latest posts
Jessie Mae Robinson: The Other Woman
I have always loved this song and love how it fits so beautifully in Nina Simone’s voice. “The Other Woman,” written by Jessie Mae Robinson, has a special contemporary resonance as we all work to come to terms with the results of our recent presidential election. Hillary might be seen as the “other woman” but, to me, this song resonates in our current climate because it is a poignant narrative of otherness and how we deal with our bitterness towards outsiders of any type.
Cole Porter: Did you Evah! —performed by Debbie Harry and Iggy Pop
I moved to NYC in 1979 from a small New England college town where I had heard of rebellion, but had hardly ever seen rebellion in any meaningful form. When I hit the city streets that summer, Debbie Harry of Blondie and Iggy Pop were two of the foremost avatars of rebellion writ large. They were way out there but they were also admired as artists. Everywhere I went in my NYC of the 80’s, there they were pushing the envelope of the creative boundaries of high and low art.
Bing Crosby and David Bowie: Peace on Earth/Little Drummer Boy
My first Song o’ Day is inspired by next Monday’s 6th annual Sing for Your Supper holiday show – A Goyishe Christmas to You – Yuletide Songs by Jewish Composers. SFYS is a divine mix of high- and lowbrow, formal and casual, elegant and earthy, classical and contemporary. I honor SFYS – Goy! with the choice of Bing Cosby and David Bowie’s duet of “Peace On Earth/Little Drummer Boy.” This duet is a perfect holiday blend of styles and generations. What better way to celebrate the holidays and NYFOS than this inclusive pairing of cardigans and mod hairstyles?
George and Ira Gershwin: Slap That Bass
As I deal with the current dystopia I encounter every morning on NPR, I keep thinking about the song “Slap That Bass” by the Gershwin brothers. “Dictators would be better off if they zoom-zoomed now and then,” they write. I couldn’t agree more. “Zoom zoom, zoom zoom, the world is in a mess”—but for a few minutes George and Ira make the world safe again.
Cole Porter: Anything Goes, performed by Lypsinka
It just rained in New York for about 48 hours and I stayed inside for the duration. I got lots done, and my students seemed happy to have their lessons here (where they get tea, more time, a better piano, and juicier stories). But today is sunny and beautiful and I finally have to leave my aerie. To celebrate, a clip from one of my favorite modern artists, Lypsinka.
Joni Mitchell: Big Yellow Taxi
Of all of today’s jaw-dropping political insanities, the fact-free, capricious dismissal of climate change strikes me as the most destructive and short-sighted. We can’t lose time, we can’t blame it on China, we can’t just tweet it away. I’ve been thinking obsessively about this Joni Mitchell classic for the past few days—“Big Yellow Taxi,” a cheerful tune with a sharp, still-timely environmental message.
Tchaikovsky: A Tear Trembles
One tiny step for mankind: I finally finished the program for NYFOS’s Tchaikovsky concert next January. It had been about 82% done for several months, and I kept swearing I just needed a weekend to polish it off. But the longer I looked at the playlist, and the more I listened to the songs Antonina Chehovska and Alexey Lavrov and my colleague-slash-student Nikolay Verevkin had suggested, the more I waffled.
Rob Schwimmer: Holding You in My Arms
I gave the recording a spin the next night. It’s called Beyond the Sky, and that it exactly where it sent me. I was bowled over by Rob’s musical prowess. People use the word “humbled” a bit too often for my taste, but that is what I felt: humbled. Rob is a master of the 88s—and a fine composer—and a modern jazz wizard (some of the tracks sound like Alban Berg with a backbeat)—and he can even play a theremin in perfect tune. “Oh, he’s a better pianist than either of us,” Michael Barrett said breezily the next day. My hackles quietly went up, of course. My motto is “Never compare, never compete,” and it has served me well. But I had taken the measure of my new colleague, and I was in awe. A breathtaking musician, and a man of warmth and generosity.
Leonard Bernstein: Take Care of This House
I had planned a different Leonard Bernstein tune to finish out my most enjoyable stint as “Song of the Day” blogger, but the events of last week compelled me to swap out my initial choice, so: some other time.
Cy Coleman: Our Private World
My “Song of the Day” blog began this week with an enchanted train; in actuality, a wheezy rickety commuter train on the Long Island Rail Road. Today, I’ll turn to the “prince of wheels–the luxury liner of locomotive trains”: the Twentieth Century, Ltd., which zoomed like a comet through the Broadway firmament of my halcyon days.
Dino Oliveri: J’Attendrai
Given that, this week, I’m writing about songs for NYFOS, I’d be remiss if I didn’t select at least one song in a foreign language.
As a show tune fan, I would have had a few options to choose from—“Dites-Moi” from South Pacific, say, or “Abbondanza” from The Most Happy Fella—but why be doctrinaire? Besides, one of my all-time favorite songs of any provenance came to me via an EMI collection of French popular chansons, Paris by Night, one of those many evocative international anthologies that were released in the first decade of the compact disc.
Richard Rodgers: Take the Moment
Many great songs are American standards; some fly under the radar of popular culture. And then there are a few great songs that haven’t even been properly introduced to the radar. In 1965, you would be hard-pressed to find two songwriters who better represented the relay race of Broadway show tunes than Richard Rodgers and Stephen Sondheim.
Jerome Kern: The enchanted train
I grew up on Long Island, forty-five minutes from Broadway (actually forty-nine) and my father commuted to the city and back on the Long Island Rail Road, five days a week, for 38 years. One night, he trudged wearily through the front door, tossed his briefcase aside, collapsed in a chair and said, “I’ve just added it up: I’ve spent three-and-a-half years of my life on the Long Island Rail Road.” “The Enchanted Train” offers a far more uplifting portrait of that venerable conveyance, the local commuter train.
Sufjan Stevens: Fourth of July
Sufjan Stevens’ seventh album “Carrie and Lowell” reveals the possibility of turning darkness into something honest and powerful. These eleven laments seek to find answers during a very private struggle for Sufjan— reflecting on life, death, and finding God after the death of his mother who abandoned him. Sufjan quietly retreated to find these answers in simple orchestrations and haunting poetry that dive into a place of unapologetic grief.
John Cage: The Wonderful Widow of Eighteen Springs
I really adore this little John Cage song, “The Wonderful Widow of Eighteen Springs.” It’s a setting of Joyce’s Ulysses and goes against every kind of traditional text setting I can think of -— it sort of deals with Joyce words but not really, it’s just cycles through the same pitches over and over again. And yet it works —