Season in the sun

I have been a resident of South Sandisfield, Massachusetts since 1961 and have always felt that this is the only place to be. I love it's winding, sometimes bumpy side roads, its cool summers, its amazingly clean air, and its flora and fauna.

However, at my age, 'Chestnuts roasting on an open fire' don't warm my bones enough in the winter. 'When the wind comes sweeping down the plain', I look for a warmer environment. So for a number of years, I have spent part of the frigid weather in  Isla Verde, Puerto Rico.

Isla Verde is a coastal area just to the east of Old San Juan. My condo faces the Atlantic Ocean to the north and I can experience an entirely different world from my life in Sandisfield. I have enough space to invite friends to come down and enjoy Puerto Rico with me. From my balcony I look down on a large pool where adults and children splash about, having a wonderful time. Then, just beyond the pool is the ocean where I see people being pulled through the waves propelled by a kite in the wind. Once in a while I see people hauled aloft in a balloon that is attached to a small boat. 'Flying too high with some guy in the sky is my idea of nothing to do'.

Often in the evening I see a brilliantly lighted cruise ship heading east, bound for Barbados, Trinidad, Shangi La!

Not a bear in sight. (Lots of those in Sandisfield!)

There is a long reef out at sea that calms the ebb and flow of the waves as they reach the shore. At night they sing a gentle lullaby which promotes blissful sleeping. My condo has soft breezes blowing through it day and night. Who needs air conditioning?

The street side of my building is Avenida Isla Verde, a bustling commercial street with shops and restaurants of all sorts.

John and I discovered this little piece of Heaven years ago and began coming to a small hotel that is right next to my condo building.

It has become a regular winter destination for me ever since.

So-   Dear Sandisfield, I will see you again in March- which means 'mud season'. Oh well!

Happy Birthday!

Today is the 91st birthday of my dear friend, Phyllis Curtin, opera diva, amazing teacher, wonderful woman.

Happy Birthday, Phyllis!

Kate-Smith

Last evening I had the great pleasure of attending the senior recital of my voice student, Katie Weiser, in Sweeney Hall at Smith College. Katie studies voice with me and with Jane Bryden, and coaches with Jerry Noble, who accompanied her last night.

Together, Katie's 'team' have been helping her prepare the program she presented last night. Here are Katie, Jerry, myself, and Jane following the concert.

While it's not considered good form to brag about one's students, I am going to do it anyway. Katie simply took command of the stage and sang a beautiful program. Rossini, Wolf, Fauré, Handel, Barber, Duke, Hundley, and Gounod were all represented on the program and all were very well sung.

Katie has worked long and hard with her teachers and her coach to bring this program to fruition. Any performer needs talent, but you also have to do the work. Katie has the talent and did the work. It resulted in a standing ovation at the end of the concert.

Here are Katie and Jerry on stage in Sweeney Hall last night. Bravi!

Barbara, revisited.

Since I wrote the blog on Barbara Cook last night, I have it on excellent authority that she has not had plastic surgery but has simply lost weight.

Whatever she did, she looks as beautiful as I remember her when she was Marian the Librarian.

Quoting the title of my first book on singing: Sing On! Sing On!, dear Barbara!!

Let it snow

This afternoon, two intrepid friends and I drove to Princeton, NJ through rain and snow to listen to a legend sing.

Eighty-five year old Barbara Cook walked out on stage with the help of a cane, sat down, and enchanted a frost-bitten audience  for an hour and a half.

I last heard her several years ago at the Mahaiwe Theatre in Great Barrington. Her voice has lost a little of its luster since then, but she still sings with that sweet sound that has identified her for years.

The program included a number of interesting songs that I was not familiar with. Most of the songs were on the quiet side with a couple of up-tempo numbers thrown in.

She now sings mostly in the middle octave of her voice with an occasional trip into head voice. No more 'Glitter and be Gay'. But she is really amazing.

Magically, she has lost the double chin that was obvious when last I saw her. Far be it from me to suggest plastic surgery, but if that is what happened, the results are sensational. She looks great!

On the drive home, the intrepid Jim did the driving honors through feet of snow. Rte 33, a major NJ highway, was like driving through a field. New Jersey goes into a South Carolina mode at any sign of snow. But he got Peggy and me home safe and sound. We celebrated with chocolate chip cookies.

Barbara announced that she was planning to keep on singing and singing and singing, and I see no reason why that will not happen.

Music, music

Often when I see the words 'Faculty Concert' I shudder. I have heard too many pedestrian presentations by well-meaning teachers.

Tonight, however, was a different story. In Sweeney Concert Hall at Smith College members of the faculty set the place on fire.

First, Karen Smith Emerson, with Judith Gordon at the piano, sang a beautiful set of songs in German by Edvard Grieg. Having been immersed in the Grieg 'Cello and Piano Sonata for the past few months, these were especially close to my heart. Karen sang with a beautiful sound, fine musicianship, and deep emotion. I would rave more but she studies with me and that would be embarrassing. Leave it at this;
Brava!

Then a piano trio of Franz Schubert, his Trio in B-flat major, Op.99 was played by Joel Pinchon, violinist, Volcy Pelletier, 'cellist, and Judith Gordon again as pianist. They gave us a brilliant rendition of the work filled with fire and drama.

Finally, Ms. Gordon returned with pianist Conor Hanick to play Hallelujah Junction of John Adams. This is a tour de force! It has all the usual Adams bag of tricks: loud sonorities, complicated rhythms, and the John Adams logo, 'Why do anything just once if you can do it 17 times?' You can hear Georg Frederik Handel trying to escape. It brought down the house.

This is a music faculty of a different stripe. Congratulations!

What to do 'til the baby comes.

This past weekend I did a huge concert with my friend Andrea; 'cello and piano. We performed works by Vivaldi, Fauré, Ginastera, and Grieg. The Ginastera and Grieg are both barn-burners! It's been a while since I have played a concert that taxing: technically and emotionally. Taxing but wonderful. Even my once-broken right hand behaved itself and performed well.

We performed in a church where I had been Director of Music and Fine Arts for twenty-one years thirty-three years ago to a packed house. Andrea had been a part of that church since childhood. We had an enthusiatic audience and got a standing ovation.

After the concert, the reception, and a lovely dinner with friends, I sat around the kitchen table with my friend Ellen, at whose home I was staying, and we talked until my Adrenalin level returned to somewhere near normal. It was after 1:00 a.m. when I finally went to bed following this 3:00 p.m. concert.

These are the lovely roses I was presented with at the end of the concert.

This is what always happens to me during and after a concert. I expend great amounts of energy, both physical and emotional, during a performance; then it takes a while for the Adrenalin to subside. At 82, your overall energy level is not what it was at 35. (hah!) At 35, I performed the complete organ works of Bach at St. Paul's Chapel, Columbia University; fourteen recitals in fifteen weeks. Talk about energy! That was over three hundred works by the great Baroque master. It was a blast. There were one thousand people in attendance at each concert. Those were the days to be on the concert stage. I did sixty organ concerts a year back then.

I can remember performing in Carnegie Recital Hall in New York long ago several times with my long-time duo-piano partner, Eleanor Benoist. Almost at the end of one concert, I felt as if we had only been playing for twenty minutes. I thought, 'Did we leave something out???' We played an enormous program. Check the NY Times of that season or my website for our review. (www.hburtis.com )When you are totally involved in the music, time has a funny way of disappearing. You are momentarily out of yourself.

Eleanor was at my concert on Sunday! 

This is when I know that I have performed as well as I possibly can. I felt this same disappearance of time at this recent concert, thirty-seven years later. The mind is an amazing thing. It can lie to you about your age when you need the strength and energy to produce something beautiful.

Perhaps continuing to perform in public at my age is the Fountain of Youth. Poncé de Leon move over!

The hardest part of concert day is waiting around for the concert to begin. Different people have the need to do different things to get themselves into concert-mode. One friend I know needs to expend energy by the quart by vacuuming, washing windows, mowing the lawn, and so on. If I did this, I wouldn't be able to play the concert. Another friend of mine used to practice full tilt until just before curtain time. Exhausting!

I feel the need to take life very easy on concert day. I loll around, reading, watching television, vegging out. I barely touch the piano. I never listen to other music. My head is full of the program I am about to play. I don't want to disturb this train of thought. It's as though I plug myself into an electric outlet to charge my batteries. Then in the concert, all hell breaks loose when I release the energy. This has been my way of coping with pre-concert hours for many years. It still works.

My first organ teacher in New York City, Claire Coci, once told me, 'Always eat a chocolate bar before you play a recital'. I always did. This time, I ate it in the intermission, just before the Grieg! Sugar rush!! Just what you need to play that block-buster.

It's a little like a pregnancy; though I have obviously never given birth. Nine months or so before the new concert you make preparations: choose your program, begin to learn it, decide musically, technically, and emotionally how you plan to present it. This is the gestation period.

When you are performing with another instrumentalist or a singer, you work together many hours to share musical ideas, decide on tempi, dynamics and so on. The program is growing within your mind and body. Your musical fetus.

Then on performance day you deliver your baby. In this case it's name was Vivaldi Fauré Ginastera Grieg, and it was a lovely creation. It's parents, the 'cello and the piano, are very proud of it.