Music Makes Us

David Byrne made a profound observation in his recently published How Music Works: "We don't make music; it makes us."  So naturally we are partially defined by the music we listen to. For myself, it is the Great American Songbook, music we sometimes refer to as "The Standards," many coming from the theatre and films or just pieces performed by some of our favorite recording artists.

I've made two CDs in the past several years and for the complete list of the songs see the end of this entry on the Great American Songbook.

Since I made those CDs I've taken some piano lessons, pretty much my first block of lessons since grade school years. Those lessons were abruptly brought to an end by my open heart surgery and although I would have liked to resume them, it is a huge commitment of time. Sigh, if I was only younger! Still, the interim lessons have helped my skills, and I decided to test them with a new CD, and selected some more challenging pieces, diverse ones, from "The Songbook." Appropriately, this album is named Music Makes Us.

Some of the songs in this album are close to my heart for mostly idiosyncratic reasons, which I will explain. But first here is the complete list:

My Man's Gone Now, Bess You Is My Woman Now,  I Loves You Porgy (from Porgy and Bess, music by George Gershwin);  The Rainbow Connection (from the Muppet Movie by Paul Williams and Kenneth Ascher); Never Never Land (from Peter Pan, music by Jule Styne); Alice in Wonderland (from the Disney animated film, music by Sammy Fain); Over the Rainbow (from The Wizard of Oz, music by Harold Arlen); Johanna, Pretty Women (from Sweeney Todd by Stephen Sondheim); No One is Alone (from Into the Woods by Stephen Sondheim), Till There Was You (from The Music Man by Meredith Willson); Getting Tall (from Nine by Maury Yeston); Why God Why (from Miss Saigon music by Claude-Michel Schönberg); If We Only Have Love (from Jacques Brel Is Alive and Well and Living in Paris by Jacques Brel); It's Love - It's Christmas, Letter to Evan (by Bill Evans); Seems Like Old Times (by Carmen Lombardo); Laura (by David Raksin); Here's to My Lady (by Rube Bloom; lyrics by Johnny Mercer); Two Sleepy People (by Hoagy Carmichael; lyrics by Frank Loesser); What is There to Say (by Vernon Duke and Yip Harburg); I See Your Face Before Me (by Arthur Schwartz; lyrics by Howard Dietz); Time To Say Goodbye (or "Con te partirò" by Francesco Sartori)

The first three are from Porgy and Bess by George Gershwin. There are many other Gershwin pieces I love to play but Porgy and Bess stands alone as a folk opera.  What can one say about such a consummate musical genius other than he was a prodigy who died too early but nonetheless flourished in all musical genres, from popular songs, to Broadway, to opera, to the concert halls.

Then I play four songs that are whimsically fairy-tale focused -- think rainbows and wonderlands.

From there, I move towards Broadway, the first three pieces by the reigning king of the Broadway Musical, Stephen Sondheim, all favorites of mine, two from Sweeney Todd and the breathtakingly haunting No One is Alone from Into the Woods.

A few months ago we saw an inspired revival of The Music Man at the Maltz Jupiter Theatre. I had forgotten that the beautiful ballad Till There Was You was from that show, and I couldn't get it out of my head until I decided to include it here.  We've haven't seen Nine, based on Federico Fellini's film 8½, but I found Getting Tall in my Broadway Fake Book and found myself playing it over and over again.  Very poignant and so included here.  On the other hand, we saw Miss Saigon in London, and thought Why God Why was a show stopper -- certainly as moving as some of Claude-Michel Schönberg's other pieces in his more famous Les Misérables.

That section concludes with If We Only Have Love from Jacques Brel is Alive and Well and Living in Paris which is the first Broadway (actually off Broadway) show that Ann and I saw together when we were first dating -- in 1969. As such, it has special meaning to me. That song is the concluding piece from the revue.

A brief shift, then, to two pieces by Bill Evans, his one and only (to my knowledge) "Christmas piece" -- It's Love - It's Christmas -- and the other a musical "letter" to his only son, Evan, soon after he was born. If I could be reincarnated as a professional pianist, it would be in the Bill Evans mold, but he was truly one of a kind.

Then a group of songs, classic standards, such as Two Sleepy People by Hoagy Carmichael, which is my little hat tip to the late and great Oscar Peterson whose rendition of this song is the best I've ever heard.

Finally, and appropriately, I conclude with the now well known (thanks to Sarah Brightman and Andrea Bocelli) Time to Say Goodbye, which is also the last piece I recorded at my session at Echo Beach Studios in Jupiter, Florida, a recording studio that is mostly frequented by professional musicians -- which brings up the difficulty of the process itself.

I had one three-hour block to get everything recorded, to get it right as best I could.  Three hours to make a 45 plus minute CD. Not only is it imposing, sitting alone in the recording studio before a concert grand piano with microphones all around, with the control room behind a glass in which my technician (the very competent and understanding Ray) is monitoring events, but it is exhausting as well. The fatigue factor took its toll, especially with the longer, more complicated pieces, when I had to flip pages of music quickly while also trying to avoid that sound being recorded.

The other difficult issue is simply being able to translate what I "feel" when playing the pieces and the recording studio is not the most conducive place for that. It becomes a technical performance which if one is a professional, perhaps that is good enough, but for me, I need that feeling factor. It is sort of like having to make love in a public place. Nonetheless, I had established big goals for this CD, worked towards them, and I'm happy I did it, even if those results may not be the same as in the privacy of my living room playing my own piano.

I'm not sure whether I'll do another CD again.  Between my three, I've recorded about 75 songs.  I'm somewhat content with that. The piano has been and will continue to be a big part of my life. I've been lucky enough to have a little talent, and a big love for the Great American Songbook genre, and the time to play for pure enjoyment.  But never say never again! 

 

Mentoring and Remembering

I didn't think I'd get around to writing anything for a while, but I can't let this go by.  There is a remarkably beautifully written piece by Philip Roth -- In Memory of a Friend, Teacher and Mentor -- in yesterday's New York Times, which one can read on several levels.  It is a eulogy, a profound testament to the power of mentoring, insight into the fine line between literature and non-fiction, and a condemnation of "the scum in power" -- what one could call government at certain stages of American history.  Roth is referring to the McCarthy era when his former high school teacher, mentor and friend, Dr. Bob Lowenstein was "mauled in Congress’s anti-Communist crusade of the 1940s and 1950s."

The main character in Roth's I Married a Communist was shaped by his friend and Roth says "the book is, at bottom, education, tutelage, mentorship, in particular the education of an eager, earnest and impressionable adolescent in how to become — as well as how not to become — a bold and honorable and effective man."  But it is also about that era when his friend and mentor was branded as "political deviant" and lost his job as a teacher for six years: "I refer now not to a boy’s but to an adult’s education: in loss, grief and, that inescapable component of living, betrayal. Bob had iron in him and he resisted the outrage of the injustice with extraordinary courage and bravery, but he was a man, and he felt it as a man, and so he suffered too."

Being a teacher, Bob was in the position of being a mentor to many.  I had had thoughts of going into teaching instead of publishing (actually, I had no thoughts about the latter, I just needed to work when I got out of college -- I think of myself as an "accidental publisher").

 

Good teachers are mentors by design and I have been lucky enough to have two during my impressionable high school and college years, and remarkably we are still in touch and continue to be part of my life, my high school economics and political science teacher, Roger Brickner, and my college English teacher Martin Tucker.

But I've been a mentor too in my career (and have been mentored by others in the publishing world) and although I rarely see them, I am lucky enough to have an email relationship with several former colleagues, some of whom I've known almost from the beginning.  The last entry made an oblique reference to one who contacted me after 44 years, Mary.  Well, hat tip to her for passing on this brilliant piece of satire by Andy Borowitz of The New Yorker, which sort of ties everything up regarding this entry -- a new shameful era in our political history, the Senate having the "the courage and grit to stand up to the overwhelming wishes of the American people."

When President Obama delivered his State of the Union address, he said that the people of Newtown, Connecticut "deserve a vote" on gun control, little did he imagine that a watered down version that focuses mainly on background checks would fail -- a shameful example of NRA's control of our politicians  We got our vote.  Hopefully, all will remember when those Senators are up for reelection.

And to the city of Boston, great sighs of relief to the refrains of Sweet Caroline.....

And when I hurt,

Hurtin' runs off my shoulders

Riffs

On several disparate topics, sort of a "catch up" posting.

First and foremost, the Boston bombings, deplorable, despicable, cowardly. The stark, almost naked vulnerability of the runners, makes it especially gruesome to me, and on Patriot's Day in Massachusetts, the symbolism of the act is unambiguous.  If it was carried out with assault weapons rather than the anonymity of trash can bombs, would it speed  national gun control legislation as Connecticut commendably passed?  I wonder, but violence in our great land is intolerable and must be dealt with through education and legislation and improved economic opportunity for all. 

Then, on a less important subject, but a continuing frustration, is the foolishness of the Florida Legislature which is actually considering massive increases for windstorm insurance coverage through its state supported "Citizens Insurance."  The unintended consequences of such an increase will destroy the nascent housing and construction recovery and, long term, turn coastline communities into ghost towns, the very communities that draw tourism, Florida's most important revenue source.  The "need" for such an increase is to buy even more reinsurance for a once in a hundred year storm but one has to wonder how much the insurance industry has cozied up to Florida legislators. 

As it is, there is a "cauldron of misconduct alleged at Citizens Property Insurance" but as a state designed and operated institution, it seems to be immune to corporate codes of ethics. The bottom line is the entire state is vulnerable to destructive weather, be it hurricanes, or tornadoes, and the state needs a plan other than a usurious tax on coastal citizens.  It could create its own reinsurance pool with a quarter of a percent sales tax increase (some of which would be paid by tourism), with, of course, still higher insurance rates for coastal homes, but not at levels that would destroy those communities.

 

Our friends Ray and Sue were briefly here, making a detour on their way back to Connecticut from the Abacos on their boat 'Last Dance.'  Always wonderful to see them and to learn more about their living full time on their boat as well as being part of a boating community in the Bahamas, the Royal Marsh Harbour Yacht Club -- scores of boaters doing the same thing during the winter (although most have homes to go back to in the summer). 

So Ray and Sue arrived here on Sunday and I followed them on "Spot Me" which broadcasts their position every twenty minutes or so superimposed on Google Maps.  A remarkable technology.  Here's their last leg of the trip from the Bahamas to here. 

I helped them untie their lines on our dock early this morning and they've begun their 1,200 mile trek "home" to Connecticut where we will join them on our boat later this summer.

Earlier this month, Ann took me to see my first opera since my college days, Richard Strauss' gruesome Salome, at the Kravis Theatre in West Palm Beach.  I went as much for the spectacle as I did to understand how Ann has "spent all that time" for the last decade with season's tickets.  She usually goes with her friend, Lois, and there they meet our friend Roy, who we also see at the Dramaworks functions, for a bite of lunch beforehand,.  Ann and I were photographed with characters from next year's program of operas.

I used to apologize for not liking Opera (Stephen Sondheim, however, gave me permission).  It was a epic spectacle to see Salome, the main part being sung superbly by Erika Sunnegårdh and it was helpful to have the English translation in the subtitles overhead.  The music is almost oppressively beautiful, but, to me, the staging seems so wooden compared to, say, a Sondheim musical.  Perhaps it measures up to Sweeny Todd for the bloodiest musical stage production.

A notable article appeared in the April 7 New York Times by André Aciman, How Memoirists Mold the Truth.  It certainly hit home with me as most of what I write is indeed memoir and I know exactly what he means by the following:

Writing the past is never a neutral act.  Writing always asks the past to justify itself, to give its reasons...provided we can live with the reasons.  What we want is a narrative, not a log: a tale, not a trial. This is why most people write memoirs using the conventions not of history, but of fiction.  It's their revenge against facts that won't go away ...And maybe this is why we write.  We want a second chance, we want the other version of our life, the one that thrills us, the one that happened to the people we really are, not to those we just happened to be once.  There is a lot more to take away from this profound article, but it reminds me of the fine line I sometimes walk between fact and fiction trying on the one hand to be truthful, but sometimes circumventing facts, frequently to keep certain people anonymous, and perhaps to remember the past as I would have liked it to be (frequently being unable to distinguish it from the real past which, ironically, it really may be!). I must confess it's also a delicate balance between honesty and privacy.

But my writing has led me to places and people (although I do not have a comment section, an email address appears in my profile) and most recently I was contacted by someone I hired 44 years ago.  She had found me through my blog and wanted me to know that I served as an important mentor (unknowingly to me) to her early in her career.  Since then she has gone on to very significant accomplishments, in business, and, more importantly, in her empathic quest to make a difference in one of the great tragedies of the past decade in our economy: the high unemployment rate and its impact on individuals (statistics aside).  I might say more regarding our distant relationship over the a narrow alleyway of time, but that will have to wait. 

My blog will probably go quiet for a while as I am preparing a piano program and will be recording it at a studio, so lots of practice in the days ahead.  I'm calling it "Music Makes Us" after a quote from David Byrne's recently published How Music Works: "We don't make music; it makes us." How true. And we are sort of defined by the music we listen to. For myself, it is the Great American Songbook, music we sometimes refer to as "The Standards."  I'll have more to say about this, and the specific pieces, after I've taken this on, difficult for me, a mere amateur, but isn't that what an engaged life is all about, setting demanding goals and doing one's best to attain them?  I've used those piano skills to bring some joy to people in retirement homes and will continue to do so.  It's makes all that time and commitment that much more meaningful.  

Meanwhile, I leave with a photograph of our seasonally flowering pink Bougainvillea tree, highlighted by my lovely wife, Ann.