medical research, thrives on creative, talented people. But it also thrives on open-hearted patrons, some of whom can be as visionary (in their own way) as their beneficiaries. For this week’s FSH Dystrophy fundraiser, I grabbed a recent song by Stephen Sondheim, “Talent.”
Read MoreTo close the benefit program this week I grabbed a song Amanda Bottoms offered: “Sing Happy,” from the 1965 Flora the Red Menace. The musical is famous for a few things: it marked the first collaboration of composer John Kander and lyricist Fred Ebb, who would soon go on to write Cabaret, Chicago, and a raft of Broadway hits; it won a Tony for Liza Minelli, who was making her Broadway debut at age 19; and it was a flop. Like many Kander and Ebb works, Flora had a politically ambitious premise, but its director George Abbott came from a more traditional theatrical ethos. He was a giant, but not the right giant for this problematic material.
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