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“We John Wilsons, we can be busy little beavers when we need to be” ~ Novelist-Composer Anthony Burgess (Dick Cavett, ABC-TV 1971)

Anthony Burgess, my Number One Language Guy, was on Dick Cavett’s talk show late one evening during my first year at music school. The host had brought up the oft-told story of how Burgess, when in his 40s, was diagnosed with a brain tumor and told he would be dead in a year; consequently he returned home to England (he’d been in the civil service in Brunei) and was seized by a mania of writing that resulted in his completing a half dozen intriguing novels, all of which are still in print. Oh, and he didn’t die in a year. Referring to his name at birth—he was christened John Wilson, Anthony being his Catholic confirmation name and Burgess being his mother’s maiden name—Burgess quipped, “We John Wilsons, we can be busy little beavers when we need to be.”

Burgess and Cavett 940x512Dick Cavett and Anthony Burgess on my old B&W portable, a US knockoff made by the same company that cornered the 70s East Coast market in prepackaged noodle soup, Pho King. Above the interlocutors: A full audio recording of Burgess’s ’71 appearance on Cavett (the first half-hour) wherein he does an Ovaltine commercial as Shakespeare would have truly sounded. And here’s a downloadable copy of his most famous work, A Clockwork Orange.

Which is a remark that came to mind when I fell in love with John—my John, John Wilson the Conductor—and read how he spent 15 years transcribing the “lost” scores of MGM musicals, toting his Sibelius-programmed laptop around, listening to tracks in off moments, plugging in those thirds and fourths and damned glissandos as he heard them, passing on pub crawling or watching the telly to keep working on this gorgeous music…

First fruit of my beloved’s efforts: The MGM Jubilee Overture, which was performed for its 50th anniversary by The John Wilson Orchestra at the Royal Festival Hall in 2004. (More information on the Overture plus tune credits here.)

FULL DRESS // A gifted mesmerist—a sinister composer—a naive young conductor from the north…inspired by an episode from the life of Rachmaninoff // DOWNLOAD FREE BOOK POSTER

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Rachel Bloom Sings Her Hugo-Nominated Love Song to Her Favorite Spec-Fic Author, “Fuck Me, Ray Bradbury”

I love this girl, a kindred spirit. Discovered her through her small-screen series, Crazy Ex-Girlfriend (2015-2019). Came for the Filipinos, stayed for the Jews and the music. Oy, the songs! [Explicit “JAP Battle” version here, with dance moves. I got almost all the Jewish references, by the way, the rest I looked up.]

Click here for this VERY dirty, very funny picture of Rachel going all penilingual on spec-fic legend Ray Bradbury (a friend of my old boss Mamoulian, by the way).

Simply note that there’s nothing subtle about Rachel’s devotion to one particular maestro of the pen. And you think I’m the only crazy one out there.

The comedy short Fuck Me, Ray Bradbury was nominated in 2011 for a Hugo Award—you know, from the prestigious World Science Fiction Society, so this isn’t just any old piece of porn. So laugh your ass off, or shut up.

FULL DRESS // A gifted mesmerist—a sinister composer—a naive young conductor from the north…inspired by an episode from the life of Rachmaninoff // DOWNLOAD FREE BOOK POSTER

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Posted on by Cantara Christopher

A Laughs and Tenderness Break: Molly Picon Sings “Oyfen Pripetchik” in Car 54, Where Are You?

We certainly all need some tenderness and a couple laughs right now. Below, the wonderful, luminous Molly Picon—who worked with legendary actor-producer-director-impressario-rival-to-Jacob-Adler-Stella’s-dad-model-for-Max-Bialystock-grandfather-of-Michael-Tilson-Thomas Boris Thomashevsky—sings “Oyfen Pripetchik” (MM Warshawsky 1848–1907), an enduring, evocative song from the past that everyone at a certain time, in a certain place, seems to have known the melody and all the words to. From season 2, episode 6 of the TV comedy masterpiece, Car 54, Where Are You? (Entire episode on my YT channel here. And really, dig the punch line ending.)

Below, a lovely rendition from Israeli singer Chava Alberstein.

Oyfn pripetchik brent a fayerl,
Un in shtub is heys.
Un der rebe lernt kleyne kinderlekh
Dem alef-beyz.

Zet zhe kinderlekh,
Gedenkt zhe, tayere, vos ir lernt do.
Zogt zhe nokh a mol un take nokh a mol:
"Komets-alef: o!"

Lernt kinderlekh, lernt mit freyd,
Lernt dem alef-beyz.
Gliklekh is der Yid, wos kent die toyre
Un dos alef-beyz.

Molly Picon in Car 54 Where Are YouCould you say no to this woman?

FULL DRESS // A gifted mesmerist—a sinister composer—a naive young conductor from the north…inspired by an episode from the life of Rachmaninoff // DOWNLOAD FREE BOOK POSTER

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Conductor John Wilson Among the Women of Glyndebourne’s 2019 Cendrillon; Plus a Couple of 2-Degree Connections to TV’s Frasier, 2023; and John’s Attitude Toward His Female Singers in General

Connection number one: The star of the classic TV show Frasier, Kelsey Grammer, starred in Man of La Mancha at the London Coliseum in 2019. His co-star in that show was popular British TV actor Nicholas Lyndhurst, who played his Sancho Panza and now plays his “old Oxford pal” on the new Frasier show. The Joe Darion-Dale Wasserman-Mitch Leigh stage musical was co-produced by venerable (and gorgeous then, gorgeous still and always) talent agent-turned-producer Michael Linnit, who gave me my first orgasm one July night in 1973 at the St Regis Hotel in New York City, New York.

Connection number two: Also in the cast of the Coliseum’s La Mancha was soprano Danielle de Niese. De Niese’s married to the chairman of the Glyndebourne Festival Opera. Just like late Met mezzo Maria Ewing who was also married to a bigwig (and not just any old bigwig but the hoity-toity SIR Peter Hall which made her a lady, Lady Hall), the ladies like John well enough. And he likes them well enough.

Even “exotic” ladies, as my bonny John described Detroit-born Maria Ewing. Danielle de Niese is a mix of Dutch/Sri Lankan; Ewing’s mix Dutch/African. (I am, if anyone’s interested, a mix of Filipino/Catalonian/Chinese/Irish—Eurasian, in other words, like these fellow lovelies.)

So should this make me jealous? Ridiculous! Pay no attention to the painting in my gallery.

Oh, who am I kidding? Hold my jacket, Vinny. [more after dinner, making Romanian goulash…]

Okay, I’m back. The trick to making good Romanian goulash, by the way, is to let the carrots boil long enough to get soft as stew. Cheap paprika is fine to use but dump it in, it’s never strong enough for the recipe.

Now to fighting for the man I love. After satisfying myself thoroughly, body and soul, with that very lively fantasy (taking place—this is where it went in my head—on the Mean Streets of the Lower East Side—between Vinny the Sardine’s kid sister Teresa, a girl sporting a crucifix and a great right hook—and a bottle blonde puttana, calls herself Lolita) I need to point out John’s propensity for let’s say not being at one with his female singers.

I have here, case in point, a young one named Sierra Boggess in her rendering of that classic song of girl power we all sang while bounding youthfully down the street—from the BBC Proms, 2010: “I Have Confidence”. You stay and listen. I can’t even listen all the way to the end, John and his O just drown out pobrecita, who I have enough sympathy for already, as back in 2018 she had to play the fall guy in the BBC’s cockamamie plan to appear racially woke—while being able to stock their shows with free, unseasoned talent from the local inner city arts school (a very common tactic in the States) for that West Side Story debacle of theirs.

In fact, this subject is making me so mad I need to sweeten the moment—so I’ve decided to sic one of the girls on my darling… Which one will it be? Petula…? Dusty…? Okay, here’s a song by a particular girl singer I get a particular kick out of: side B of “To Sir, With Love”—Neil Diamond’s “The Boat That I Row” sung by Lulu! I’m singing this song dancing to your picture, mi amor.

John Wilson Glyndebourne 1Above John at Glyndebourne, 2019: “Vous êtes mon prince charmant” from Act III of Jules Massenet’s comic opera.

Now, about the 2019 Cendrillon: At the intermission talk with Cendrillon‘s director Fiona Dunn, my beloved John Wilson, mezzo Kate Lindsey, and soprano Danielle de Niese, the topic of debate was, What should Prince Charming look like in the 21st century?

Says John to the lovelies pictured above: “I think having Prince Charming as Massenet stipulated, it fits beautifully within the whole kind of sonic picture of the whole thing. It’s not a piece that you could say fits on one musical plane, it’s got lots of colors. It’s one of the most colorful pieces he ever wrote… When I said I was doing this piece to people, they would say, Oh yeah, that’s a nice light sort of sweet little piece. It’s not a sweet little piece, it’s a big piece, there’s always another layer to get to and there’s always more detail to explore, always more depth every time. It’s not lightweight…”

EXTRA! The most John Wilsonish piece in Cendrillon.

“Marche des princesses”
from Cendrillon, Act IV
Jules Massenet, composer
Academy of St Martin in the Fields
Neville Marriner, conductor
Capriccio, 1997

FULL DRESS // A gifted mesmerist—a sinister composer—a naive young conductor from the north…inspired by an episode from the life of Rachmaninoff // DOWNLOAD FREE BOOK POSTER

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A Sexy NYC Memory to Celebrate My 3rd Anniversary of Falling in Love with Conductor John Wilson; Plus the BBCSO Doing Elgar’s Bach Fantasia; and Theatre of Blood (United Artists, 1973)

From 4 May, 2021. In one of my old postings (“On Conductor John Wilson’s Full Dress and The First Porn Movie I Ever Did, 1”) I said something about a certain hot tub party being only the second time a man ever gave me his business card before we had sex… Well, this was the first.

It happened one evening in July, 1973. I was 18. I had just gotten that job as night solfeggist at ASCAP only a couple of weeks earlier, which is in itself a very interesting story I’ll have to tell you one of these days. Only now let’s get back to me walking down Broadway from 63rd. I loved walking home to the Village after work on a summer evening, when all of midtown was still buzzy with life and good times. After the night shift, some of my fellow solfeggists would go across the street to O’Neal’s Balloon to drink with the fancy Lincoln Center crowd (here’s my own favorite table showing up in Annie Hall), but I got a bigger kick being below 54th with all the theater people. On this particular evening I was approaching 46th…and right there on the corner of 46th stood a really good-looking guy, tall and blond and nicely dressed, who seemed to be scoping out one by one all the passers-by. For some reason he lit upon me. He got my attention. Then he asked me if I knew where a good jazz club could be found, the way you might ask any passer-by about a mailbox or the way to the Empire State Building… I told him I was new in town. Then he suggested we (“we”!) buy a newspaper and sit down somewhere and check the listings together. Oh, I was game. My first New York adventure! We went across the street to Howard Johnson’s where he bought me a hamburger and told me about himself. He told me he was an agent. He’d just put his client on the plane that day—his client having just been on The Dick Cavett Show promoting his new film, a comedy-horror flick that’s now a classic—and he himself was going back to London in the morning. He told me his client’s name, which I recognized at once, and then he gave me his card, which I kept for years until I gave it to an actor friend who said he was “looking for a UK rep”… Then he asked me about myself, all the nice polite questions a man’ll ask you beforehand… But we also talked about show business, shows, show music. I told him I liked Man of La Mancha. Having found no jazz clubs worth going to that night, we left HoJo’s and walked over to 5th Avenue, where we strolled back to his hotel room at the St Regis. I was ready for anything, expecting nothing. Even when he pulled the line, “Let’s get out of these hot clothes, shall we?” with that gorgeous limey accent of his, I still wasn’t sure we were on the road to making it…until we started making it. At that point we hadn’t even kissed. But oh, how he made up for it! I wasn’t a virgin, but here was the first man I ever slept with who actually knew how to take his time pleasuring a woman. By the time I was under him, gazing down at the back of his incredibly sexy legs, an electric shock went through me, and for the first time in my life, I orgasmed. So that’s the story of my first New York hookup. We parted in the morning, wishing each other well, and I even made it back to the boarding house in time for breakfast. A perfect sexual encounter with a happy ending.

I’m telling you this, John, because what Michael Linnit made me feel that night is nothing compared to how you made me feel when you conducted Elgar’s Bach Fantasia in Sydney three years ago. I’m not kidding. I had just fallen in love with you when I saw you shimmy to a Jule Styne tune in some video… But this time (it was about 2 weeks later) there was only you and the music on the radio. I’m not even crazy about Elgar, I was waiting for your Prokofiev. But I was so keyed up—for the past couple of weeks I had been vibrating with desire for you—that when a certain chord was played in the Elgar, a wave rolled through me, it was just so yummy… But that wasn’t all. As I lay there gasping, a little voice in my head went, You fool! Don’t you remember who’s doing this? And so I came again, this orgasm coming over me like a wave meant to drown…and I reached for you and knocked the lamp off the night table.

One day I’ll tell you about the other times (Vaughan Williams, Richard Rodgers). But I just wanted to let you know now how much you’ve meant to me, how much you still mean, even when you’re not wearing full dress.

Elgar GirlAbove Cantara and her lust: Elgar’s Bach Fantasia played by the BBCSO under Leonard Slatkin. And here’s the score.

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The Bernstein Film That SHOULD Have Been: Leonard Bernstein’s True Love

My former nemesis, Hollywood producer-writer Naomi Foner Gyllenhaal (see Stephen Gyllenhaal), for years tried to get her project for son Jake Gyllenhaal off the ground: a film based on Bernstein’s decades-long love affair with an Israeli journalist-soldier-actor named Azaria Rapoport—the drama culminating in the 1981 premiere in Jerusalem of the conductor’s 16-minute piece for flute and orchestra, Halil (meaning flute), dedicated to young Israeli flutist-soldier (every Israeli is considered a front-line soldier) Yadin Tanenbaum, killed in the Yom Kippur war. The film was to be called Nocturne, which is how Bernstein himself described this work.

Above: Halil by Leonard Bernstein (Moscow, Maria Fedotova soloist)

But now I understand there’s a new movie out about my beloved rabbi of music that turns him into nothing more than half of some concocted New York glamour couple. Kind of like that smart-alecky piece by journalist Tom Wolfe, Radical Chic and Mau-Mauing the Flak Catchers, which was required reading in high school in Minneapolis, circa 1970; we were not-so-subtly encouraged to side with the Black Panthers (which was okay, my first boyfriend was a Black Panther) while snickering at Lenny and Felicia. This did not sit well with me at 15, a faithful viewer of Bernstein’s monthly Young People’s Concerts (all episodes here) on CBS Sunday afternoons (1958-1972). Call me a Lenny groupie, more or less. Just like Lydia Tár.

FULL DRESS // A gifted mesmerist—a sinister composer—a naive young conductor from the north…inspired by an episode from the life of Rachmaninoff // DOWNLOAD FREE BOOK POSTER

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A Special Letter Featuring Scott Fitzgerald to My Beloved John Wilson, After His Appearance with the Sinfonia of London at The Glasshouse, Gateshead UK, 11 November 2023

See the name up in the title of this posting, The Glasshouse? Got it right this time. The only reason I kept the out-of-date jpg up on your schedule, John, is because I love this picture of Gateshead so much and got too lazy to change to the new name. Expect that pic to crop up again in some other impersonation in the future.

Number two. This picture. Okay, I will admit to a sudden unexpected and totally unfamiliar onrush of an irrational emotion. But if you don’t understand how you get to me there’s no hope for you or your generation.

Number three. This picture. An honest artistic statement. Yeah I stole your selfie. Come and get me, coppers.

Number four. The matter at hand. I got the strong impression last night, John, that you were still in Gateshead (you’ve probably finished your Liverpool gig by now) and needed some sort of psychic “Daphne Moon” boost from me. Glad to oblige. I’ll tell you the story, long overdue, of how my dad and mom met and got married. It has to do with two of my aunties not-really-aunties-but-older-cousins—years of letter writing—and the Jai-Alai Building in Manila…

Shoot, time passes…now I’ve got to go be with Mister Grumble for a while. Tonight we’re listening to (my baby angel’s blind, remember?) the near-beginning of The United States of Socialism by Dinesh D’Souza; the middle of The Con Man by Ed McBain (“Mendo-zaaaaaaaah!”); and the last chapter of The Simulacra by Philip K Dick. Oh! And streaming the fifth season of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine.

I’ll return on my next writing day, which fortunately is tomorrow.

I see they’re making you travel from Gateshead down west to Liverpool and then back up north to Glasgow and then back down to Nottingham and finally over to Manchester. Jeez, what a schedule for you and your people.

So you want to hear more about my dad. Okay! I’ve owed you this for a while, sorry for the lateness, juggling a lot of balls, including a heart episode, not to winge. Continuing what I wrote in “25 May—Two Birthdays: My Dad’s and My Beloved English Conductor John Wilson’s“…

Well, after that whole thing about not being able to marry the woman he wanted to because of the miscegenation laws of the state of California, my dad and his white fiancee (never found out her name but it was the late 1940s so I bet it was something pretty like Helen or Margaret) went back to her home in Missouri where, like in most of the interior states, there were no legal barriers.

[4:30pm 13 Nov 2023 Pacific Time. Have to go now, Mister Grumble’s dictating his new novel to me, his sixth…be back as soon as I can…]

Mister Grumble is calling his latest novel The Last Bohemia. It’s about our old neighborhood, New York’s East Village, during the cheap-rent artsy 1980s. I’m really looking forward to it.

Back to my dad. So John, the marriage didn’t work out, of course, name me another interracial couple who made it work in the midwest in the 1940s-50s. So when they broke up in St Louis, my dad I guess was at a crossroads. There were two things he knew how to do, box (he was a small-time prizefighter in California in the 20s, a flyweight like his hero, Filipino 1923 champion-over-Welshman-Jimmy-Wilde, Pancho Villa)—and cook.

This is where that Minneapolis railroad tycoon comes in and where the story enters F Scott Fitzgerald country in more ways than one.

[2:20pm 14 Nov 2023 Pacific Time. If it doesn’t rain I promised to take Mister Grumble out for a beer, he can’t go out anymore by himself. (He has a red-tipped cane, but sighted people just don’t pay attention and the sidewalks are too littered anyway.) Still, the IPAs here are pretty good, so… ]

[WHOEVER’S READING THIS WHO ISN’T JOHN: If you’re around him during this tour and you can pass him a couple words when he won’t bite your head off, just let him know CANTARA GOT HIS DAPHNE and will try to write more soon. Right now I’ve got to talk about Kennedy]

FULL DRESS // A gifted mesmerist—a sinister composer—a naive young conductor from the north…inspired by an episode from the life of Rachmaninoff // DOWNLOAD FREE BOOK POSTER

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The Equalizer Comes to New York’s East Village, Plus Stewart Copeland’s Theme Music

With the coolest theme on American TV, The Equalizer introduced Copeland’s stunningly unique sound to the mainstream audience. In keeping with the series’ mash-up concept of “tradition merged with New Age high tech,” Copeland’s musical accompaniment would, one: with the exception of hero Robert McCall himself, forego the Wagnerian structure of identifiable leitmotifs, and instead choose to score the city of New York itself as a primary character; and, two: fuse classical structure with the combo of  “percussion carrying melody and synthesized strings” attached to world rhythms. Copeland’s would be a coldly ethereal yet dense “urban ballet” sound inexorably linked to the modern cityscape. This sound would influence composers such as Hans Zimmer and Thomas Newman.

610 East 9th Street NYCThey shot several episodes in my old neighborhood, the East Village, at great risk to star Woodward (two heart attacks and once he fell through an apartment building roof–not ours thankfully). That’s 610 East 9th Street, where we lived 1981-86. Rent for our 4-room inc full kitchen and full bathroom, 2 bedrooms and 1 living room, facing street: $250/m. You read that right. $250 a month.

Copeland was born in 1952. The son of CIA officer Miles Copeland, Jr (who appears as a character in Norman Mailer’s epic spy novel Harlot’s Ghost), he took up the drums at 12, was raised internationally in Cairo, Beirut, the US and England; and throughout the 1970s alternately worked as road manager and backup drummer for various groups until founding in 1977, along with Sting and Henry Padovani (later replaced by Andy Summers), the English progressive rock band The Police. After The Police went on extended hiatus in 1986, the drummer with a composer’s sensibilities dove headlong into scoring—to this day, one of his most notable works is as musical voice of The Equalizer, on which he composed 51 of 88 total episodes of the series.

FULL DRESS // A gifted mesmerist—a sinister composer—a naive young conductor from the north…inspired by an episode from the life of Rachmaninoff // DOWNLOAD FREE BOOK POSTER

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Things I Did for Love of Geordie John Wilson, 1: Watched Get Carter (British MGM 1971, Mike Hodges Director) and Sarah Millican; and Listened to, But Didn’t Watch, The Orville

This is all to do with my beloved John Wilson, Conductor being from Gateshead. Except for that Seth MacFarlane show.

Sarah Millican first. Tried listening to this fast-talking comedienne from nearby South Shields the middle of 2019 but could not keep up with her pace or her accent. Later I started watching old episodes of Auf Wiedersehn Pet, The Likely Lads, Byker Grove (which starred BGT presenters Ant & Dec when they were kids), and now one of my favorite shows ever on television, Our Friends In the North (all episodes here) etc etc but they’re just so…masculine, you know? Which I suspect probably pretty much characterizes Geordie culture anyway… So I started alternating watching that show with When the Boat Comes In, which was more successful for me, as the estimable Northumbria-born actress Jean Heywood provided a good model of what a feminine northeast accent sounds like. After her it was a snap to follow Millican.

Second, The Orville, Seth MacFarlane’s Star Trek-like TV series. Like the 70s folksinger says, “I’m a stoner, I’m a trekker, I’m a young sky walker…” So yeh, I’d be interested in watching this show just to see if it measures up to the standards of my youth. Unfortunately, none of MacFarlane’s (post-Family Guy) projects ever sound interesting enough for me to overcome my intense personal dislike for him. So…maybe later. I did, however, listen to the show’s theme music, which was written by Andrew Cottee, the same young man who wrote some arrangements for The John Wilson Orchestra over in England. The theme does everything expected of it.

Third, Get Carter, starring Michael Caine and the City of Newcastle. Made this movie last on my list because it deserves two paragraphs, being the British noir classic that it is…

Sidebar: As we all now know from film school, existentialism is the engine of noir, which means that petty details like Michael Caine speaking in a thick Cockney accent* when his character’s supposed to be from Newcastle-upon-Tyne oughtn’t to matter to the sophisticated auditor. But I had a problem. I’m sorry. Three years ago I wouldn’t have cared, one Brit being the same as any other. Then I fell in love with John Wilson, a Low Fell lad, and individuality suddenly became a very important thing to me.

The Movie Overall: Not quite sure why the filmmakers transplanted novelist Ted Lewis’s story from his original setting in Lincolnshire (Lewis’s birthplace), to Tyneside, but since it’s the classic story of the Anti-Hero’s Revenge, which works anytime, anyplace, it does fine here. Michael Caine’s a little podgy but quick with his reflexes and still a treat for the ladies. Lots of sex and violence, lots of local atmosphere, local faces, and landmarks like Tyne Bridge, the Newcastle Racecourse and, of course, the carpark across the Tyne River.

The Carpark in Gateshead Scene: By a stroke of luck Get Carter was just streamed on Criterion so I watched the entire movie, then to make sure, watched the carpark scene twice more in order to understand why it so sticks in the mind. Because it does, you know, even though I’m not a fan of movies like this. I guess it’s because there’s rather a high elegance to this scene that contrasts with all the mundaneness and phony poshness around it… Very arty, but a genuine statement. Or maybe it’s just because I like watching Michael Caine get all riled up.

EXTRA! Mark Steel’s in Gateshead. Say no more.

The now torn-down carpark at Trinity Square in Gateshead in this famous scene was a dreary piece of English Brutalist architecture that, according to its creator, was never meant to stand the test of time anyway. That’s the theme to The Orville above.

*I understand that a stage version of Get Carter was recently performed in Newcastle, with Carter’s accent spoken correctly.

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Stephen Sondheim, Earl Wrightson, and Irwin Kostal, Leonard Bernstein’s Legendary Orchestrator, On American Musical Theatre, WCBS, 15 October 1961

In an episode of this television series (available on my YT channel here), originally broadcast exclusively in New York City, Sondheim speaks before a workshop of NYC high school students, discussing the genesis of such songs as “Small World”, “I Feel Pretty”, and “One Hand, One Heart,” which are performed by Martha Wright and Ralph Curtis.

This show also includes question and answer period with Irwin Kostal, arranger and conductor for West Side Story. Hosted by Earl Wrightson. Produced by Ned Cramer. Directed by Neal Finn.

  • Everything’s Coming Up Roses – The CBS Orchestra
  • Small World – Martha Wright
  • Maria – Ralph Curtis
  • I Feel Pretty – Martha Wright
  • Tonight (Balcony Scene) – Ralph Curtis and Martha Wright
  • One Hand, One Heart – Ralph Curtis and Martha Wright
  • Mambo – The CBS Orchestra
  • Cool (Fugue) – The CBS Orchestra
  • Everything’s Coming Up Roses (reprise) – The CBS Orchestra

Sondheim, Wrightson, KostalAbove: Lyricist-Composer Stephen Sondheim, Baritone/Host Earl Wrightson, Orchestrator-Conductor Irwin Kostal. Again, here’s the clip on YT that provides a rare glimpse into the creative life of Sondheim and Kostal.

Here’s an excerpt transcription:

Mr Kostal, what is the difference between an orchestrator and an arranger?

It refers specifically to what you find on the music. When a composer composes a piece of music, we hope that it’s a complete piece of music, and when a man like Mr Bernstein composes the music (short laugh) it is. So all you do, you just discuss with him what he’d like to hear, flutes, violins…and you follow exactly what is written on the paper. This is what I call orchestration. Now, I get to do very little of that kind of work…because nowadays composers don’t bother with too much detail…

Steve [Sondheim] here is the kind of man we need because he’s studying music, and believe me that is a rarity on Broadway, because most composers don’t… At one time in history, composers actually did their own orchestration. They had the time in those days…but also, they could do it. For instance, Victor Herbert was a tremendous orchestrator. On one television show I did recently I actually used Mr Herbert’s scores as he wrote them in 1916—I couldn’t do ‘em any better. He knew what he was doing. Kurt Weill was the last one to do this. George Gershwin never did it on Broadway, but he—after he became a successful songwriter—studied music and learned how to orchestrate so that by the time he did Porgy and Bess he was able to do a very good job on the orchestrations.

Now, in arranging—if the composer does not do his job properly, the orchestrator has to come in and finish the job for him. Now, you’d be surprised how many times I do Broadway shows where I get roughly a one-line melody, a lead sheet, and I have to add the bass line, the harmony, the chords, and if it goes on for four minutes or a routine I have to think of things for the flutes to play and the violins to play etcetera, and it becomes a hefty job and I really feel like I am a composer’s partner when I do this*… You know, the more you do of this sort of work, the less the composer likes it. Because he’s kind of mad at you because he didn’t do it himself, I think anyway. And it serves him right. He should do it himself. I think he should go to school himself and learn. We have too many lead sheets—sure, the melody is the most important thing in music, but too many of our composers have decided to write only the melody. They have separated melody from music. Now, the art of melody writing is not a separate art from music, it’s a part of music. And when they have written this top line and leave the rest to me, they’ve got to be dissatisfied because they didn’t do it themselves. Let them get down to their business and go to school and learn to write!

[*I wonder who’s he’s talking about. Shinbone Alley’s George Kleinsinger? Fiorello’s Jerry Bock? Surely not The Music Man’s Meredith Willson—Willson went to Juilliard.]

FULL DRESS // A gifted mesmerist—a sinister composer—a naive young conductor from the north…inspired by an episode from the life of Rachmaninoff // DOWNLOAD FREE BOOK POSTER

PATREON

Posted on by Cantara Christopher · 3 Comments

Letter to Leonard Bernstein from Felicia Montealegre, Late 1951

An extremely private but deeply moving letter, published in a collection by Yale U Press in 2013. This was written around the time she had just married Bernstein and was still acting in television (watch Felicia as Mildred in Of Human Bondage on Studio One on my YT channel here):

Lenny and FeliciaAbove the newlyweds: Bernstein’s early piano composition, “Four Anniversaries: 1. For Felicia”

Darling,

If I seemed sad as you drove away today it was not because I felt in any way deserted but because I was left alone to face myself and this whole bloody mess which is our “connubial” life. I’ve done a lot of thinking and have decided that it’s not such a mess after all.

First: we are not committed to a life sentence—nothing is really irrevocable, not even marriage (though I used to think so).

Second: you are a homosexual and may never change—you don’t admit to the possibility of a double life, but if your peace of mind, your health, your whole nervous system depend on a certain sexual pattern what can you do?

Third: I am willing to accept you as you are, without being a martyr or sacrificing myself on the L.B. altar. (I happen to love you very much—this may be a disease and if it is what better cure?) It may be difficult but no more so than the “status quo” which exists now—at the moment you are not yourself and this produces painful barriers and tensions for both of us—let’s try and see what happens if you are free to do as you like, but without guilt and confession, please!

As for me—once you are rid of tensions I’m sure my own will disappear. A companionship will grow which probably no one else may be able to offer you. The feelings you have for me will be clearer and easier to express—our marriage is not based on passion but on tenderness and mutual respect. Why not have them?

I know now too that I need to work. It is a very important part of me and I feel incomplete without it. I may want to do something about it soon. I am used to an active life, and then there is that old ego problem.

We may have gotten married too soon and yet we needed to get married and we’ve not made a mistake. It is good for us even if we suffer now and make each other miserable—we will both grow up some day and be strong and unafraid either together or apart—after all we are both more important as individuals than a “marriage” is.

In any case my dearest darling ape, let’s give it a whirl. There’ll be crisis (?) from time to time but that doesn’t scare me any more. And let’s relax in the knowledge that neither of us is perfect and forget about being HUSBAND AND WIFE in such strained capital letters, it’s not that awful!

There’s a lot else I’ve got to say but the pill has overpowered me. I’ll write again soon. My wish for the week is that you come back guiltless and happy.

~F

from The Leonard Bernstein Letters
edited by Nigel Simeone
Yale University Press, 2013

FULL DRESS // A gifted mesmerist—a sinister composer—a naive young conductor from the north…inspired by an episode from the life of Rachmaninoff // DOWNLOAD FREE BOOK POSTER

PATREON

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Ravel’s Piano Concerto for the Left Hand in D Played by the Royal College of Music Symphony Orchestra Conducted by John Wilson, October 2018

The 19th episode of the 8th season of the long-running Korean-wartime sitcom M*A*S*H entitled “Morale Victory” (clip available on my YT channel) is mostly pretty silly—but! Get through all the A-story shenanigans and there’s a surprisingly tight and moving B-story about a wounded soldier/concert pianist which culminates in a 3 1/2 minute scene that always makes me cry. David Ogden Stiers (Juilliard, ’72) plays Dr Winchester and James Stephens plays his patient.

Above: Maurice Ravel’s Piano Concerto for the Left Hand in D Major (1938) performed by the Royal College of Music Symphony Orchestra conducted by John Wilson, with piano solo by Nikola Avramovic. Plus watch the clip on my YT channel here.

(Winchester wheels David into the squalid hut that is the officers+enlisted club)
David: What are we doing here, doctor? I don’t want a drink.
Winchester: Good. Because you’re not gonna get one.
(Wheels him close to the piano)
David: What the hell is this all about?
Winchester: Please, David. (from manila envelope takes out sheet music) I’m sure you’ve heard of these, eh?
David: (glances at them) Pieces for the left hand. Of course I’ve heard of them. What are you suggesting now? That I make a career out of a few freak pieces written for one hand?
Winchester: Not at all. I won’t make any pretense about your physical ability to play concerts. That’s not my point. Are you familiar with the story behind the Ravel?
David: No, and I don’t really—
Winchester: It was written for an Austrian concert pianist named Paul Wittgenstein. He lost his arm during the First World War. He embarked on a long search to commission piano works for the left hand alone. Composer after composer turned him down. But he refused to give up. Finally, he found Ravel who, like him, was willing to accept this great challenge.
(Beat; David considers this)
Winchester: Don’t you see? Your hand may be stilled, but your gift cannot be silenced if you refuse to let it be.
David: Gift? You keep talking about this damn gift. I HAD a gift! And I exchanged it for some mortar fragments, remember?
Winchester: Wrong! Because the gift does not lie in your hands! I have hands, David. Hands that can make a scalpel sing. More than anything in my life I wanted to play. (sighs) But I do not have the gift. I can play the notes, but I cannot make the music. You’ve performed Liszt, Rachmaninoff, Chopin. Even if you never do so again, you’ve already known a joy that I will never know as long as I live! Because the true gift is in your head and in your heart and in your soul. Now, you can shut it off forever, or you can find new ways to share your gift with the world, through the baton, the classroom, the pen. (points to sheet music) As to these works, they’re for you, because you and the piano will always be as one.
(Winchester sees a spark of interest in David and moves him closer to the keyboard. With a look of determination, David begins to play the Ravel. Winchester’s face registers intense emotions, including joy)

FULL DRESS // A gifted mesmerist—a sinister composer—a naive young conductor from the north…inspired by an episode from the life of Rachmaninoff // DOWNLOAD FREE BOOK POSTER

PATREON

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Rodgers & Hammerstein’s Cinderella Starring Julie Andrews, CBS-TV 1957

We all need a visit from the Empress of Delight every so often. So—here she is in all her youthful splendor, about to be kissed by handsome Jon Cypher.

Julie Andrews, Jon Cypher in Cinderella 1957Above Dame Julie and her Prince Charming: The entire audio of R+H’s 1957 original TV musical, Cinderella.

FULL DRESS // A gifted mesmerist—a sinister composer—a naive young conductor from the north…inspired by an episode from the life of Rachmaninoff // DOWNLOAD FREE BOOK POSTER

PATREON

Posted on by Cantara Christopher

Lalo Schifrin’s Other Theme; Armenians in California; Black Actresses on 60s TV; a Seminal American Stage Work; and LA PI Beefcake

Mannix (1967-1975) was a long-running private-eye American TV show from the dynamo team of Geller-Link-Levinson. It was popular for several reasons, one being Mike Connors’s Hirsute Sex Appeal (here pictured); not to mention the show’s viscerally satisfying action scenes (Mister Beefcake gets beaten up a lot); its swingy, sexy theme composed by none other than Lalo “Mission: Impossible” Schifrin; and, not least, for Joe Mannix’s lovely secretary, Peggy Fair.

Peggy Fair (Gail Fisher) was a character very much in the tradition of capable cool-headed female helpmeets to the main investigator guy (think Della Street or Effie Perrine). In the mid-60s there was a bouquet of gorgeous black actresses in regular roles on prime time: Fisher; Diahann Carroll starring as Julia; and of course, Nichelle Nichols as Uhura in Star Trek. Not to mention there were frequent small-screen guest appearances by stage stars like Ruby Dee and Diana Sands and TV stalwarts like Mimi Dillard. And you know, looking back, I think I noticed these actresses particularly because they all reminded me of one particular black girl I had a crush on from her photos and her work, who’d died in the mid-60s only a few years after her historic stage triumph:

“MikeAbove sweet Lorraine Hansberry (1930-1965), playwright, author of the seminal American stage drama, A Raisin In the Sun: Lalo Schifrin’s tuneful syncopated 6/8 that’s the theme for Mannix, played by his orchestra.

Remembering the TV show Mannix also brings me back to something I quickly realized after moving to the Golden State: When you come to California, more sooner than later you will run into an Armenian. Heck, one of my first secretarial jobs in LA was for Tbilisi-born Rouben Mamoulian. Connors (1925-2017), who was born Krekor Ohanian in Armenian-strong Fresno, claimed to be a distant cousin of William Saroyan, author of The Time of Your Life and The Human Comedy, among other classic dramas of mid-20th century America.

Saroyan once made a memorable statement, “Wheresoever two Armenians meet, there is Armenia.” Which is something I’d like to apply to Filipinos as well.

FULL DRESS // A gifted mesmerist—a sinister composer—a naive young conductor from the north…inspired by an episode from the life of Rachmaninoff // DOWNLOAD FREE BOOK POSTER

PATREON