Apple has finally released its app designed specifically for classical music, though I haven’t really had much of a chance to try it out yet, partly because it’s currently only available for iPhone and iPad (with Android yet to come), and I do more listening on my iMac. I do want to briefly mention two … Continue reading Apple Music Classical
Music
On the Steps of the Schubert
Broadway World has posted a video commemorating the 50th Anniversary of “Sondheim: A Musical Tribute”. I remember getting that album back in the 70s, although probably a year or so after it came out, when I was a fledgling Sondheim fan. That album helped to cement my admiration for Sondheim.
New Year’s Eve 1978
I’ve never been one for celebrating New Year’s Eve, and I usually just stay at home those nights, but in 1978 I decided to make an exception as a friend and I headed to New York City, the locus classicus of New Year’s Eve celebrations, to ring in the New Year with panache. Pat … Continue reading New Year’s Eve 1978
Meet the Beatles
Mark Evanier has started a retrospective series on The Beatles, which got me to thinking about when I first encountered them. I was not much of a fan of rock music back in the 50s and early 60s, my tastes running more to Broadway show tunes. I’d hear an occasional rock or pop tune from … Continue reading Meet the Beatles
Those Final D’s
It’s been a week since I listened to that cast album of Irving Berlin’s Mr. President, but some of the songs are still swirling around in my brain. Of course, I used to have the album when I was a teenager, so I knew the score by heart in those days. Nanette Fabray played the First … Continue reading Those Final D’s
An Old Fashioned Wedding
Ethel Merman was in her late 30s when she created the role of Annie Oakley in the original production of Annie Get Your Gun in 1946, which was a bit too old for the historical Annie, but given that the show took lots of other liberties with history, it probably didn’t matter much. Of course, 20 … Continue reading An Old Fashioned Wedding
A Brilliant Comic Lyric Writer
Stephen Sondheim compiled a list called “Songs I Wish I’d Written (at Least in Part)” and he included an Irving Berlin number on that list. In the concert that included some of those songs he made some opening remarks, and here is what he had to say about Berlin: One, “You Can't Get a Man … Continue reading A Brilliant Comic Lyric Writer
A rubdown with a velvet glove
Speaking of Irving Berlin, as I was, I’m reminded of the time we went to see the Conrad Weiser High School production of his 1950 Broadway musical Call Me Madam. I think the only reason we went to see it was because our family doctor’s son, Arlington Nagle Jr., had a part in it. And … Continue reading A rubdown with a velvet glove
There’s “tootsie” playing “footsie” very cosy
Irving Berlin was one of the towering figures of Tin Pan Alley and the musical theater with a career reaching back to 1911 with his first hit tune “Alexander’s Ragtime Band”. Most of his famous songs date from the 20s and 30s when the songs in musicals often had very little to do with the … Continue reading There’s “tootsie” playing “footsie” very cosy
Possibilities
Last night I decided to listen to the Original Cast album of the Broadway musical It’s a Bird… It’s a Plane… It’s Superman, a score I haven’t heard in several years, and it immediately threw me into a quandary. I know that the Penn State Thespians put on the musical, as I have several vivid memories of … Continue reading Possibilities