6 Days in NYC

 

Sometime in March we learned that Stacey Kent, to us one of the premier Great American Songbook and Jazz singers, was going to appear at Birdland this June.  Kent now performs mostly in Europe.  We saw her ages ago when she made a rare appearance at the Colony Hotel in Palm Beach.  There we witnessed her genius, her unique phrasing, putting her on the same pedestal that we would place Sinatra, although Kent is considered a jazz performer.  They both know how to sell a song.

 

Her New York City booking was the motivation for us to say to heck with the risks of traveling nowadays, go to NYC and kick off a heady cultural visit joining our son, Jonathan, and his wife, Tracie, for that first night at Birdland.  We would also see their new Upper West Side apartment for the first time, and then squeeze in as much theatre and museums as we could.  We booked our go to place, a hotel where we’ve stayed before with its location between Broadway and 7^th on West 54^th street ideal for making our destinations walkable, weather and our golden-ager bodies permitting.

 

So, in March we booked everything, using Delta miles that have been stagnating since the pandemic.  We were set but knowing the trip might still present hurdles.

 

As our departure date approached, our anxiety rose.  Delta had been routinely cancelling our flight.  We tried to book alternative flights on Jet Blue, an airline we once loved.  Everything is now an extra charge and we no longer feel that cozy relationship.  Their web site is designed to make you panic:  “Only 3 seats left at this price; you must book now!!!”  So rather than alternative bookings, we decided to stick with our Delta reservations and hope for the best.

 

We’re glad we did as they finally got the necessary equipment and crew back online for our flight, and that went off without a hitch, our neighbor Joe even volunteering to be our Uber to the airport, a generous gesture knowing the anxiety we had been experiencing with this flight and travel in general.

 

So off we went, to be met by our “kids” at LGA, the new Terminal C a few football fields long.  Getting into their car, we learned that the Stacey Kent concert had been cancelled.  COVID.  Between that awful word, supply chain issues, inflation, and political chaos, it does feel like Agamemnon. 

 

 

Visiting our kids’ apartment, overlooking the Hudson, with a lovely rooftop dining and sitting area, was a highpoint.  If they only had a 2^nd bedroom!  But they moved, as we did, during the pandemic and it was catch as catch can.  We’ll be staying there later in the summer when they are away, so it all works out and we are grateful.

 

 

We were able to share a couple of lunches on their rooftop, sandwiches from a very West Side take out restaurant, Sherry Herring, specializing in serving fish on baguettes.  And from there, I walked almost five miles throughout my Upper West Side past (Ann decided to head back to the hotel), visiting my old brownstone apartment at 66 West 85^th street, the corners of 85th and Columbus now populated by three different restaurants, including one where we had brunch a few days later called “Good Enough to Eat”-- typical West Side in name and food faire.

 

 

My enthusiasm for my walk was not only heightened by observing the effects of the passing of 50 plus years since I’ve lived there, but also included intense people watching, walking their dogs on Central Park West, the doormen chatting about the Yanks and the Mets, and the multitude of construction workers, seemingly endless construction, mostly refacing brownstones and apartments. 

 

 

 

Only on the West Side would one come across a café which tolerates humans unaccompanied by dogs, but they can’t use the main entrance.  Given the way I feel about politics now, I root for the dogs.

 

I walked back past where we were married, the Ethical Culture Society, on the very same day Sondheim’s Company opened (a future blog entry will be devoted to him and that coincidence), and then finally past Ann’s old apartment, the one bedroom at 33 West 63^rd Street which now stands dwarfed by huge high rises.  Ann remembers Lincoln Center being built when she first moved into that rent-controlled apartment (two windows on right side, second floor). And then back to our hotel on 54^th Street to get ready for the balance of the week, museums and theatre and a cabaret performance. 

 

It was becoming an intense week.  I loathe traveling anymore especially in this rage ridden society onto which you can pile the incredible expense even to get a small bag of tissues.  NYC was reminding me again of the 70s, garbage all over the place (walking along one street I thought I spied a squirrel walking beside me but it was a big rat), some homeless living on cardboards with their shopping carts.  But we soldiered on.

 

 

Matisse’s The Red Studio exhibit at The Museum of Modern Art was a must see.  The New Yorker praised the exhibit as follows: “The exhibition surrounds a rendering of the French artist’s atelier, with most of the eleven earlier works of his (paintings, sculptures, a ceramic plate) that in freehand copy, pepper the canvas’s uniform ground of potent Venetian red.”  

 

 

I also strongly responded to one of his rare depictions of the male figure, Young Sailor, a teenage fisherman in a coastal town where Matisse frequently stayed. 

 

And as this photograph of him illustrates, he liked dogs too, just like New Yorkers!

 

We visited other parts of MOMA, always calming, inspiring moments in our lives.  I love just relaxing in their courtyard and enjoying the juxtaposition of it as an oasis in this great city.

 

Next, we went to the American Museum of Natural History, where a week would hardly plumb the depths of its collections.  I remember going through it as a child and some of the original dioramas seem to be unchanged.

 

But that was not our reason for visiting.  We were there for the impressive gem exhibit:

“The Mignone Halls of Gems and Minerals tell the fascinating story of how the vast diversity of mineral species arose on our planet, how scientists classify and study them, and how we use them for personal adornment, tools, and technology. The galleries feature more than 5,000 specimens from 98 countries. “

 

The following day began our theatre excursions, seeing POTUS: Or, Behind Every Great Dumbass are Seven Women Trying to Keep Him Alive, then A Strange Loop, and finally, Tracy Letts’ The Minutes.   

 

 

When we originally booked these shows, we thought POTUS’ hilarity would put us in a good mood, but it was like an extended Saturday Night Live skit with stars, the audience roaring when they first appear on stage.  Everything was over the top, the incidental music so loud Ann had to turn her hearing aids way down while I suffered.  Even the lighting and the revolving stage overwhelmed the senses, and the air conditioning must have been set at 55 degrees.  The humor consisted of 5^th grade potty talk which was not funny to us.  No sense in saying more as the play’s subtitle describes it all, Behind Every Great Dumbass are Seven Women Trying to Keep Him Alive.  A dumbass President; we wondered who that might be.

 

Next on the docket was another one we booked long before the Tonys.  We had seen Hamilton on Broadway when it first opened, and we had hoped that similarly A Strange Loop would push the Broadway boundary further.  We wanted to be part of it.  It did, but not in the sense that Hamilton succeeded in marking a real evolution in American theatre.  We also had second thoughts about A Strange Loop after seeing their musical number at the 75^th Tony Awards on TV (winning not only the Best Musical at the Tonys but the Pulitzer Prize for Drama before going to Broadway as well).  Why allow that one selection to dampen our enthusiasm?  

 

When we arrived at the theater we learned that the lead, Usher, was to be played by an understudy, Kyle Ramar Freeman.  This did not turn out to be a deterrent, but a bonus.  I think an understudy has to take advantage of those moments and he did.  He gave a memorable performance.

 

Unfortunately, A Strange Loop --to me at least -- is not in the class of most former Tony winners.  I get it though, the struggle of the artist to emerge in a society which throws so many slings and arrows at him, from his home life to his shame about his sexual orientation, his weight, his being black.  It never failed to be interesting and it was one of those performances where the mostly gay audience was giving back as much energy as it got.  There is one somewhat explicit sex scene, but, hey, we’re New Yorkers at heart and it was not disturbing.  And no pun intended, it is the climax of the show and Usher comes to the realization that he must live his life, not the one that he has been imagining to please others.

 

There were no real dance numbers, although Usher’s neuroses and self-doubt characters moved and sang with gusto and they were well choreographed; while the music was good, it was not memorable.  Nonetheless, the 100 intermission-less minutes flew by.  We’re glad we saw it as we’ve seen the arc of Broadway from the days of Rodgers and Hammerstein, to the emergence of Hair, to Sondheim, onto Hamilton, and now the next iteration in musical theatre history. 

 

We came out that theatre on 45^th between Broadway and 6^th Avenue in a light rain.  Forget an Uber or a cab and although the most direct route to walk back to our hotel was via Broadway, we opted for 6^th Avenue as the throngs of people on Broadway or 7^th Avenue were staggering.  Figured if there was any chance of making it uptown via cab, it would be 6^th Avenue as well, although that pipedream dissolved with the increasing drizzle. Wise that we packed a couple of light umbrellas.

 

The best of our Broadway selections was the next night, Tracy Letts’ The Minutes, right next door to where we were going the following night, Feinstein’s.  I’m anxious to read this play as there is so much meaningful content.  The town of “Big Cherry” in The Minutes is a metaphor for our sick society and political system, a comedy which becomes darker and darker, satisfying every misanthropic fiber of my being, knowing where this once great nation is going, now being led by the Trump-anointed SCOTUS. (No direct mention of any of this in the play.) 

 

The Minutes moves from a town hall meeting to the enactment of a myth the “leaders” of the town hold dear in their hearts.  Towards the denouement the play ascends to the participation in a ritual, one our violent society holds sacred.  It is performed to indoctrinate one individual into the belief system of the group.  Big Cherry could be anywhere USA, but I would like to think it is in New Jersey, such as Excelsior in Thornton Wilder’s The Skin of Our Teeth.  One can draw comparisons.  Both plays have archetypal characters where the sweep of history is played out.

 

Ironically, while we saw this play, SCOTUS was about to announce rolling back Roe vs. Wade and also finding a long-standing NY State law against carrying hidden weapons invalid, denying our “precious” 2^nd Amendment “rights.”  Can you imagine the inevitable open carrying of weapons in a city of 18 million?  Looser gun laws beget more gun sales which beget looser gun laws, a strange loop indeed.  And gay rights will be the next to fall as SCOTUS seems to be implying that State laws take precedence over the Constitution.

 

The Minutes can be viewed through this lens.  Five of the eleven characters were played by understudies, Tracy Letts and Blair Brown not making appearances, perhaps some felled by COVID.  Still, that did not spoil the performance.  I started to sob at the end for what we’ve become.  This play, although it did not win the Pulitzer or the Tony for Drama, will endure.  It is Letts’ profound cautionary tale about our times and encroaching fascism.

 

 

Pretending that all is OK with the world was the only way we could totally enjoy our final night, a special appearance by Brian Stokes Mitchell at Feinstein’s/54 Below.  This was dinner and a two-hour performance by one of the great baritones of Broadway theatre, one who can not only sing, but entertain the audience, who introduced the music as only one so intimate with the selections can do.  

 

 

The show was an eclectic Broadway selection of iconic songs, including some Sondheim.  But as he originated the role of Coalhouse Walker Jr., in the musical Ragtime, for which he received a 1998 Tony Award nomination for Best Actor in a Musical, he sang the inspired “Wheels of a Dream” to rousing effect.  The highlight of the evening was his powerful rendition of “The Impossible Dream” from Man of La Mancha.  He had played Don Quixote in a Broadway revival.  During the early months of the pandemic, he sang this from the window of his apartment overlooking Broadway to honor the first responders, the health workers.  Each day a crowd would gather below to urge him on, so many people in fact that he was finally asked to cease his performances for safety reasons. 

 

He asked whether there were any first responders or health workers in our audience, and I pointed towards our daughter in law, Tracie, who is a Doctor, who drove to her hospital every day when most of us were ensconced in our homes, and let’s face it, no one fully understood the risks.  N95 masks and hospital gear was their only protection, and we were so happy that Mitchell acknowledged her presence and frequently looked at her while he sung this exceedingly moving song.

 

So on Saturday morning our “kids” picked us up early at the hotel and we were off to LGA for the return home.  The new Terminal C is all smart phone territory.  Forget about eating unless you can download the menu and pay using your virtual wallet.  Although we’re fairly Internet savvy, it took the small village of the two tables on either side of us with people who could have been our grandchildren to help us out.  Turns out both were on their way to Asheville, one for a wedding and one to see her brother, both first-timers in Asheville so we were able to fill them in on the “must” things to do there.  I would like to believe there is a fundamental goodness which will finally prevail.  This little incident at the airport reinforced that hope, but the rest of the news is dreadful. 

 

We did it all in NYC in six days, other than catching a Yankees game.  Maybe next time!

 

 

Under the Radar

When we think of the great body of work which constitutes the Great American Songbook, there is a tendency to forget the great composers who never wrote a Broadway show but whose songs are as much part of our musical heritage.  I’m reminded of this while reading William Zinsser’s Easy to Remember; The Great American Songwriters and Their Songs.  Perhaps I’ll have more to say on the book when I’m finished.  Yet, I will say that the book, for me at least, is fascinating, as Zinsser’s passion for the music is evident on every page, it’s encyclopedic, and finally, he frequently discusses the songs’ construction, both musically and lyrically.  This is my kind of tribute to the music I love.

And, yet, there are omissions.  A composer such as Henry Mancini gets but a passing mention, only because of working with the “vernacular poet” of lyricism, Johnny Mercer, on the song “Moon River.”  But a glaring total omission is the work of Johnny Mandel, perhaps not a household name, unless you hear one of his songs which you would swear was written by someone else.  His oeuvre is not extensive, but he’s written a wide range of idiosyncratic songs and teamed up with some interesting lyricists.  He has, most notably, worked extensively as an arranger for well known singers of his time as well as playing with some of the big bands of the 40s such as Jimmy Dorsey and Count Basie.

He too worked with Johnny Mercer the lyricist on perhaps one of his best known songs, written for a movie, “Emily.” Tony Bennett, Sinatra, and a host of others have recorded it.  The jazz community has adopted this work as their own, particularly the superb interpretation by Bill Evans, a version of which can be heard and seen here, Bill Evans in an intimate setting, Helsinki, 1969.

My mother’s favorite song was “The Shadow of Your Smile,” another film song he composed.  Whenever I visited her at my boyhood home from which I had long moved she’d ask me to sit at our old piano, by then partly out of tune, and play what I didn’t realize was a Mandel piece.

And talk about unusual, he composed the “Song from M*A*S*H (Suicide Is Painless)”, which is also now played in jazz venues.

His work with lyricists Alan and Marilyn Bergman produced two classic pieces, the mystically evocative “A Waltz from Somewhere” which reaches back to another era and one of my other favorites, “Where Do You Start?” about how does one disentangle one’s life from another’s?….”So many habits that we’ll have to break and yesterdays we’ll have to take apart.”

Yet the song which landed me in the sea of Johnny Mandel songs, never tying them altogether until I bought the composer’s Songbook, was “You Are There” as sung by today’s first lady of song, Stacey Kent.

We had the seen her and her husband, her producer and saxophonist Jim Tomlinson, some ten years ago at the Colony.

Her rendition of “You Are There" really elevates the composer’s intention: “To be done in a rubato feeling throughout”

Dave Frishberg, a musician who is sometimes best known for his satirical lyrics, wrote the words to this moving ballad and his collaboration with Mandel produced a classic, the story of a lover who is not just absent but is dead.  The ethereal quality of Mandel’s music works with the lyrics:

In the evening

When the kettle's on for tea

An old familiar feeling's settles over me

And it's your face I see

And I believe that you are there

In a garden

When I topped to touch a rose

And feel the petal soft and sweet against my nose

I smile and I suppose

That somehow maybe you are there

When I'm dreaming

And I find myself awake without a warning

Then I rub my eyes and fantasize

And all at once I realize

It's morning

And my fantasy is fading like a distant star at dawn

My dearest dream is gone

I often think there's just one thing to do

Pretend that dream is true

And tell myself that you are there

I offer my own piano rendition of this wonderful work.  Thank you Johnny Mandel for all your contributions to the Great American Songbook!

Stacey and Nicole

Kudos to Rob Russell and his vision for the Colony Hotel’s Royal Room. What used to be a storage room at the famous Palm Beach boutique hotel has been transformed into what the Oak Room is at the Algonquin, or Feinstein’s at the Regency, or call it the Great American Songbook South. Last week we were fortunate enough to see Stacey Kent there. She may well be regarded as the new first lady of the genre. Very talented musicians back her up, in particular her husband, Jim Tomlinson, a superb saxophonist who produces her albums and is her business manager. He and novelist Kazuo Ishiguro wrote several new pieces for Stacey’s recent album, Breakfast on the Morning Tram, four of which she performed.

What catapults an artist like Stacey Kent to the top of her field? First, she is completely dedicated to the genre, living the music. When she says that her very favorite lyric is from People Will Say We're In Love, “Don't keep your hand in mine; Your hand feels so grand in mine” you feel it deeply when she sings those words as she did the other night.

Then, she articulates the lyrics while singing them, and when listening to the Great American Songbook selections, the words are as important as the music itself. http://lacunaemusing.blogspot.com/2008/01/great-american-songbook.html
Every nuance intended by the songwriter surfaces in her performance.

Stacey came to her art somewhat by accident, studying for a Masters degree in comparative literature in Europe where she met her husband who also arrived on the music scene via an academic labyrinth. http://www.staceykent.com/. Her perfect phrasing is reminiscent of Sinatra’s who was the master. But she is a one-of-a-kind; just listen to her rendition of The Boy Next Door: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7NScBJtKkrk .

After her performance at the Royal Room we chatted with her and Ann gave her a big hug, which was reciprocated. It’s as if we’ve known her forever.

She reminds us of another great jazz singer, Nicole Pasternak, whom we’ve befriended and regularly see perform when we’re in Connecticut, as the Northeast is her home base. http://www.nicolepasternak.com/. In some ways Nicole is a more versatile performer, belting out a Patsy Cline song as readily as an Irving Berlin classic. Stacey by contrast has honed a distinctive style, restricting her performances to the very songs and style she can make immortal.

It is hard for a regional performer such as Nicole to bring her talents to the national scene. I’ve been trying to find the right gig for her in South Florida without success. I’m more disheartened by this than Nicole who mostly sings just for her love of this unique musical treasure we call the Great American Songbook. Thanks to her dedication and to artists such as Stacey Kent this distinctively American cultural experience lives on for future generations.