Showing posts with label Sondheim. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Sondheim. Show all posts

Saturday, June 17, 2017

Sondheim Side by Side with Cecil and Mays



My favorite bass player, David Einhorn, knowing my love of Sondheim, gifted me Our Time, Tommy Cecil and Bill Mays’ incredible jazz interpretation of Sondheim’s work.  As it is indicated as “Volume 2” I was able to find their first CD of Sondheim’s music, appropriately called Side by Side.  I don’t think I’ve ever written a “plug” for anything in this space, but I make an exception for these two CDs. (Amazon carries both.)

Tommy Cecil and Bill Mays

They take the beautiful and frequently complex music of Sondheim to another level (although some of the pieces Sondheim was only the lyricist), probably the most unique jazz pieces I’ve ever heard.  It is an equal partnership between a gifted bassist and pianist.  We’ve seen Bill Mays at the Colony on Palm Beach, intended to go back this year, but learned that the Colony had cancelled his brunch gigs on Sunday, probably due to financial considerations.  He is perhaps one of the best jazz pianists at work today.

No drummer is necessary for this pair. In fact a drummer would interfere with their accomplishment, a unique collaboration of two gifted musicians, their voicing and rhythm just perfect.

Before these two CDs I had collected a series of Sondheim jazz albums by the Terry Trotter Trio, the only such authorized renditions by the great man himself, Stephen Sondheim.  I listen to them frequently but now I’m fixated on the innovative work of Cecil and Mays. Here are the tracks from the two CDs:

Side By Side (Sondheim Duos)

1 Something's Coming 7:09
2 Not While I'm Around 6:25
3 Broadway Baby 8:00
4 Every Day a Little Death 6:10
5 Ballad of Sweeney Todd 4:50
6 Small World 6:52
7 Side By Side By Side 5:27
8 Anyone Can Whistle 6:28
9 Comedy Tonight 7:06


Our Time (Sondheim Duos 2)

1 Everybody Says Don't  5:33
2 Johanna 3:44
3 Our Time5:59  
4 Moments in the Woods 6:09
5 Finishing the Hat 4:48
6 The Miller's Son 5:55  
7 Losing My Mind 4:19
8 The Best Thing That Has Ever Happened 5:44
9 Agony 6:05
10 Being Alive 5:44
11 Rich and Happy 6:08

Saturday, April 8, 2017

There IS Something About A War!



From the cocoon of craziness, a Presidential butterfly has emerged.  It took just one look at “those beautiful babies” for Donald Trump to extol his virtue of “flexibility,” and do what he condemned his predecessor for even contemplating, a direct strike in Syria without Congressional approval.  It was the perfect confluence of opportunity, being able to engage in a low risk strike to deliver a long overdue message to Assad, throwing raw meat to the public thereby looking Presidential to prop up his approval ratings, while burying the Russian election tamping (and Trump’s possible connection) to the back pages of the Internet. A trifecta of fortuity!

Yes, there is nothing like a war.  Even Brian Williams was waxing poetically on MSNBC “we see these beautiful pictures at night from the decks of these two U.S. Navy vessels in the eastern Mediterranean, “I am tempted to quote the great Leonard Cohen: ‘I am guided by the beauty of our weapons.’” 

Oh, the thrill of launched Tomahawks, beautiful to behold!  Stephen Sondheim’s priceless pasquinade “There’s Something about a War” (from A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum) says it all. The complete lyrics can be heard in this YouTube link but here is just a small excerpt to make the point. 
….
There’s something about a war.
Something about a war
Something about a war
That makes this little old world all right.
A warrior’s work is never done.
He never can get a rest.
There always are lands to overrun
And people to be oppressed.

There’s always a town to pillage
A city to be laid waste.
There’s always a little village
Entirely to be erased.

And citadels to sack, of course,
And temples to attack, of course.
Children to annihilate,
Priestesses to violate…..

Or maybe some of the Village People’s Macho Man lyrics are appropriate in this instance:


You can best believe that he's a macho man
He's the special god son in anybody's land
hey, hey, hey, hey, hey

Macho, macho man
I gotta be a macho man
Macho macho man


Yes let’s all get into the spirit of it.  Not that the Pentagon’s decision (with Trump’s approval) to send the message was the wrong one; something finally had to be done in response to the reported use of chemical weapons, but to get caught up in this one action without having an end game or more importantly a compassionate plan for Syrian refugees, is typical of this chaotic administration. 

Obama tried to involve Congress in the decision to intervene in Syria but the very people now sagely approving the recent attack would not give Obama authority.  Obama, in retrospect, should have just made a preemptive strike without bothering with the Constitution.  He was damned either way.  Trump was already tweeting back in 2013 “The President must get Congressional approval before attacking Syria-big mistake if he does not!”  Or the one which is even more telling is from 2012: “Now that Obama’s poll numbers are in tailspin – watch for him to launch a strike in Libya or Iran. He is desperate.” 

Who’s desperate now? But as we have been conditioned, no real push back on any of this.  He’s flexible! It’s okay!  There is nothing like a war!

Maybe if Trump is constantly exposed to pictures of Syrian children he will reverse his anti-refugee policy, so antithetical to what this nation stands for.  As one Syrian refugee put it:  Who gets to pick their country?

While hiding behind the shield of being a humanitarian, Trump has flexed his “strong man” muscle, even to the delight of some of his naysayers who have been calling him crazy.  One can only hope that he continues to listen to the professionals in the National Security Council.  Give him credit for removing Bannon from the NSC.  One has to be grateful for morsels of sanity.

Saturday, March 25, 2017

Vicki Lewis Triumphs in Gypsy at the Maltz Jupiter Theatre



We all know the story and most have seen both the play and the movie Gypsy about the struggle of an obsessed stage mother driving her youngest daughter's rise to fame during the fading years of vaudeville.  For me, there were three reasons to see this show yet again: the music of Jule Styne, the lyrics of Stephen Sondheim, and the character driven roles created by Arthur Laurents who mined the memoirs of Gypsy Rose Lee when creating the story.

Even with these attributes, how does one breathe new life into the well known story?  There is of course the Maltz theatre’s reliable skill of handling musicals, but in the case of this Gypsy there is also the powerhouse of a performer, Vicki Lewis, who plays Rose on steroids.  Her portrayal alone is worth revisiting Gypsy, along with an exceptional supporting cast.  But when Lewis is on stage, she is a force of nature, self deluded by her unrealistic ambition for her daughters, only to rise out of the ashes of self destruction with the colossal closing number “Rose’s Turn.”  On the other hand she keeps the audience feeling distressed by her constant manipulations only to have our hearts go out to her, again and again. 

Celebrated stage, screen and television actress Vicki Lewis stars as Rose
This is a woman with many losses in her life, her own mother and several husbands, then June, the daughter she grooms for stardom, played with wide-eyed innocence by Jillian Van Niel, and then the man who stood by her, Herbie, flawlessly performed by John Scherer (seen previously at the Theatre in La Cage aux Folles, Annie and They're Playing Our Song, as well as on Broadway).  Ultimately, we grieve as much for Herbie, another casualty of Rose’s delusions.

Emma Stratton stars as Louise (Gypsy Rose Lee)
We watch the transformation of talented Emma Stratton as Louise (whose national tour credits include Bullets Over Broadway and Anything Goes), from the ungraceful neglected child into the great Gypsy Rose Lee, an accident of Herbie booking the troupe at a burlesque theater.  There we meet three of the most unlikely caricatures of burlesque performers, who belt out one of my favorite songs, so typical Sondheim in its word play, “You Gotta Get a Gimmick.”

There are so many people to mention, but a special call out to Brett Thiele who plays Tulsa, whose dance and song solo with Louise looking on in an alley behind a theatre is reminiscent of a Gene Kelly routine, singing one of my other favorites, “All I Need is the Girl.”  It is at this moment that a “performance gene” is awakened in Louise, not to mention the spark of love.  But Tulsa eventually takes June for his own now leaving Rose with her overlooked daughter, Louise, a new project to mold into stardom.

Marcia Milgrom Dodge, whose work on revivals, new musicals, and plays has been seen throughout the world, directed and choreographed the Maltz production.  There is a very effective, moving scene where Rose’s troupe of child performers meld into adults in an instant, still singing and performing the same old routines.  Be prepared to be wowed by the conceit.  She said the following about Gypsy: “I’m drawn to stories that illuminate the human condition: stories about families; flawed characters with strong ambitions and giant dreams.”  And, indeed, that is what the show is all about.

Gypsy is the show where Sondheim felt he finally came into his own and experienced a liberating freedom in writing the lyrics.  He further acknowledged that the music by Jule Styne “supplied the atmosphere of both the milieu and of the musical theatre itself.”  It was one of the last musicals for which Sondheim was merely the lyricist but you get the sense he was learning the musical treatment from a master, saying “Jule’s score was redolent of not only vaudeville and burlesque but of the old fashioned, straightforward, character-driven musical play…of which Gypsy was one of the last examples and probably the best.”

The list of memorable songs is endless from this musical.  In addition to the ones I already mentioned, “Let Me Entertain You.” “Some People,” “Small World,” “You’ll Never Get Away from Me,” “If Momma Was Married” (another personal favorite, so vintage Sondheim), “Everything is Coming Up Roses,” and “Let Me Entertain You,” plus others!

Although frequently performed, and indelibly etched in our memories from the film, here is a refreshing revisit, made particularly memorable by Vicki Lewis’ performance.  The show is playing at the Maltz Jupiter Theatre until April 9.


Pictured from left to right: Atsuhisa Shinomiya, Johnson Brock, Neville Braithwaite, Steve Carroll, Vicki Lewis (above), Jillian Van Niel (below), John Scherer and Bret Thiele. All stage photos by Alicia Donelan