He Made a Hat

It's a wrap, a life of joy and genius, the second volume of Stephen Sondheim's biographical and encyclopedic collection of his lyrics and recollections, Look, I Made a Hat; Collected Lyrics (1981-2011) with Attendant Comments, Amplifications, Dogmas, Harangues, Digressions, Anecdotes and Miscellany  (Alfred A. Knopf, 2011). My enthusiasm for the first volume, Finishing the Hat, led to writing about it before I was finished reading it and then again upon completion more than a year ago.

My initial observation on reading the first volume bears repeating for the second as well: "As the subtitle hints, it is not only an erudite, introspective, and sometimes self deprecating account of his own works with the complete lyrics, both those retained and discarded for the shows he wrote during the period, it is also a frank discussion of the 'major players' of his time, most of whom he of course knew or knows, and some of whom he did not but nonetheless influenced him in some way. I call this book 'a document' as only a first-hand participant of Sondheim's stature could make his reminiscences a treasure-trove which will be studied by students of Broadway for years to come."

The amusing subtitles of the two volumes at first glance look similar, but there are subtle differences. Both have "Attendant Comments" and "Anecdotes" in their subtitles, but Finishing The Hat's "Principles, Heresies, Grudges, Whines" have been replaced by "Dogmas, Harangues, Digressions," and the all encompassing, "Miscellany" and "Amplifications" in Look, I Made a Hat's subtitle.  Sondheim is too precise a thinker to imagine these changes were made only because of his playful, almost sardonic sense of humor.  This second volume is less about others in his profession (although it is still that to a degree), than it is about himself, the process of creating, an attempt to tie everything together, the dominant figure of the NY Stage coming to grips with the process of aging and looking back at what defines his work.

This second volume covers his more mature works, 1981 to the present.  It also reviews a wide range of "miscellaneous" works, ones I've never heard of, some incomplete or unproduced pieces.  The "big four" here are his well-known Sunday in the Park with George, Into the Woods, Assassins, and Passion. 

Sunday in the Park with George is about the life of George Seurat and, in particular, the two years he took creating his "A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte."  Of significance to Sondheim is this musical united him with the author of the book, James Lapine, with whom he would frequently collaborate afterwards.  The song "Finishing the Hat" is from Sunday and as he uses the title as the general metaphor for both these volumes, it bears some closer examination.  He says it "reflects an emotional experience shared by everybody to some degree or other, but more keenly and more often by creative artists: trancing out -- that phenomenon of losing the world while you're writing...."

 He continues with an anecdote.  One of his pleasures is "inventing games" and he was once playfully challenged by his friend, Phyllis Newman, the actress and singer, wife of Adolph Green, to create "a game of murder" (a more interesting one than the card game of the same name that already existed) and once Sondheim started to work on the game, he labored continually through the night, saying  "I hadn't moved for eleven hours. I must have, of course, if for nothing else than to go to the bathroom, much less get a drink or a snack. But I had no memory of it. I had left the planet for eleven hours, completely absorbed in a world of instructions, gunshots, diagrams, and clues, calibrating every possibility of the players' movements and observations. I've never had a better time making a hat. No matter how trivial the goal may have been, the intensity or the concentration was the same as that of writing a song, and just as difficult and exhilarating. 'Finishing the Hat' is an attempt to convey that treasured feeling. ...Relinquishing the world may be easier in the privacy of a study or during a walk in the woods, but it can happen in a public place, too.... When the cocoon is self-created, the surroundings matter not at all. As befits the creative act, 'Finishing the Hat' is a stream-of-consciousness lyric. There is no complete sentence."  

....That, however you live, / There's a part of you always standing by, / Mapping out the sky, / Finishing a hat... / Starting on a hat../ Finishing a hat... / Look, I made a hat.../ Where there never was a hat.

Into the Woods came right on the heels of Sunday in the Park with George, Sondheim wanting to collaborate with James Lapine again.  It started off as a "quest musical along the lines of The Wizard of Oz," one of Sondheim's favorites as the songs help define the characters and convey the story. Into the Woods became a potpourri of famous fairy tale characters going into the woods, "the all-purpose symbol of the unconscious, the womb, the past, the dark place where we face our trials and emerge wiser or destroyed..."  Sondheim says of the two main characters, the baker and his wife, "their concerns a quotidian, their attitudes prototypically urban: impatient, sarcastic, bickering, resigned -- prototypical, except that they speak in stilted fairy-tale language and are surrounded by witches and princesses and eventually giants.  This makes them funny and actable characters, and their contemporaneity makes them people the audience can recognize." 

Sondheim thought the work would be producible by a wide range of theatre companies, from schools (as there is an absence of obscenities) to professional theatres, and the musical works on two levels, one for just entertainment and the other as a sophisticated adult parable. "I predicted that Into the Woods could be a modest annuity for us [he and Lapine], and I'm surprised to say I was right."

I've "feared" seeing Assassins as having lived through so many of them in my lifetime, I just did not want to have it in my face on the stage, pretty much the same reason Ann and I don't see violent movies.  But, after reading Sondheim's description of the musical, it's on our list to see if it should ever be revived. Leave it to Sondheim (and his collaborator, John Weidman, based on an idea by Charles Gilbert, Jr.) to make a musical out of nine of the thirteen attempted presidential assassinations.

In describing how he came to Assassins, Sondheim reveals much about the process and writing lyrics in particular.  It also shows his own level of enthusiasm for this work, not to mention the level of reflection and prose in Look, I Made a Hat: "Writing lyrics is an exasperating job, but there are occasional moments which compensate, such as finding the right word that sits exactly on the right phrase of music or stumbling on the surprising but appropriate rhyme. It is those moments that propel you (me) to continue groping through the morass of banalities and not-quite-good-enough stabs at freshness and grace which constitute the bulk of the writing. And there is no moment more invigorating than reading the initial pages of your collaborator's work, especially if your collaborator is first class, the kind with whom I've been repeatedly blessed (not by chance, I can assure you - I've approached, and agreed to be approached by, only those whose work I like). Suddenly, what have been weeks of theoretical palaver, circling the subject, finding the spine and mapping the trajectory of the story, analyzing the characters, improvising scenes and songs, discussing style-suddenly, all that - becomes crystallized in a page or two of dialogue which makes the idea into words, much in the way a first rehearsal makes the word become flesh. Because of the quality of my collaborators, I have experienced that moment often, but the most exhilarating of those highs was the evening I read the first pages of John Weidman's script for 'Assassins'."

Passion is another collaboration with James Lapine, although the idea itself was conceived by Sondheim after he had seen an Ettore Scola film Passione d'Amore  which struck him "as a story worth singing." He was concerned about making it into a musical as "the characters were so outsized."  It might have demanded an opera, not a musical, and that is an art form that Sondheim (I am happy to learn) does not enjoy.  I say "happy" as I too have carried around the scarlet letter of "OP" (opera-phobic) even though I enjoy both music and theatre. Sondheim has exonerated the tinge of guilt I feel about opera, even though I briefly studied it in college when I used to go to the Met, sitting at the student's desk which had a very limited view of the stage in my day where I followed the score of the opera.  Maybe I simply don't go in for pageantry. 

Here's Sondheim's take on opera: "I have successfully avoided enjoying opera all my life. There are many moments in the operatic literature that thrill me, but few complete scores, and even those that do ...I would rather listen to on records because they strike me as way too long. I was brought up on the swiftness and insubstantiality of musicals, and I'm not as enthralled by the human voice as I would like to be. For me it's the song, not the singer; I don't really care who sings 'Vissi d'Arte,' I care about what she's singing. I discriminate among singers of popular songs and show tunes, but for some reason I'm both less enthusiastic and less critical when it comes to the higher stratum of the art form. I recognize that this is my loss, and I sometimes envy (but not a lot) the swooning pleasure my opera-buff friends get from it. The thing that puts me off most is that most opera composers seem to have little sense of theater. They spend as much time having their characters sing about trivialities as about matters of emotional importance, and they too often resort to recitative to carry the plot along-for my money a tedious and arid solution to a problem easily solved by dialogue."  You are preaching to the choir, Mr. Sondheim.

Passion is an epistolary musical, with the songs, as Sondheim puts it, "somewhere between aria and recitative...[and] there's enough dialogue so that no one could mistake Passion for an opera. I hope."

Then, some one hundred plus pages of the book are dedicated to the on and off again fourteen year affair of creating a musical based on the Florida resort architect, Addison Mizner and his raconteur brother, Wilson Mizner, perfect models of picaresque lives.  Wise Guys/Bounce/Road Show went through four different incarnations, finally ending up pretty much as it began as far as the main theme is concerned, the relationship between two brothers.  The show had "four distinct scripts; three distinct directors; nine leading actors."  Sondheim had written thirty songs, most of which did not survive all four versions. Among the directors who impacted the show was, ironically, Sam Mendes in London who was also the director of the film Revolutionary Road, based on the novel by Richard Yates which I republished when thefirst edition had gone out of print.

But the director who had the most impact was John Doyle, who put the work on the course of becoming Road Show, after its previous variations over its ponderous life as Wise Guys and then Bounce.   About Doyle, Sondheim says, "He was enthusiastic about the story and understood the style, and at the same time saw what the show was trying to say about America with the objective, yet sympathetic, eye of a foreigner. He also saw that what the show needed was compression, to give it the kind of pace that defines the American image: speedy, impatient, determined, brash and humorous, all of which was expressed in what we had written-except for the speed, which wasn't speedy enough....Doyle turned out to be an exception among directors; the script he handed us after his tinkering, although it had its fair share of misguided and awkward moments, brought the mix of family dynamics and American penchant for reinvention into one focus, and that was what we had never properly been able to accomplish. 'Wise Guys/Bounce/Road Show' was about so many things: American enterprise, American conniving, American promotion, American greed, the class system, sibling love and rivalry, road movies- a soup that Doyle (and Oskar) boiled down for us, which is what a good director, like a good editor, can do."

Then, Sondheim covers his "Other Musicals,"  "Movies" and "Television" (following college he wrote for the TV show, Topper, and Kukla, Fran and Ollie an amusing aside to his career).

In the mix of his lyrics and reminiscences are some of the "attendant comments."  Although Oscar Hammerstein was his mentor, and Sondheim thinks of himself as a lyricist, he is also a first rate composer.  When Sondheim graduated from Williams, he won a coveted prize for music which allowed him to study composition with the composer and music theorist Milton Babbitt.  Sondheim explains why he focused on lyrics in his two books: ".... the technique of composition is impossible to be precise and articulate about without using jargon. The inner workings of lyrics can be communicated easily without resorting to arcane terms; understanding what a perfect rhyme is requires no special knowledge. But understanding what a perfect cadence is requires knowing something about harmony and the diatonic scale. Music is a foreign language which everyone knows but only musicians can speak. The effect is describable in everyday language; how to achieve it is not."

Sondheim has had a love-hate affair with critics and while he takes some head on in these volumes, he writes generally about the art of criticism and the impact of this Internet age:"...It takes a long time to learn not to pay attention to critics, or at least not to let them distract you. ....A good critic is someone who recognizes and acknowledges the artist's intentions and the work's aspirations, and judges the work by them, not by what his own objectives would have been. A good critic is so impassioned about his subject that he can persuade you to attend something you'd never have imagined you'd want to go to. A good critic is an entertaining read. A good critic is hard to find. Then again, to a certain degree good critics are no longer necessary to find. The phrase 'Everybody's a critic' has taken on a universal cast. The Internet encourages people to  share their opinions with the world. In the theater, the 'buzz' created by chat room chatters has become increasingly important to a show's reputation before it opens, and has actually affected some of the news-paper and magazine critics, who refer to the chatter in their opening- night reviews. The irony is that the Internet is in the process of killing off the critics' jobs."

I think of Broadway as having several fairly distinct periods.  Before Rodgers and Hammerstein, the American musical was primarily revues with a loose plot to introduce song or dance, mostly light musical fantasies and comedies without much serious meaning to simply amuse and entertain. R&H changed all this with the introduction of the "book" -- a play in which music, dance, and plot were all integrated.  And musicals became more serious, introducing themes that were largely ignored before. It became the most emulated form for the Broadway musical since.

But the fermentation of social change in the 60s and 70s brought a new period to Broadway.  Sondheim was part of that but so was the so called "rock musical" starting with Hair and Tommy, coming into full bloom with musicals by Andrew Lloyd Webber, beginning with contemporary rock pieces such as Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat and Jesus Christ Superstar, morphing into operetta type musicals such as The Phantom of the Opera.  Broadway came full circle with some of those works, operettas having flourished before Broadway's golden age.  Of those works, Sondheim says, "Rock and contemporary pop are not part of my DNA; worse, I find them unsatisfying when applied to the kind of musicals I like to write because of the limited range of their colors. Perhaps someday (maybe even by the time this book is published) someone will write a rock score that will have suppleness and variety, but the ones I've heard seem to me rhythmically and emotionally restricted, earnest to a fault and, above all, humorless except when they're being 'satirical' (that is, sarcastic). This lends them a pretension which rivals the British pop operas that briefly conquered the world during the 1990s."

 

Sondheim, meanwhile. blazed new trails, the "urban musical" such as Company, in addition to pushing musical limits in areas normally reserved for drama, Pacific Overtures, Sweeny Todd, Assassins, to name but a few.  He also sought vehicles for his love of panache and paying homage to those that made the Broadway theatre, most clearly celebrated in Follies. 

Who will now carry on the tradition of Broadway innovation?  Instead,  revivals seem to be sweeping contemporary theatre (maybe just a deficit of good stuff being written?).  They of course have their place.  It is the lifeblood of good regional theatre such as our own Dramaworks in nearby West Palm Beach.  Sondheim's thoughts on revivals? ".....I suspect that every writer who has had the pleasure of seeing his shows revived, whether on Broadway or in a community theater, has also suffered the chagrin of seeing it distorted almost beyond recognition-if it were truly unrecognizable, it would be a relief. The problem is that a great many directors, not just the academics or the amateurs, reconceive for the sake of reconception, usually in the name of "relevance" or of "fixing" the show's flaws. They want to be considered creators so desperately that they think nothing of rewriting the authors' work. Good directors shine a new light on a piece; the others shine a light on themselves."

Irreverent or outspoken?  Perhaps.  But, if Sondheim isn't entitled, who is? If you decide to read the book, read the "Epilogue" closely.  It reveals as much about the man as it does the artist.  He says that one would think writing songs for the theater, after so much experience, would become easier but "invention" does not.  In fact, "...it gets harder chiefly because you become-or should become-more aware of the pitfalls, especially the danger of repeating yourself. I find myself using the same chords and the same tropes over and over, and I fight against it; but when I lose the battle, I rationalize it as being a matter of style, my style, a style I've developed over the years, an identity as unchanging as my signature. And to a certain extent it is-but notas much as I tell myself it is."

And here is a man who knows he has climbed most of the mountains of his life, and is looking back, trying to bring it altogether and make some sense of the inexplicable and iniquitous process of aging. (Fitzgerald had it right with his short story "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button," but T.S. Eliot best summarized the process in his poem "Little Gidding" -- "Having rehearsed the bitter gifts reserved for age / the end of all our exploring / Will be to arrive where we started / And know the place for the first time.")

About this universal truth, Sondheim laments, "The diminution of energy and the fear of superannuation are unpleasant enough, but you learn to put up with the first and ignore the second; the loss of memory is worse, and dangerous. The thing that bothers me the most is not forgetting faces or names, but forgetting trivia. Having to search my dwindling gray cells for who directed 'The Sound of Music' upsets me a lot more than not recognizing the stranger who wanders up to me at a party and turns out to be someone I've known for thirty years and worked with half a dozen times. What's dangerous is that not remembering makes you think about remembering, which inevitably draws you into the past. As time goes on, I watch old movies and listen to old songs more and more; when asked my place of residence on a customs form, I always want to write 'The Past.' "

As an amateur pianist I have a special appreciation for the work of Sondheim.  He writes extensively about his lyrics, but his music, to me, is equally brilliant with a fondness for waltzes like Richard Rodgers had..  Some of his pieces are hard to play (for me) as the music is pared to almost recitative lyrics, with many notes to a measure.  His music is always a challenge but a joy to play and no doubt he will always be known as one of Broadway's finest.

I have so many favorites, but his short lived 1981 musical Merrily We Roll Along includes one of his most beautiful, fragile ballads, Not a Day Goes By and for this entry I include (albeit a somewhat flawed) "home video" of my playing the song.  It is a testimony of my great respect for Sondheim's music and what it has meant to my life. His lyrics best express how I feel....

"Not a day goes by,

Not a single day

But you're somewhere a part of my life

And it looks like you'll stay.

As the days go by"

Senseless to the Sublime

The last two nights make me think of Franz Kafka's The Hunger Artist, in which a famous fasting artist is on display in a circus menagerie, the crowds pushing past him to get to watch the lions stalk and feed. "He immediately got an earful from the shouting of the two steadily increasing groups, the ones who wanted to take their time looking at the hunger artist, not with any understanding but on a whim or from mere defiance—for him these ones were soon the more painful—and a second group of people whose only demand was to go straight to the animal stalls." It is a highly symbolic story of how artists sacrifice themselves for their art and the general public's ignorance of what great artistry demands and preference for sensational pursuits.

One of the reasons we live in this area of Florida is for the cultural diversity it has to offer. True, it does not have the advantages of a London or a New York in its breadth or consistently high quality, but knowing where to go can uncover some wonderful cultural events. Case in point, our favorite small theatre where we never miss a production, Palm Beach Dramaworks. But the largest theatre in the area is West Palm Beach's Kravis Center for the Performing Arts and we've seen some fine musical revivals there over the last several years, South Pacific standing out in my mind, and some special programs such as when Sondheim visited for an evening discussion of his works.
Admittedly, it was with some trepidation that we got tickets for the Kravis’ production of Beauty and the Beast but Ann had tried to see the Broadway version, liked some of the music, and never could get tickets so we were hoping that this touring production would at least be on par. Tuesday night we saw the opening and it was so dreadful that we left at intermission. This review gives some of the details although it is actually very restrained in its criticism.


It is a Disney dumb-down production presumably for the kiddies, with one dimensional slapstick characters, but, amazingly, most of the adult audience seemed to be laughing at the childish humor which at best rose to the level of a sitcom. The fact that a Beauty and the Beast could flourish for so long on the Great White Way says much about the public's taste in musicals. We should have known better!

The following evening we sought redemption, having long ago booked tickets for a series we have followed for years, Keyboard Conversations ® with Jeffrey Siegel at The Society of the Four Arts in Palm Beach. These are "unique concert-plus-commentary format in which he speaks to the audience about the music before performing each work" in their entirety. Wednesday night was one of the most demanding programs we've ever heard this highly-acclaimed American pianist perform, tackling three of the most difficult pieces written for the piano by Johann Sebastian Bach (Chromatic Fantasia and Fugue, BWV 903), Samuel Barber (Fugue from Piano Sonata, Op. 26), and Ludwig Van Beethoven (Sonata No. 23 in F minor, Op. 57 --- the "Appassionata). Mr. Siegel playfully calls the program "Three Great B's Bach, Beethoven and Barber" (the latter B normally reserved for Brahms, but this is the 100th birthday celebration of Barber, one of America's leading composers, a contemporary of Bernstein and Copeland). In addition he played two of Barber's "Excursions" which I had never heard and reminded me so much of some of Gershwin and Copeland.

The physicality of the performance was astounding. As I play the piano myself, I have a special appreciation for what Siegel accomplished last night, performing the entire program without sheet music, keeping up with the tremendous technical demands of these pieces. Indeed at the end of the night, when he conducted his traditional audience question and answer portion of the program, he seemed, justifiably, physically spent, perhaps like the artist in Kafka's story. But this audience was brought to a standing ovation in appreciation.


Antidote du jour.......

.

Literary Concord

Several years ago Ann cut out an article in the Palm Beach Post about Concord, Ma. and its rich literary and revolutionary war history. As we were visiting our son, Chris, in nearby Worcester, it was an ideal opportunity to push on to Concord for a couple of days, stay at a B&B (North Bridge Inn, highly recommended) and see for ourselves. We decided to concentrate on Concord’s literary history, and its place at the crossroads of Transcendentalism with Emerson as the center of that universe. To walk where Emerson, Thoreau, Alcott, and Hawthorne walked is awe-inspiring. They were all contemporaries, living near each other. This is indeed a sort of holy ground of American literary and intellectual history.

There is no better way to start such a trip than to visit the Concord Public Library, dedicated by Ralph Waldo Emerson when it opened in 1873. In this day of the Kindle and the iPad, it was refreshing to be in a traditional library, befitting the literary community which it is at the center. Inside one can find Daniel Chester French’s sculpture of Ralph Waldo Emerson. French’s tools were given to him by Louisa May Alcott.

In the Concord Museum Emerson’s study is perfectly preserved, moved there after there was a fire in the Emerson home.

The Old Manse was home at one time or another to both Hawthorne and Emerson. Here Nathaniel Hawthorne and his bride Sophia rented for three years beginning in 1842. While on tour, we were able to see the following etching in one of the window panes using Sophia’s diamond wedding ring:

Man's accidents are God's purposes. Sophia A. Hawthorne 1843
Nath Hawthorne This is his study
The smallest twig leans clear against the sky
Composed by my wife and written with her diamond
Inscribed by my husband at sunset, April 3, 1843. In the Gold light.

One can still see the smallest twig leaning “clear against the sky.” It would have been interesting to eavesdrop on conversations between Emerson and Hawthorne as Hawthorne was not a Transcendentalist. Henry David Thoreau (pronounced “Thorough” by the natives) is said to have planted the garden at the Old Manse as a wedding gift to the Hawthornes. The garden still blooms there. From the Old Manse Emerson’s grandfather witnessed the “shot heard around the world,” the opening volley of the American Revolution on the Old North Bridge.

The Old Manse also houses a 1864 Steinway piano and I was surprised when the docent invited anyone on the tour to try it. Most items on these house tours are of the “look-but-do-not-touch” nature. As no one volunteered I stepped forward to play a few bars of Memories by Andrew Lloyd Webber, my apologies to 19th century sensibilities. It was out of tune, but all keys functioned, more than 150 years after this piano was built.

This is how life was before the “conveniences” of modern life. Parlor games and music, plays written and performed by the residents, writing and philosophical discussions, and books read to the family by candlelight. (Hawthorne read the entire works of Sir Walter Scott to his children while living in Concord.)

The nearby Wayside is now a National Park property and tours of the home and the nearby North Bridge are conducted by Park Rangers. We were lucky enough to have had a private tour of this home. Louisa May Alcott spent her childhood there and many of the scenes from Little Women were set in her memory from that home. It is also the only home ever actually owned by Nathaniel Hawthorne who gave it the name, Wayside.

The tour of the Orchard House, where Louisa May Alcott actually wrote Little Women was inspired. The docent enacted several quotes from the novel, leaving one motivated not only to buy the book (once again) but others as well in the gift shop.

Alcott’s father, an educator who struggled to make ends meet, was an enlightened man, encouraging his daughters to learn, building a small desk for Louisa May (unheard of at the time), and having the pleasure of watching his daughter become one of the best selling author’s of her time, certainly making the family wealthy. That small, plain desk has been perfectly preserved. Father Alcott was devoted to Louisa May and she was devoted to him. Eerily, as the New York Times reported at the time in 1888, it is a noteworthy fact in connection with her life and death that Miss Alcott and her father were born on the same day of the month, and that they died within 24 hours of one another.

A couple years ago we had the pleasure of touring Emily Dickinson’s home in Amherst. She is probably my favorite poet. I wonder whether her relative isolation in Amherst, while the literary hotbed of New England was not far away in Concord, but far enough to remove her from that scene, might have contributed to the quiet loneliness of her poetry. I am not aware of Dickinson ever meeting the Concord group.

Sleepy Hollow Cemetery is now the resting place of the Alcotts, Thoreau, Hawthorne and Emerson, Thoreau’s grave just simply inscribed, “Henry.” I cannot visit such a graveyard without thinking of Emily Dickinson’s poem I Died For Beauty which I never forgot since reading it in college and in fact recited those words at Dickinson’s gravesite in Amherst:

I died for beauty but was scarce
Adjusted in the tomb,
When one who died for truth was lain
In an adjoining room.

He questioned softly why I failed?
"For beauty," I replied.
"And I for truth, the two are one;
We brethren are," he said.

And so, as kinsmen met a night,
We talked between the rooms,
Until the moss had reached our lips,
And covered up our name

Our wonderful tour of Concord was concluded by having dinner at the Walden Grill with my best friend from college, Bruce, and his wife, Bonnie, residents of nearby Sudbury, and both dedicated teachers of literature. Perhaps learning, teaching and literature are in the water of Concord, Ma. and its environs!

Copeland Davis

Remember that name, Copeland Davis.

Earlier in the year I was inspired to write about the Florida Sunshine Pops orchestra. And, I’ve written before about jazz performers who are in a class by themselves, both those who are well known and those who work mostly in local venues, performing mainly for the love of the Great American Songbook.

The other night we attended the first of the Florida Sunshine Pops concerts for the season, which was a tribute to Richard Hayman and the Boston Pops. Hayman was the principal arranger for the Boston Pops for some 30 years, and today at the age of 89 is still active as the conductor of the Florida Sunshine Pops. Also, as one of the original members of the Harmonica Rascals he can still play a mean harmonica! His arrangements of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer film scores are legendary.

This first concert of the season had a special guest performer, someone we’ve seen before, Copeland Davis, whose prodigious talents as a pianist inspired a standing ovation at the end of his first piece with the orchestra, Didn’t We? He brings a rare mix of gifts to the keyboard – first abounding warmth that shines through his presence on the stage, but, foremost, his ability to fuse blues, jazz, pop, and classical in one piece. I have seen some great jazz pianists and the only ones I remember having this ability are the late Oscar Peterson and Claude Bolling. At one point in his performance, in the middle of an arpeggio, Davis turned to the audience, slyly smiling, as if to say, “look, Ma, no hands!” I will go out on a limb and predict that Copeland Davis is destined to go way beyond the Florida market. Although his You Tube performances were not recorded under the best conditions, depriving him of the showcase he deserves, here is one I loved:

He jes' keeps rollin’ along

Last night we had the pleasure of seeing the last of the season’s Florida Sunshine Pops series of concerts at our nearby Eissey Campus Theatre. I’ve written about the Pops before and its gifted, octogenarian conductor, Richard Hayman.

This was a special concert devoted to Rodgers and Hammerstein, the undisputed Broadway innovators who, with Oklahoma!, changed everything about the Broadway musical. Their contributions to the Great American Songbook are legendary.

So yesterday’s concert was a “grand night for singing” and that is what makes this series so special: the level of the talent and professionalism that accompanies the orchestra. Last night’s featured performers were William Michaels, Lisa Vroman, and Stephen Buntrock all leading players on Broadway. They were joined by the Fort Lauderdale Gay Men's Chorus, giving a truly inspirational dimension to those particular songs that so readily lend themselves to choral accompaniment such as Climb Every Mountain or Oklahoma! (which we learned, last night, was written by Rodgers and Hammerstein in a half hour while the show was being previewed in New Haven).

Another highpoint was the Florida Pop’s rendition of the beautiful Carousel Waltz, no doubt orchestrated by the maestro himself, Richard Hayman. If it were not for Johann Strauss, Jr, I think Richard Rodgers would be known at the “waltz king” as so many of his greatest pieces were in three quarter tempo.

But for me, the solos by Michals, Vroman, and Buntrock, were especially remarkable, not only for the quality of their voices but as Broadway trained actors, by their ability to communicate the emotion of the song as they comport themselves on the stage.

Naturally, I had my favorites, Lisa Vroman has a Julie Andrews voice and in fact sung The Lonely Goatherd, the yodeling ditty so closely identified with Andrews from The Sound of Music.

William Michaels is currently appearing in the landmark revival South Pacific at Lincoln Center. His rich baritone voice lends itself to the role of Emile de Becque but last night he sang what some have called the greatest song from the American musical theatre, Ol’ Man River from Showboat (artistic license: music by Jerome Kern, but lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein). Hammerstein described it as “a song of resignation with protest implied.” Perhaps it is a song for our times and my piano rendition is here.

Then there was Stephen Buntrock’s rendition of Oh, What a Beautiful Mornin the opening song from Oklahoma!, sung by the cowboy, Curly. In fact, Buntrock recently appeared as Curly in the Broadway revival of Oklahoma! so he follows in the tradition of Alfred Drake, Howard Keel, and Gordon Macrae. It’s a delicate, beautiful song, an uncharacteristic opening song for a Broadway musical, but after all, this was the musical that established a new direction for the musical theatre, making the music intrinsic to the plot, driving character development. My piano rendition of Oh What a Beautiful Mornin can be heard here.

How His Heart Sung

My favorite gifts -- to give or to receive – are books and music. This past holiday Ann, and her best friend, Maria, who was visiting us from Sicily, gave me Peter Pettinger’s biography Bill Evans, How My Heart Sings (Paperback; Yale University Press, 2002) and a collection of sheet music and books on theory, including the Bill Evans Fake Book, transcribed and edited by Pascal Wetzel from Evans’ recordings. (A “fake book” gives the melody line and the basic chords, without arrangement, which the musician then has to improvise.)

Between the biography and the fake book I have a greater appreciation of Evans’ musical genius and can understand why he has been called the Chopin of jazz. I highly recommend the biography to anyone who has admired Evans, although you should be aware that as Pettinger was a concert pianist, the biography delves as much into the intricacies and structure of Evans’ music as it does his life.

His life was tragic as he began a heroin habit in an effort to “fit in” when he first played with Miles Davis’ group. This ultimately contributed to his early death at 51. But, oh, his music, the extent of which I was not fully aware until reading the biography and working on the fake book. His compositions are melancholy and ethereal, frequently changing keys and tempo, with unique chord voicings abandoning the root note. This leaves the listener with a feeling about the sound rather than a musical denotation, almost like comparing poetry to a short story. His classical training clearly comes through and one gets a sense of his Slavic heritage as well. As Evans said, “I have always hoped to visit Russia, to feel at first hand the roots of this part of myself.”

Before the gift of Bill Evans Fake Book I was already familiar with his well known “Peri’s Scope” and “Waltz for Debbie,” with the latter being part of my regular repertoire. Here is a wonderful video of Evans playing “Waltz for Debbie,” probably his best known composition: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dH3GSrCmzC8

Delving into the fake book I discovered other gems and my favorite piece now is “Bill’s Hit Tune,” which Evans described as having “a quality of a French movie theme if played slow.” A performance of the piece by Evans is also on You Tube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wuprXet5_YQ

Then there is “Comrade Conrad,” with its changing keys and alternating sections of 4/4 and 3/4 time. The soaring “Turn out the Stars” seems to evolve almost on its own accord and as abstract as it might be, it all makes sense. I think this piece reflects his deep classical roots and it might be his masterpiece. I also love his plaintive “Funny Man” and fragile “Time Remembered.”

“Letter to Evan” is one of the few Evans pieces for which he also wrote lyrics. I think of it as a tone poem, beautiful in its simplicity. It was written for his son’s 4th birthday; tragically Bill Evans would be dead only one year later. His son is a musician as well, writing for films. He wrote a poignant essay about his father on the 21st anniversary of his death: http://www.evanevans.org/mind.asp?ID=16

Finally, I love playing the mournful, haunting “We will Meet Again,” which Evans wrote soon after his beloved older brother, Harry, committed suicide. Richard Kimball, a pianist and composer with both classical and jazz backgrounds, skillfully performs an arrangement of that piece:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZiN5DsOdM38&feature=related

For the amateur pianist, playing Evans’ work and trying to understand the structure of the music can be intimidating. I take encouragement from Evans’ own definition of jazz: “It’s performing without any really set basis for the lines and the content as such emotionally or, specifically, musically. And to me anybody that makes music using the process that we are used to using in jazz, is playing jazz.” So, I’ll keep trying to play jazz, “music of the moment” as defined by Evans, and hopefully learning with the inspiration of these two gifts, Pettinger’s biography and Wetzel’s transcriptions of Evans’ music.

Before Consciousness

I was born prematurely and my mother spent ten days in the hospital. The bill she saved from Mary Immaculate Hospital in Jamaica, New York shows $85.00 for her room, $15.00 for the delivery room, $5.00 for laboratory fees, and 25 cents for “special medicine.” Dr. Siner’s bill for “confinement, prenatal and postnatal care” was $125.00, so it cost $230.25 to bring me into this world. This was 1942 when a new car was less than $1,000 and a gallon of gasoline was 15 cents.

It’s difficult to write with enthusiasm about something you’d like to forget. But a lot of life is about stupid choices and my high school years in particular seemed to have an abundance of those. I was a product of New York City schools, Public School 90 and Richmond Hill High School.

My early schooling was unexceptional and without much merit. My kindergarten report card revealed more about the times than me. I had high marks for posture and satisfactory ratings for cleanliness, and the ability to use a handkerchief and covering my mouth when coughing. I also displayed good working habits, showing improvement in the ability to express myself and to speak clearly. Unfortunately, I needed improvement in the ability to dress alone.

Going to and from school, walking along 107th Street to Jamaica Avenue and onto Public School 90 were social events, gathering friends for the hike. We talked mostly about vacations and the upcoming summer, plans of playing ball until dark, roaming the neighborhood on our bikes, or watching Captain Video and His Video Rangers and Hopalong Cassidy on our recently acquired DuMont TV.

For me, excelling at baseball and its variants, punch ball, stickball and stoopball, became a priority to compensate for being one of the younger kids in the neighborhood and being smaller. I learned to throw hard and accurately, throwing a baseball with my older, next-door friend, Skip, who settled behind a manhole, which became home plate. Put a rubber Spalding in my hand and I would whip it against the garage doors on 107th and Atlantic Avenue, side arm, overhead, fastball, curve or screwball, or throw it at the right angle on a stoop step for a home run.

During the first few years of schooling my most difficult “subject” was penmanship. I was one of the first generations where they no longer forced left-handers to become right-handers. Instead, we sat at right-handers’ desks but were nonetheless expected to produce perfect cursive handwriting. This problem came to a head when I nearly flunked the 5th grade because of my handwriting, but my Plaster of Paris rendition of a Mississippi river boat won awards, redemption, and allowed me to pass into the 6th grade.

One part of the summers I looked forward to was our annual two-week rental of a cottage in Sag Harbor, usually during the end of August. Mysteriously, the clouds of family conflict would clear briefly for that event and we would spend the days on Peconic Bay. There was a food shack on the beach, where we would get a frank or hamburger with salty French fries bathed in ketchup, listening to Teresa Brewer belting out “I don't want a ricochet romance, I don't want a ricochet love” on the jute box. It was in Sag Harbor where I developed a love of boating, renting a rowboat with a small Johnson outboard engine. It was also where I went through my first hurricane when Hurricane Carol in 1954 drove water into the first floor of our rental, blocks from the Bay.

I give my mother credit for buying a piano and insisting that I take lessons. I did so reluctantly and practiced as little as possible and after two years of occasional classical lessons, I was allowed to quit. A few years later, I voluntarily took guitar lessons hoping that some of Elvis’ charisma would magically materialize through me. When that did not happen, I quit those lessons too but that paved the way for learning what, at the time, was called “popular” piano – playing by improvising chords. To this day, piano is very much part of my life.

While posture, politeness and penmanship may have been the most admired childhood attributes of the post WW II era, McCarthyism, the Korean War, and the constant shadow of nuclear war with Russia lurked in the background. Frequent air raid drills disrupted our days, having to hibernate under our desks while shades were drawn, presumably to shield from the light and fallout of a nuclear blast. While this “protection” was preposterous, one has to wonder how those drills psychologically impacted our generation.

My graduation from the 8th grade and my choice of Latin as my foreign language put me directly into Richmond Hill High School instead of the “Annex” where most freshman went. I would have been better off staying with my class plus at that time we moved to another home in Richmond Hill, near Kew Gardens, leaving my neighborhood friends.

Unfortunately, I squandered the first few high school years mostly because fleeing my house was my highest priority -- anything to escape the litany of strife between my parents. In another era, my parents would have divorced, but instead they stayed together and were at constant war, with the fallout on my sister and myself.

My poor mother; she never really understood her self-imposed prison of a marriage. She was racked with guilt and rage, constantly trying to “justify” herself in the eyes of my sister and myself. Who was “right” and who was at “fault” obsessed her (and, in a more passive way, my father as well). Her letter to me, written soon after I graduated from college, shows her ongoing misery. It is a deeply sorrowful letter, but I share it below as it ties together much of my youth.

My solution was to disappear, onto the subways of New York, into sports, to my neighbors, out on the streets, or setting pins at the bowling alley of a local men’s club. I finally fell in with the “wrong crowd” – a group of kids who were hell bent on destroying their lives in some way.

One of them, Paul, was my best friend during my early high school years. He was a rebel with a James Dean aura. In later life Paul became a psychedelic artist. His road to that distinction was paved when he first learned to carve simple tattoos into himself using India Ink, graduating to having professional tattoos injected all over his body. He and I would go off to a Coney Island tattoo parlor on the subway for those. For some reason, I hesitated doing the same (probably because it was painful). When I read John Irving's haunting and enigmatic Until I Find You I couldn’t help but think of Paul.

We were members of a small “gang” along with Livio and John. Livio’s parents had a small shed in the back of their house, which we turned into a clubhouse. There we smoked, drank and did other stuff our parents would disapprove of; when we finally got caught we built an underground clubhouse in Forest Park, near the railroad tracks where we could hide and continue our antics.

It wasn’t until Paul’s tattoos were “discovered” by his parents (they were under his clothes, never exposed) and John got into trouble with the law that the clubhouse started to disintegrate. Finally, as a junior in high school, I was free of that influence.

Luckily for me, a “new kid” on the block moved in around the corner at about that time. Ed did not go to my school but instead commuted to Brooklyn Tech. His family had cultural values that were new to me. Whereas most of my generation worshiped Elvis and the like, Ed was into Frank Sinatra and jazz. I’ll never forget the first time I heard his recording of Ahmad Jamal at the Pershing playing But Not for Me. I called him “Ed Cool.”

I grew up in a household where most of the books were the Reader’s Digest condensed version, along with a collection of zither music on vinyl 78s. We never went to the theatre but instead watched TV, Milton Berle’s Texaco Star Theater, Sid Caesar's Show of Shows, and The Ed Sullivan Show. So, I found my own voice and cultural interests through others. In fact, having now escaped my “clubhouse” friends, I befriended neighborhood kids who excelled at school, Ed, Bud, and Ken, and adopted their families.

Bud lived immediately next door and we played on the same church basketball team. We also threw a baseball until dark during summer days, or we would shoot hoops at the backboard over his garage door. He was one grade ahead of me, and he was allowed to drive his father’s T-bird. That opened new geographic as well as social vistas. Bud and sports had a steadying influence at the time.

Ken was an honors student who lived in an apartment house up the street. We watched Sputnik on his rooftop and shared the sense of wonder that accompanied that feat. Little did we realize at the time how much that would change our lives.

By my senior year, I made honor classes in literature and economics (still, may favorite interests). For the first time I also became active in high school activities, becoming one of the school yearbook photographers, using the same Speed Graphic camera my father had during the war. With that camera I prowled the halls like a professional journalist. I began to date and finally had a social life. Judy and I danced to the Theme from Summer Place.

Unfortunately, by this time my three somnambulistic years of high school resulted in a mediocre scholastic average. That, combined with my parents parochial outlook towards schooling left me with few choices for college.

In fact, the “plan” was not to go to college at all. After all, no one from my family other than my Uncle had gone past high school. My father favored my going into the army to learn more about photography so he could ultimately pass on the family photography business (see: http://lacunaemusing.blogspot.com/2007/11/literature-and-family.html).

The 1960 Archway yearbook entry reveals much about my limited outlook: “Bob, a member of the Union Cong. Basketball team…most pleasant experience will be graduating…holder of 2 attendance certificates…favorites – H.G. Wells, Yankees, English, all sports…hopes to become photographer. Next stop: Army”

Nonetheless, at the twelfth hour I convinced my father that if I went to college, I could still learn what I needed about photography on the job (as I did during my many years of working with him during the summers). Between my grades, my parents’ reluctance to send me out of state, and my late application, I was accepted on probation as a business major (from which I switched to psychology and eventually literature) at Long Island University in Brooklyn. I commuted there for my first year by subway, worked during the summers, and used my earnings to finally move into the dormitory the second year. That began a new chapter in my life.


October 21, 1964

Dear Bob,

Last night’s conversation with your Father gives me an opportunity to finally explain something to you.

I hope you are aware of his everyday twisting, exaggerations and distortion of every subject and everybody. I hope you are aware, as you saw last night, that he always needs a defender when he has a family discussion or fight. I was put on that telephone last night to back him up; if you recall, you or your sister were always called for help when we had a discussion or fight.

I realized after getting on the phone that I should not have, because I was the one who always ended up having a fight with either you or your sister when I never started it.

I realized after getting on the phone and the recalling of the fact that he did forbid you to continue with the club, and you, of your own effort did so, but later thanked him for having the interest to forbid you.

Your Father’s remembrance of the smoke filled room took place when he helped you boys move the radio and phonograph combo down to the club, but since he is so prone to distortion and exaggeration, this vision exists in his mind as the day, HE flew bodily down to the club and broke it up to teensy weensy bits, took you bodily out and closed up the shack like a GI catching the Gestapo. Pray tell I’ve heard the story enough.

I silently gave you the credit and was happy your Father took the initiative.

I know you don’t want to go further but I hope you read further; I should once in my lifetime be able to explain how his behavior has affected us all.

Your Father has been a good provider and doesn’t spend on “wine women and song.” A lot of men are good providers. But I am reminded daily of this day in and day out.

Do you remember when you children would say to me, “Oh Mommy this cake or cookies or dinner is delicious” and was reminded by him that if it wasn’t for the money he gave me, you wouldn’t have the cookies. The attention then focused upon him – oh isn’t Daddy wonderful, completely pushed me out of the picture and no one gave a damn how many hours it took to make this treat.

When I brought clothes for you children – and I did buy you nice things once – and wanted to display them to your Father at night, and have you go over the thrill of owning them – we were reminded again that if it wasn’t for the money he gave me, you wouldn’t have the clothes.

Your teeth were fixed because he gave you the money; not because I faithfully every six months took you both there. I worked at being a Mother. That WAS my job.

The birthday parties, the Christmas parties and all the other things I did to the best of my ability only existed because your Father gave me money. Little can you Father see that no matter what, I would have given these things even without his money.

Little by little I began to withdraw from doing the things I loved to do. I baked less, I shopped less, I took less interest in the type of clothes I bought for you both. I wouldn’t show them to him. It gets to a point when you get no credit, you don’t give an ounce of care.

When I screamed for credit I was told, “who are you”.

I was brainwashed into “who are you”. Confusion reigned until I realized I didn’t even have the respect or love of my children.

Confusion reigned until I didn’t know how to chose friends anymore. No matter who they were, good, bad or indifferent, they were bums. I was even called a bum by one of my kids.

Perhaps you don’t recall during your high school days you were brainwashed with “who are you” and “what the hell do you know.” You can’t convince me that your high school work suffered from lack of brains; it only suffered from your feeling of nothingness pounded into you by the same brainwashing I received.

We start on your sister now. “Who are you and what the hell do you know,” was her daily message too.

I lost my ability to fight anymore and tried escaping listening to “who are we”.

You rose above all this garbage and did a great job at college. Your Father will take credit for that too. I only hope your sister will do it too. I know she will.

Love, Mom