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Every once in a while someone comes up with a crazy idea for a new piece of musical theatre that really works!
Last night at Barrington Stage 2 (aka St.Germain Stage) Eric Price and Joel Waggoner did just that! Presto Change-O simply flew off the stage into what should eventually be a Broadway run.
Eric wrote the delightful, amusing, and emotional book and lyrics, Joel the energetic music which portrayed every textual idea in scintillating floods of song. They are damned good!
Lenny Wolpe
The very fine cast included Lenny Wolpe as Sheldon, Michael Rupert as Lance, Jarod Spector as Michael, Jenni Barber as Tina, Barbara Walsh as Mary, and Bob Walton as Arthur. Marc Bruni brilliantly directed the show.
Michael Rupert
The rather complicated plot line dipped back and forth from the present into the past. Everyone on the stage is a magician. Everyone! Sheldon is a retired magician who is apparently suffering from some sort of senility, Mary is his daughter, Michael is the son of Mary and Lance, all of whom are magicians, and Arthur is Lance's brother, who is- guess what?
Jared Spector
Not only do these folks portray magicians on stage, they all do magic tricks before your very eyes, sometimes alone and sometimes all at the same time. It is dazzling!
Jenni Barber
Through a series of emotional events, Michael finally gets his divorced parents back together, falls in love with Tina, and learns from his grandfather that sometimes magic is real. This was a great idea that worked!
Barbara Walsh
Joseph Wartnerchaney was the Illusion Designer, which means he taught them all to become real magicians. The entire production staff is remarkable operating the complicated set and special effects effortlessly.
I feel that Act II could use a bit of tightening up. Second Acts are notorious for losing energy, but this is a minor point.
The witty words and music include solo numbers and various ensemble pieces which work beautifully. I don't know when I've seen a première of a musical that I enjoyed more.
My dear friend Phyllis Curtin died yesterday after a long illness. Her career as an opera and oratorio singer, recitalist, promoter of modern music, and teacher is legend.
I have known Phyllis since the 1950's. She was one of the stars at New York City Opera, performing in The New York City Center on 55th Street in those days. I still have a vivid picture of her sitting on the roof of the cabin in the set of Carlisle Floyd's opera Susannah, singing 'Ain't it a pretty night?', her long dark hair flowing in the stage moon light and her silver voice reaching out to her rapt audience. Magic!
I saw her perform many times during our lives. When she sang the part of Kate in Vittorio Gianinni's opera The Taming of the Shrew, I saw every performance of it that season. I knew Vittorio and my very good friend, Dorothy Fee, was the librettist for the work. I was her escort to all the performances. A rare experience.
Dorothy told me that when she and Vittorio were putting the words to the music, he would phone her and say, 'Dottie! I need more words. I'm in the middle of the aria and have run out of text!' Dorothy told me that she did not want to try to compete with the Bard of Avon poetically, so she would borrow his own words from Romeo and Juliet or the Sonnets. It was all Shakespeare!
I remember hearing Phyllis sing Pierrot Lunaire in Memorial Hall at Harvard when I was teaching there. My seat was in the front row, directly in front of her. She sang this difficult work effortlessly, looking serene and lovely. She was wearing a gorgeous gown and open-toed shoes and I could see her toe keeping very accurate time throughout. I thought that was wonderful and fun and told her about it later in our friendship.
I heard her at the Met, in recital; she even occasionally sang in oratorio at the Church of The Ascension on Fifth Avenue and Tenth Street where my organ teacher, the great Vernon de Tar, was the chorus master.
As we both grew older I would sometimes go visit her at her home in Great Barrington and we would have a great afternoon talking about singers, technique, music, life. These times were very enjoyable for me and I think she liked them as well.
Phyllis and I both studied with the great Olga Averino, whom I still quote in nearly every voice lesson I teach. Phyllis worked with her at Wellesley in her student days and I worked with her later when I went to Harvard to teach. We both adored her!
Once, when one of my students was planning to sing an audition with 'Ain't it a Pretty Night?', I asked Phyllis if she would hear her and make suggestions as to presentation.
Kate sang for Phyllis and Phyllis told her, 'When you sing this aria you must look far into space and sing into infinity.'
I am positive that is what Phyllis is doing right now!
Last night Rood Hill Farm Concerts presented two extraordinary young musicians in recital in my Sandisfield studio: Julian Müller, 'cellist, and Mayumi Tsuchida, pianist. Both are preparing Master of Music degrees at Mannes College of Music at the New School in New York City.
Julian has been a part of the Ferris Burtis Music Foundation program for the past five years. It has been a pleasure to know him and watch him grow into the competent, wonderful performer he is becoming.
Their program opened with Julian playing the Bach Suite for Cello No. 1 in G Major. His sense of musicality and style are simply beautiful, his enormous technique completely at his service.
This was followed by Julian and Mayumi performing Schubert's Sonata for Arpeggione and Piano in A minor, D.621.
According to Wikipedia 'The arpeggione is a six-stringed musical instrument, fretted and tuned like a guitar, but bowed like a cello, and thus similar to the bass viola da gamba. The body shape of the instrument, is however more similar to a medieval fiddle than either the guitar or the bass viol.'
Their performance was stunning in this amazing work, their collaboration perfect.
Mayumi then presented Chopin's Ballade No. 1 in G Minor Op. 23 with the bravura and sensitivity the work deserves. What a fine pianist she is!
Together they continued with Olivier Messiaen's Louage à l'éternité de Jésus pour Quator pour la fin du temps, an ethereal work composed while Messiaen was in a concentration camp during World War II. This evocative work was performed with deep emotion bringing back the horrors of that event.
They closed the program with the Brahms Sonata for Piano and Cello in E minor, Op.38, one of my favorites, which I used to perform with Scott Kluksdahl in the days when my right hand still worked. Brilliant,exciting, and perfect!
My 83 year old Steinway M was made to sound very young indeed with Mayumi's musical and technical expertise. It is three years younger than I and sounds a lot better! Of course it has had the advantage of being rebuilt a few years ago by the World's best piano technician,Marvin Cech, while I am still the original model having had bronchitis-sinusitis for the past week and a busted right hand for the last ten years or so. But I carp!
My special thanks must go to my partner David who arranged the house for the concert while I mostly sat in a chair, giving orders and wheezing!
Never having had children, it is these wonderful young musicians of the Ferris Burtis Music Foundation, as well as the myriad of talented students in voice, piano, organ and harpsichord I have worked with since I was 17 years old who are my progeny.
Whew! That's a long time.
Many have gone ahead to have fine careers of their own in music as performers and teachers. Seven of my singers have sung at the Met and other venues world wide.
Not bad for an old man with a bum right hand!
Tax-free gifts to the Ferris Burtis Music Foundation may be sent to Maeve O'Dea, Berkshire Taconic Foundation, 800 North Main Street, Sheffield, MA 01257 with checks made out to Ferris Burtis Foundation.
Hearing these wonderful young artists, as I did last night, is my reward, and John's, for having started the Foundation years ago. At my death my entire estate will go into the work of the Foundation.
http://ferrisburtisfoundation.blogspot.org
