Like every other theater kid, I lived for the Tony Awards. Growing up in Seattle, it was my big window into what was happening on Broadway. I would glue myself to the TV to watch all the performances and note which cast recordings I would want to get. That habit led me to one of […]
Read MoreIn late 2006, I was amongst the student performers working on the NYFOS@Juilliard “Songs of Peace and War”. The program was coming together, but there was one spot towards the end of Act I that needed to be filled. It came down to two wonderful Kurt Weill songs, “A Dirge for Two Veterans” from Four […]
Read MoreTo start the week off, I’ve chosen a song by Marc Blitzstein, one of the two composers featured on our NYFOS concert next week. Blitzstein garnered national attention in 1937 when his pro-union musical The Cradle will Rock was shut down by the Works Progress Administration. His other works include the Opera Regina, the musical […]
Read MoreThough this song isn’t a Donny Hathaway original, I agree wholeheartedly with Jack Gulielmetti’s sentiment in his earlier piece for NYFOS on “Someday We’ll All Be Free” – I really, REALLY love him, and likely could have made the entire week about him and his songs. I feel like this week’s tribute to space in […]
Read MoreThe original Rodgers and Hart tune from their mostly-forgettable musical Jumbo (featuring a flightless elephant unlike the one featured some years later in Disney’s 1941 animated film Dumbo) is a lovely tune. Nina Simone made it irreplaceable 23 years later. (Digression: I know there will be Janis Joplin fans in the room screaming bloody murder, […]
Read More“But you promised black artists, Joseph.” Yes, yes, I did. And as much as I love and adore Blue Eyes, he’s not the steam engine of this song – Count Basie is, along with his orchestra and the legendary Freddie Green. The arrangement by Quincy Jones is a match made in heaven for this meeting […]
Read MoreThe original version of this song was called “Death Letter Blues” – it was written and performed by Delta blues artist Son House in 1965. The two versions each give me very different types of chills – the Son House original feels like a declamatory primal sob, whereas the Cassandra Wilson version feels like a […]
Read More“She’s saying that one has to hold someone in a relationship like one holds sand in their hands. If you simply keep your hands cupped open, the sand will happily stay there. But if you try to close your hands or squeeze them shut, the sand will slip through your fingers. You have to let someone breathe.”
Read MoreBaritone John Brancy answers our questions on his connection to the music of Kurt Weill and how he created his much acclaimed recitals about WWI. John returns to NYFOS on November 19 in a concert versions of Marc Blitzstein’s No For An Answer & Kurt Weill’s Der Silbersee. We are especially thrilled to have you, […]
Read MoreTo round out the week, I present to you the American propaganda song “I Paid My Income Tax Today” by Irving Berlin, written in 1942 to facilitate the “unprecedented” income tax collection efforts supporting World War II. The rights to the song are actually still owned by our esteemed Internal Revenue Service, which widely distributed […]
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