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!

 

 

It’s Time to Bring the 2nd Amendment Up To Date

 

Predictably, I had to leave out much, even key arguments, to consolidate this Op Ed piece on Gun Control for publication in the June 4, 2022 Palm Beach Post.  The online version invited readers’ comments and I was astonished by the personal vitriol it generated, just more evidence of our broken country.  All those comments were shielded by anonymity.

While the Constitution’s 2^nd amendment gives its citizens the right to bear arms, it has to be open to interpretation and refinement as times change.  With the radical metamorphosis of the “arms” of the 18^th century, its definition (and its original purpose) should have been steadily narrowed; otherwise, at its most absurd extreme, munitions manufacturers could be selling tanks, bazookas, you name it at your local gun shop. Meanwhile, that same Constitution gives States inherent "police power" to protect public health and safety.  One would think that those who do not carry guns should have the “freedom” to live without threats from those who do carry guns.

The freedom concept is not too far removed from one that pertains to tobacco.  Until the full impact of being exposed to second-hand smoke became well known, nonsmokers essentially had no rights.  Smokers “lost” their “freedom” to smoke in public once the tobacco industry lost its grip on the narrative it controlled.  Things must change when public health and safety are demonstrably at risk. Since Columbine more than 300,000 students have experienced or witnessed gun violence at school. It is time for our children no longer have to fear attending school, as well as their parents for sending them. 

My article makes the point of comparing gun registration to automobile registration and regulation.  Both instruments are potentially dangerous and laws governing their ownership and use are needed.  Absurd say the gun lobbyists.  But is it?

Imagine an alternative universe where automobiles were not invented until the last twenty years.  These same people would be arguing that their “freedom” is being curtailed having to register vehicles, getting licenses, being tested, requiring them to obey traffic laws. Having government oversee gun sales would also control how many one person could own without being declared a dealer (as it is with autos), and therefore be subjected to another level of scrutiny.  Mass shooters have a tendency to have arsenals, owning more than one gun and in some cases huge collections. Red flag!

The tired argument against the foregoing is it doesn’t stop the “bad” guys and that it would not immediately eliminate mass shootings.  Agreed!  But over time, the mandate of registration, with laws governing the consequences of the failure to register, report sales to another person, etc. is a more permanent solution.  Australia had a successful buyback program for guns.  Buy them back, no questions asked, putting a premium on assault weapons, banning the purchase of the same.  Anyone possessing such a weapon after the moratorium or selling one would be breaking the law.

Expensive, yes, but it must start sometime, or we will be having a new Memorial Day for school children.  Are their lives worth discarding for the “freedom” to own assault weapons?

YET…Senate Republicans have already said that they will not consider the regulations experts think are central to stopping mass shootings: an assault weapons ban such as we had until 2004, limits on ammunition magazines, and expansions of background checks to cover private gun sales are all off the table. They also say an age limit of 21 to purchase an assault-type rifle like that AR-15 is unlikely. – Heather Cox Richardson, June 7, 2022 “Letters from An American”

 

‘The Belle of Amherst’ –Emily Dickinson Inhabits Palm Beach Dramaworks

 

This stunning production incorporates the best features of the streamed version, which was broadcast by Palm Beach Dramaworks last year, while showing the power of live theatre to move an audience.  It shines a bright light into the very soul of the enigmatic poet, revealing her art and Emily herself.  This first-person monologue speaks truths about life and death with wisdom that came strictly from within, looking back at her life from her early 50s.  Margery Lowe gives an incandescent performance, breathtaking in range and passion.

 

The Belle of Amherst was meticulously researched by William Luce who wrote it in the mid 1970s inspired by the actress who would play the role on Broadway, Julie Harris.  She is closely identified with the play.  In addition to Luce’s brilliant integration of 19th century sensibility with Dickinson’s letters and poems, the Palm Beach Dramaworks production with Margery Lowe playing Emily, breathes real life into the character and her setting.  One would never know there is only one woman on the stage.

 

Lowe is not only a doppelganger for Emily; she also played her in a two-hander premiere at Dramaworks in 2018, Edgar and Emily. That work was lighthearted, comic in many ways, and you really didn’t get to fully know Emily as you do in Luce’s play.   

 

Lowe’s Emily is filled with life and expectations and the acceptance of her obscurity as a poet, although secretly hoping for publication.  She has her “words” and words are her life.  Yes, she must seek “the best words” and they swirl all about in her observations of nature, light, love, and the routines of living as well as the inevitability of death.  Although I have seen Lowe perform in many plays over the years, this is the one I will always remember.

 

William Hayes, The Belle of Amherst’s director, also doesn’t see this Emily as a shy reclusive intellectual, but, instead, a passionate observer, almost to the point of breathlessness, highlighting her mischievous side, capturing her vivaciousness as well as her vulnerability.  And she’s a great cook (her own opinion)!  He has her moving to and fro, from her writing desk to her bed, to the parlor, sitting on the floor with her scraps of writing and her finished poems.  All this while talking not only to the audience, and to herself, but to friends and family, one sided, of course; only she can hear the other’s reply.  Nonetheless, the audience can divine the other side from her reactions. 

 

In the streamed version Hayes had to be concerned about the camera view and now live theater has liberated the director to bring the full expanse to the audience, including the many comic touches which the streamed version could not fully exploit.  Laughter heightens her humanity and Hayes and Lowe capitalize on those moments.  As Lowe said when asked: “nothing beats live theatre. I did the film without a scene partner, but now my scene partner will be right in front of me.”

 

Margery Lowe does it all flawlessly, making an inward journey, inviting us along.  She fully engages the audience, seemingly making eye contact with everyone, creating a sense of intimacy which is rare.  I found myself frequently smiling as if she was talking to me personally.

 

Hayes and Lowe are in perfect sync, and on a magnificent stage designed by the award-winning Michael Amico.  Every detail on the stage has a purpose, the floral arrangements, the large windows upstage, perfect for lighting touches, her flawlessly made bed and dresser, her sacred, small writing desk, the tea cart and service, inspired by historical accuracy.  The entire stage takes on the feeling of a fine tapestry.  And the centerpiece is the trunk of her poems which she finally offers to the audience as her legacy.  “Remembrance’ – a mighty word.”

 

Light imagery is so important in her poems.  Once when we visited her home in Amherst which is now a museum, we were allowed to linger in her bedroom where her writing desk was, to be able to look out those same windows, and see the late afternoon light as she would have seen it.  One becomes acutely conscious of her light imagery and the sparse, enigmatic content of her poems.  Kirk Bookman’s lighting captures similar moments, ebbing and flowing with her emotions, beautifully framing Lowe.  During a rare display of the aurora borealis, colors flood the stage. 

 

Brian O’Keefe’s costumes are stirring.  Not only did he masterfully design and create Emily’s signature white ensemble with the cinched waist and voluminous sleeves, but all the accessories, the shawls, the apron, the bonnet and cape, and parasol add the finishing touches that lend such authenticity to this production.

 

Sound designer Roger Arnold’s ominous church bells chime during a funeral, and when Emily’s normally strict, staid father sound them as the aurora borealis began.  The sounds of a train are in perfect sync with Lowe’s gestures of the local train’s labyrinth path to Amherst or when she follows the clip clop of a horse drawn carriage.  Her favorite bluebird sang outside her window.  Arnold also reinforces PBD’s attention to detail as he chose classical incidental musical selections by a composer and pianist of her time, William Mason, whose music Emily might have heard. 

 

This play demands one’s full attention, but those who give themselves over to this inspired solo performance are in store for a soul searching and satisfying tour de force.  It runs through June 5th at the Don & Ann Brown Theatre in Downtown West Palm Beach.

Golden Years

It’s the literal translation of Anos Dourados by the great Brazilian composer, father of the bossa nova, Antônio Carlos Jobim (also known as “Tom”), whose music was widely adopted by jazz musicians throughout the world.  To me, it’s also those years when the Great American Songbook came into being and flourished.  It still does in the world of jazz and regularly at my piano.

In my piece on Bill Mays I went into some detail about what distinguishes an amateur’s playing from a professional’s.  Someone wrote asking for clarification about my statement “I long ago lost the ability to sight read other than the melody line and the chords and improvise the rest.”  Doesn’t that mean you play by ear, I was asked?  I wish I did, having lost that ability long ago as well.  It is a contradiction I suppose, improvising harmony and the bass from the chords, playing the melody from the treble clef which I read.

With apologies to any professional musician reading this the best way I can explain it is by revealing a bit of serendipity as Covid-19 took control of our lives.  A friend sent me a link to a recording of Anos Dourados I had never heard it before and was spellbound by the melody.  I was compelled to find the sheet music which I managed to do – with chords, no harmonic arrangement and no clef bass.  So I sat down with it at the piano and after a few passes at it, I casually recorded it on my cell phone to mail drop to my friend.  I recently I had to upgrade phones and found that forgotten recording and was surprised by that first take at the song. 

Unfortunately Google and Microsoft do not play well together and there was no way to transfer this to my Windows based computer, so I improvised a transfer having to record the recording and since it is not up to par technically, just saved it in my personal cloud.  Imperfections and all I embed it here and include a photograph of the sheet music. Perhaps this explains better what I was trying to say.

Here’s the melody line and the chords.

 

Here is a link to the recording of the iPhone recording! Although amateurish, having the ability of sit down with a piece of music and just play it has been and continues to be a source of joy. If I first hear it I can capture some of the nuances, but even if I’ve never heard the music, give me the melody line and the chords, and I can play it. Anything up to five flats (D flat major) or three sharps (A major).  That in itself is an interesting anomaly.  I struggle with 4 sharps but not 4 flats, probably because it is less likely to find songs from the Great American songbook written in 4 or more sharps.   

The lyrics remind me of the romantic, lost love ones that might have been penned by Paul Simon, and while the title, “Golden Years” refers to the years when the singer was happy with his now lost love, ironically these are my “golden years” in another sense of the words.