a review of Daniel Okulitch

Publication: Journal of Singing Author: Berg, Gregory Date published: September 1, 2012 Daniel Okulitch: The New American Art Song. Daniel Okulitch, baritone; Ricky Ian Gordon, Jake Heggie, Lowell Liebermann, Glen Roven, piano. (GPR Records GPRB004SKJZ0Y; 70:48) Ricky Ian Gordon: Quiet Lives: "Bus Stop," "Three Floors," "The Crazy Woman," "Virginia Woolf," "Interior," "As Planned," "Kid in the Park," "Lullaby." Jake Heggie: Of Gods and Cats: "In the Beginning," "Once Upon a Universe." Glen Hoven: Songs from the Underground "He Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven," "Ozymandias," "The Expulsion from Eden," "Like a Beacon," "Composed upon Westminister Bridge," "Teeth," "This is Just to Say," "What am I After All," "Song," "London Airport," "The Leader," "Knightsbridge Ballade," "Come to the Edge," "London Airport, reprise," "In My Craft or Sullen Art." Lowell Liebermann: Night Songs. "Good Night," "She Tells Her Love While Half Asleep," "A Variation on 'To Say To Go To Sleep'." This release may be the most exciting and impressive art song recording of the last decade, thanks to the superlative calibre of songs it contains and the marvelous singer who brings them thrillingly to life. Baritone Daniel Okulitch is among the most highly regarded artists of his generation, with an impressive resumé that includes the role of Schaunard in Baz Luhrmann's groundbreaking Broadway production of La bohème from a decade ago. Although the charismatic Okulitch has won great acclaim in such mainstream roles as Don Giovanni and Figaro, his greatest headlines thus far came as the star of Howard Shore's science fiction opera The Fly, in which he appeared completely naked in one critical scene. The baring of his powerful physique may have attracted some extra attention to the L.A. Opera's production, but what garnered the most meaningful praise for Okulitch was his heart-rending portrayal of the tragic scientist Seth Brundle, while contending with a difficult and largely ungrateful musical score. It was the kind of accomplishment that an ordinary artist could not have hoped to achieve, and one can only hope-and, if there is any justice in this world, expect-that many more such opportunities will be his. Most singers resist comparisons with colleagues and counterparts, no matter how illustrious, but one hopes that Okulitch would not mind being compared to the superb American baritone Walter Cassel. His long and distinguished career included impressive stints at both the Metropolitan Opera and New York City Opera, roles in several Hollywood musicals, and a plethora of performances in live music theater. That thorough blending of genres surely helped Cassel hone a singing style that combined operatic grandeur with down-to-earth humanity, a style that served him especially well in creating the role of Horace Tabor in The Ballad of Baby Doe. His artistic assets included a glorious voice, authentic expressiveness, and diction that was beyond reproach. Okulitch's work here, while uniquely his own, is sometimes eerily reminiscent of his highly regarded predecessor, and one anticipates that Okulitch will ultimately enjoy success of similar dimensions. He is certainly already on his way. Thus far this discussion has been limited to the singer headlining this project, but it is the dazzling quartet of composers at hand that most dramatically distinguishes this recital from the run of the mill. Ricky Ian Gordon and Jake Heggie scarcely require a word of introduction for anyone conversant in modern opera and art song; they are the cream of the crop. Lowell Liebermann is a more familiar name in instrumental circles, with a host of highly acclaimed works to his credit, but the success of his opera The Picture of Dorian Gray leads one to hope that many more vocal works are in his future. The fourth composer, Glen Roven, may be the least familiar to JOS readers, but his resumé includes two presidential inaugural gala concerts, the one-woman shows of Liza Minnellli and Patti LuPone, the final televised appearances of Frank Sinatra and Sammy Davis, Jr., and conducting everyone from Placido Domingo to Hootie and the Blowfish. He has also fashioned his own English translations of several Mozart operas and Schubert's Winterreise, and his many original compositions include highly regarded works inspired by classic children's books like Runaway Bunny and Goodnight Moon. Roven also happens to be the artistic director for GPR Records, so he as much as anyone is responsible for assembling these four composers who also serve as pianists for their respective works. Roven's Songs of the Underground is a cycle consisting of fifteen highly diverse songs that demonstrate the composer's inexhaustibly rich imagination and flair for the dramatic. The poems include works by Yeats, Shelley, Milton, Whitman, Auden, Wordsworth, and Dylan Thomas, among others, and Roven treats these texts with discernment and sensitivity. Among the most impressive of these songs is "Ozymandias," a setting of Shelley's poem in which a traveler describes the ruined wreckage of a once mighty statue now half sunk in desert sands. This is one of the songs where Okulitch can unleash the massive majesty of his voice up to high F as he intones the words just barely visible on the statue's pedestal: "My name is Ozymandias, king of kings. Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!" Then the composer strips away the grandeur of the music to a bleak emptiness as we hear these poignant words: "Nothing beside remains. Round the decay of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare, the lone and level sands stretch far away." Roven's vividly illustrative music both puts us at the scene and prompts feelings of contempt as well as sympathy for the arrogance of this now forgotten ruler. Not all of these songs are quite so monumental. "Teeth" is a playful salute to English teeth which ends with diese words: "Let's sing a song of praise to them-Three Cheers for the Brown, Grey and Black!" Roven garbs the poem in music that is off-kilter both harmonically and rhythmically without being so odd as to get in the way. Another fun-loving song is "The Leader," in which someone desperately begs to be the leader (of what exactly we can only guess), only to say upon finally getting what he wants, "Yippee, I'm the leader! Okay, what shall we do?" This song is especially hilarious as its performed here because Okulitch has such a powerful and virile voice, and yet manages the quicksilver quality of this childlike song so effortlessly. Other notable songs include "The Expulsion of Eden," a setting of Milton's intriguing poem that seeks to describe exactly how and with what emotions Adam and Eve exited the Garden of Eden. The driving, slashing musical figures Roven has crafted bring the scene and the couple's pained emotions vividly to life for us. These are just a few of the songs that comprise this fascinating cycle, which one can only hope will be taken up by baritones anywhere and everywhere who are equal to its considerable challenges. The other three works are not nearly so long, yet offer up great pleasures and treasures of their own. Ricky Ian Gordon's Quiet Lives is a superbly crafted set of seven songs that take us inside the lives of some unconventional and misunderstood people. One especially poignant poem, "Interior," describes the house of an older woman who lives alone and wishes to shut out the pain of the outside world. "Her mind lives tidily," so says the poet, "apart from the cold and noise and pain-and bolts the door against her heart out wailing in the rain." In James Schuyler's poem "Virginia Woolf" the narrator wishes that they could have somehow been around on that fateful day in 1941 when writer Virginia Woolf killed herself by drowning. Gordon's music perfectly captures the emotional ambiguity and confusion of the narrator and everyone else trying to make sense of such a tragedy, even after all these years. There is much beautiful music in this set, but nothing lovelier than the flowing lullaby that brings the cycle to an exquisite finish. Jake Heggie's Of Cats and Dogs, by contrast, contains only two songs, but yields more smiles and laughter than the rest of this generous disk combined. "In the Beginning" tells the story of creation from the peculiar perspective of a cat, and at least one passage in the accompaniment perfectly imitates the sound of a cat strolling on the keys of a piano, which is a delicious touch. So is the way the song so adroitly shifts from slinky and sensuous passages to stentorian pronouncements from the Almighty. "Once upon a Universe," on the other hand, paints the amusing yet not quite comprehensible scenario of God being a little kid and being chided by his mother: "Don't play with your creation!" It's a marvelously imaginative text and Heggie runs with it like only he can. Finally, the disk includes Lowell Liebermann's Night Songs, which features music that is a bit more conventional yet incredibly lovely. This is also the only set of the four which holds together with perfect cohesiveness, and in this company that is high praise indeed. It's fair to say that this generous collection does not happen to present as wide a swath of music styles as one might want from a disk audaciously titled "The New American Art Song." One looks in vain for anything that even hints at the avant garde or other styles less accessible than what is to be found here. No, this is meant to be a mainstream celebration of the modern art song as performed by one of our best baritones, accompanied by each of the four illustrious composers represented here. It's a marvelous concept, executed brilliantly. Read more: http://www.readperiodicals.com/201209/2744534491.html#ixzz3HAsKjOSq

Goodnight Moon Syberite 5 Review in Sarasota!

CONCERT REVIEW: Wit, beauty and challenge meet at Forward Festival By Richard Storm , Herald-Tribune / Monday, May 12, 2014 It should be no surprise that Sybarite5, the string quintet founded by a Sarasotan, brought their usual mix of fierce energy, tonal beauty and intellectual challenge to the finale of their Forward Festival — Coming Together, the new festival incorporating both local and international talent. Sybarite5 will collaborate with Key Chorale for concerts that fuse classical music and rock. / COURTESY PHOTO Sybarite5. COURTESY PHOTO Sybarite5, comprised of Sami Merdinian and Sarah Whitney, violins, Angela Pickett, viola, Laura Metcalf, cello, and Sarasota product Louis Levitt on bass, has developed a repertoire that mixes historical landmark music with the newest output from Led Zeppelin, Radiohead, and Andy Akiho, the chamber music star of today. Akiho's "Revolve" had its world premiere at this event; Radiohead's "No Surprises" was heard in a lovely and touching arrangement for string quintet, created after the ensemble had performed the original with Key Chorale in Sarasota in an event titled "Mozart Meets Radiohead." Joined by the Sarasota-based Chroma Quartet (Christopher Takeda and Jennifer Best Takeda, violins, Michael McClelland, viola, and Abe Feder, cello) the ensemble grew in intensity and impact. Chroma Quartet / COURTESY PHOTO Chroma Quartet / COURTESY PHOTO In this combination we heard a glowing performance of Claude Debussy's Sacred and Profane Dances performed brilliantly by harpist Cheryl Losey; Osvoldo Golijov's new-tango "Last Round;" and "Coming Together" by Frederick Rzewski;,a strong musical interpretation of the festival's title, in which the combined strings were joined by Blythe Gaissert, soprano, George Nickson, percussion and Djordje Nesic, piano. Blythe Gaissert-Levitt / COURTESY PHOTO Blythe Gaissert-Levitt / COURTESY PHOTO Gaissert's impressively lyric mezzo-soprano was both touching and inspiring in her rendition of Margaret Wise Brown's children's story "Good Night, Moon," newly set to music by Glen Roven specifically for the festival. However, although her singing was not part of the compelling tonal fabric of "Coming Together," her beautiful speaking voice (occasionally joined by those of the ensemble) was riveting as the drama grew and touched our souls. All in all, this was another milestone in Sarasota's growth as an arts destination. CONCERT REVIEW GALA FINALE CONCERT. Forward Festival, presented by Sybarite5. Reviewed May 11 at Holley Hall. CONCERT REVIEW GALA FINALE CONCERT. Forward Festival, presented by Sybarite5. Reviewed May 11 at Holley Hall. avatar RICHARD STORM Richard Storm writes about classical musical and opera for ArtsSarasota.com. Make sure to "Like" Arts Sarasota on Facebook for news and reviews of the arts.

from Huffington Post ART ISN'T EASY

ART ISN’T EASY With blogs posting almost daily about how opera is dying or dead, with even the head of the Metropolitan Opera, in a pre-strike negotiating tactic (that badly misfired) claiming, “Grand opera is in itself a kind of a dinosaur of an art form,” I was over the moon with the all the attention given to the Met’s production of The Death of Klinghoffer: articles on the front page of major newspapers across the country, world-wide television coverage, huge protests at the opening night. In an obviously bad choice of a cliché, I might say “Now that’s good for the Jews!” Well, for the world of opera anyway. I admit it: I am one of those who think any kind of publicity is good. And when was the last time an opera made the front page of The NY Times? Understand that I also love when actors make political speeches on Award Shows. I believe that if you have an audience of a billion people, say something important. Don’t thank your agent. I remember as a little kid the first time I heard the word Apartheid was when Stevie Wonder talked about it on the Grammy’s. Despite my enthusiasm for all things politically incorrect, I was completely surprised by my reaction to Klinghoffer. I was invited to the dress rehearsal and arrived with certain pre-conceived notions. One was that it was going to be much less controversial than the protestors were saying because after all, it’s “only an opera” and the protester fully admitted they had not seen the piece. Two, I believed I wouldn’t much care for the music. Wrong on both accounts. I was in shock! It was so much more political than I thought. In fact, even though I’ve spent thirty years seeing theater, I don’t think I’ve every seen a production as political. And while it wasn’t all that anti-Israel to me, it was incredibly pro-Palestinian. When the lead terrorist Molqi sings (underscored by desperate music), “We are not criminals and we are not vandals, but men of ideals,” it is clear that the opera is asking for us to understand these men and sympathize. I won’t soon forget the scene at the end of Act One where the Palestinians were singing against what I could only assume is the wall erected to keep Palestinian terrorists out of the county, and hundreds of projections of pro-Palestinian graffiti (and anti-Israel) kept bombarding the audience with slogan after slogan while enormous green flags waved and the chorus sang about “their” land at the top of their voices. This was the type of patriotic song that every country in the world has, a song of love of one’s country, one’s land, coupled the dream of never surrendering, with pulsating violins, trumpets blaring and timpani pounding. Very powerful stuff. But very one sided. The composer and librettist of the opera were quoted as how the opera is fair and balanced, not really favoring one side or the other. Here’s a rule: never, never, never believe what a composer or librettist tell the press. Listen to the music; that’s where they reveal their true feelings. To be clear, I am politically pro-Israel. I love the country and have conducted there many times. The pro-Palestinian politics of this opera did not make me feel any more sympathy for their cause. But I was thrilled to see this huge, emotional statement. For what is opera anyway but huge, over the top, emotional statements? Will it make the Zionists rethink the necessity for a Jewish state? No. Will it change the minds of people who believe a two-state situation is the only answer to the violence? No. Will it make both sides think, even the tiniest bit about the other side? Doubtful. But will it draw more attention the conflict that has existed in Israel for many, many years? Definitely. And that attention has been generated by a work of art, an opera. Good! As for my other surprise, I loved the music. And that made me very happy. After all, no matter what anyone says or does, opera is about the music And this score is spectacular: choral writing to raise the rafters, incandescent and powerful arias, funny comic turns, and magnificently dense orchestral writing. Everything a great opera needs. While I’ve enjoyed certain minimalist pieces, Adams’s Slow Ride in a Fast Machine, and the Jerome Robbins and Philip Glass ballet, Glass Pieces, I’ve never enjoyed minimalist operas. Nixon in China gave me a headache and I left after the first act. I liked Adams’s Doctor Atomic a bit better, but mainly because of the production and the cast, certainly not because of the score. From the first notes of the “Palestinian Chorus,” with its mysterious F-minor chords that shimmer like the desert sun, I was hooked. Yes, it had the minimalist underpinnings, but what caught my attention were the gorgeous melodies in the orchestra and in the choral writing. With the counter-point, the harmonies, the colors, the music felt more than contemporary; it felt ageless. The musical building-up to the shooting was cataclysmic, almost unbearably spine tingling, like a minimalist Verdi. Mrs. Klinghoffer’s final aria was a tour de force for the mezzo-soprano Michaela Martens, so powerful it certainly added weight to Jewish side of the political scale. But not nearly enough for there to be anything resembling balance. Sadly, I couldn’t be at the opening to experience the event. I was at a fund- raiser where we spent the better part of our meal discussing this opera. A friend who had seen it before at BAM complained about a scene set in New Jersey where Jews bicker endlessly and loudly. I told him it had been cut. (Opera composers are certainly allowed to revise—the original Madama Butterfly was a flop. I don’t know why they revised Klinghoffer so I can’t say if they had ceded to criticism or not.) Our dinner conversation got quite heated even venturing into a discussion of The Merchant of Venice and whether or not Shakespeare harbored anti-Semitic feelings or whether Shylock was an empathetic character. I thought, well that doesn’t happen every day! Then as our main course was served, my cell phone started buzzing. I started to get blow-by-blow text messages from a friend who was at the Met: “Helicopters overhead!” “A protestor just interrupted the show.” “Another Scream.” But the SMS I was most happy to receive was the last: “Huge standing ovation. The audience is going crazy!” Metzuyan! (That’s Hebrew, Google-translate it!) Glen Roven is an Emmy-award winning composer who is also Artistic Director of GPRrecords.

A rave review for THE VINEYARD SONGS!!!!!!!!

New Music Collective Concert on April 18, 2014, at Spectrum (NYC Lower East Side) Posted on: April 20th, 2014 by Art Leonard No Comments I was invited to attend the concert presented under the auspices of New Music Collective at Spectrum on April 18 by Glen Roven, composer-conductor-record producer extraordinaire. We became acquainted when Glen was commissioned to contribute a song to the 5 Boroughs Music Festival’s Songbook and I attended one of the presentations of that project. His GPR Records is making an important contribution to preserving and advancing American art song as performed by exciting young performers. So when he invited me to attend this concert to hear the premiere of his new song cycle, The Vineyard Songs, Op. 33, by soprano Laura Strickling and Michael Brofman, I resolved to go despite my unfamiliarity with the venue. Spectrum is a second-story floor-through apartment in an ancient narrow building on Ludlow Street, just a few blocks from where my great-grandfather Jacob Cohen had his tailor shop when he arrived in the New World around 1920. So I get an eerie feeling walking around in this neighborhood, knowing that an ancestor who died long before I was born once walked those streets and, given the age of the buildings in the neighborhood, saw many of the same sights I was seeing as I scurried eastward on DeLancey Street to get there in time for the concert. I was familiar with only three composer names on the program: Glen Roven, of course, Steven Gerber, and Lowell Lieberman. I’d say that of the three Lieberman is the one who has broken through into the more general consciousness of music lovers to the greatest extent, but his inclusion on this program actually seemed a bit out of place, since he was represented by three of the “Four Etudes on Songs of Robert Franz,” charmingly rendered by pianist Miori Sugiyama, which sounded like relatively faithful piano transcriptions of 19th century lieder, not early 21st century creations! First things first: Glen’s song cycle is gorgeous. He has set verses by Judith B. Herman, Justen Ahern and Angela M. Franklin, evoking the experience of spending time on the island of Martha’s Vineyard. I’ve never been to the Vineyard, so I can’t attest to the accuracy of the feelings summoned up by this melding of verse and music, but I know a fine song cycle when I hear one, and this is a fine song cycle, expertly performed for this world premiere. My enthusiasm for American art song dates to my college years, when I fell deeply for Charles Ives’s songs. Ives really invented the naturalistic setting of idiomatic American verse, liberating us from the constraints of England’s folksong and Germanic-Mendelssohnian precedents, and I heard the same sort of freedom in Glen’s songs. Actually, most of the cycle is concerned with Judith Herman’s songs, six out of the eight numbers, and the two by Ahern and Franklin are the shortest songs, so I would consider this largely a Herman/Roven cycle, and the two combine wonderfully to enhance each other in a unified artistic expression. After the concert, I asked Glen whether these will be recorded, since I want to get to know them better, and he assured me that they would be forthcoming. After all, he pointed out, he owns a record label. . . Happy composer who owns a record label.

ANDY HARDY GROWS UP, the prequel to the NY TIMES Article

Andy Hardy Grows Up by Glen Roven Sugar Babies wasn’t supposed to be a hit. The 1979 Broadway insiders “knew” no one wanted to see two has-been movie stars doing hokey jokes from a long-dead low-brow genre. Yet, it was, a big, fat, lines-around-the-box-office smash. And why? Two words: Mickey Rooney. The show was, however, a disaster in rehearsals. Directors came and went, songs rehearsed in the afternoon were in the trash by 5 PM, the producers kept bringing executives from the movie studio trying to hook them up with the chorus girls instead of paying attention to the show. But most importantly and disastrously, the sketches, those traditional stalwarts of any Burlesque show (meet ya round the corner in a haaaaalf an hour) weren’t funny. To make matters worse, Mickey barely showed up at rehearsal. He’d come in for a few hours, torture whoever was directing the show that day, then simply vanish. Ann Miller would be diligently rehearsing her tap numbers but Mickey was nowhere to be found. The show tried out in San Francisco at the Curran Theater and the technical rehearsals fared no better than rehearsals in New York. Sets weren’t finished, costumes didn’t arrive, the old comics hired couldn’t remember their lines and of course, Mickey was usually MIA. It was with great trepidation that we started the first preview. I conducted the temporary overture and it received tepid applause. Then the curtain went up, a spotlight hit this 5 foot, bald, fat, little old man, but the audience went bananas. They wanted to see him. The needed to see him. The timing of the show seemed to be perfect. The audience remembered him like he was their long lost brother. He wasn’t trying to be young, he wasn’t trying to be a movie star, he was just Mickey Rooney. And that was wonderful. He stood there and the applause was defining. It kept building and building and building. I could see Mickey’s face: he was overwhelmed with the love. Here was a washed up movie star (at 16, the biggest box office draw in the world) whose recent career consisted of doing sex comedies at dinner theater in towns nobody heard of; now he was in a Broadway bound musical and the audience was loving him, without him doing a thing. He couldn’t believe it. I saw it on his face The opening number, where gorgeous chorus girls pulled every old gag in the book (busty nurses wielding enormous hypodermic needs, pants suspenders being cut) was choreographed around Mickey, since he never came to rehearsals; he just had to stand there and the number happened around him. But with this opening applause and his confidence soaring, Mickey took over the number. He was a star reborn and wasn’t going to stand still. He chased the chorus girls, he flirted with them, he looked completely amazed when chorus girls bumped him from the rear, and bumped him again! He did take after take, double take after double take, and the audience was with him completely. That was just the opening number. Then came the first sketch. And miracle of miracles, it was funny. Because of Mickey. He was a natural clown, in the old fashioned sense of the word. His timing was impeccable, his ad libs, hysterical and his facial expressions, priceless. Burlesque is really about dirty old men being lecherous towards pretty young, but busty, girls. Maybe because the audience remember Mickey as Andy Hardy, and we all knew how innocent the judge’s son was, his leering’s didn’t seem all that lascivious. (Remember this was 1979!) He worked the comics on stage, the chorus girls and especially the audience. The old jokes were getting belly laughs. And Mickey was having the time of his life. In a flash, life had turned around. He was a star again. He was in a hit. I have my personal theories about why Mickey was so brilliant in this part. Before he was Andy Hardy, before he was Mickey McGuire, he was Joe Yule, Jr., son of a famous Burlesque comedian whose work has been lost to the sands of time. Mickey wasn’t playing a fictional character who would romp with Judy, he was channeling his father. He was a father (of six) paying tribute to his own father. He was also, in my opinion, a true genius. As he began participating more in the shows development, the entire cast and creative team were stunned as he revealed more and more skills: he could play drums like Buddy Rich, play jazz piano like Gershwin, and of course, could sing and dance with more grace, style and energy, than performers half his age. Perhaps because he was so small, all his talent couldn’t be bottled up in his pint sized body. It had to be released and when it was, it exploded with the energy of an atomic bomb. The creative staff was as shocked by the audience’s reaction as Mickey was. They all thought the show would be Ann’s, probably because she actually had come to rehearsals. But it was clear from the first moment who the real star was and they acted accordingly. All sketches that didn’t involve Mickey were cut, as was a very sweet roller-skating number. The producers thought it wasn’t perhaps the best idea to have their star (and their meal ticket) sliding around on skates when with one wrong bump he could end up on top of the Tuba player in the pit. The biggest change in the show in San Francisco was the addition of the medley of Jimmy McHugh songs. For the first time, Mickey and Ann would come out together and sing. We tried to rehearse this number in NYC (in the toilet of 890 Broadway because there were no walls up yet at the studio) but Mickey never came to rehearsal so we just let it slide. The producers knew that the audience needed Ann and Mickey to do something together. It was still a challenge to get him to rehearsal. He was slated to sing, “I Can’t Give You Anything But Love.” Hugh Martin, the legendary MGM songwriter/arranger was brought in to help. Hugh, who wrote “The Trolley Song” was one of the music coaches at the Little Red School House on the MGM lot where Judy, Elizabeth, Jane, Mickey and Ann all grew up, so he was almost a father figure to Mickey. Around Hugh, Mickey immediately reverted to his fifteen year old self, naughty yes, but respectful. It was Hugh who, trying to get Mickey to focus, (and Hugh told me he had the same problem at MGM), suggested Mickey play the piano and accompany himself. Our stars were terrified at the technical and orchestra rehearsal of the medley. It was finally going into the show and Ann and Mickey felt under-rehearsed. I remember Mickey watching me for all he was worth during that rehearsal, hoping to remember the lyrics, hoping I could prompt him if he didn’t, hoping he’d hear the drums, all those things that go through a performers head when they are nervous. Of course, they had nothing to worry about. The audience went crazy as two legends came out dancing and singing. Together. Although I knew they were still anxious, the rousing applause that began then number gave them the needed shot of adrenaline. I call it “Doctor Footlights.” Mickey broke people’s hearts as he sing “Anything but Love.” The audience (and the orchestra) couldn’t believe he played so beautifully and sensatively, using the most sophisticated jazz chords imaginable. (Who knows who taught him jazz? Ellington?) For the first time in the show, he was introspective and subdued as he quietly serenaded Ann. Annie, channeling Ethel Merman, belted “Ridin’ High” to the last note in the balcony. But, it was the two of them cavorting during “Sunny Side of the Street” that catapulted the audience into show biz heaven. Mickey and Ann were suddenly 17 years old, and the entire audience was transported back to their own childhood movie palaces where they first encountered Mickey and Ann. Of course, everyone knew Mickey and Ann (and the audiences themselves) were much older. But Ann and Mickey could still deliver. They weren’t merely survivors. That still could stop a show. That first performance of the Medley was the best it was ever done. The sound man forgot to turn off Mickey’s mike after they took their bows (and bows and bows) and the whole audience heard Mickey say, “Hey, how about that, Ann. They liked us!” Glen Roven is an Emmy winner who’s new musical, The 5,000 Fingers of Doctor T opens on Broadway next season.

TAKING A TAXI! My article about Mickey Rooney from the NY TIMES!

ArtsBeat - New York Times Blog SEARCH ‘Taking a Taxi’: Remembering Mickey Rooney on Broadway By GLEN ROVEN APRIL 8, 2014, 12:25 PM 11 Comments E-MAIL FACEBOOK TWITTER SAVE MORE Mickey Rooney in "Sugar Babies" at London's Savoy Theater in 1988. Express Newspapers, via Associated Press Mickey Rooney in “Sugar Babies” at London’s Savoy Theater in 1988. Glen Roven, the original musical director of “Sugar Babies,” shared this reminiscence of working with Mickey Rooney on Broadway in what became the actor’s late-in-life comeback triumph. Mr. Rooney died on Sunday at 93. After bumpy tryouts in San Francisco, Los Angeles, Detroit, Chicago and Philadelphia,“Sugar Babies” opened on Broadway on Oct. 8, 1979. The show — a celebration of burlesque starring Mickey Rooney and Ann Miller — finally settled down for nice, comfortable long run. Except with Mickey it was always a roller coaster. As the person who conducted the show every night, I was along for the ride for almost three memorable years. I remember meeting him for the first time. I was taller, but not by much, and we could look each other in the eye. I was 19; I said I hoped that my being young didn’t bother him. “Kid, when I was 16 I was the biggest box office star in the world,” he said. “You’ll do fine.” Our rapport continued during the run. When the spotlight first hit Mickey during each performance at the Mark Hellinger Theater, if he didn’t get the gigantic ovation he had gotten used to, he looked at me and would whisper, “Taking a taxi tonight, Glen.” That meant he would take all the numbers at a breakneck speed no matter what. He would still give a brilliant performance, just faster than usual. A lot faster. I was able to keep up with him, barely. But I enjoyed the challenge. Things would be fine in the solo numbers, but in the duet with Ann, it was a bit trickier. He would be “taking a taxi” and Ann would do it at the exact same tempo every night. Conducting a duet at two different tempos was something I never learned in school. One night, I remember, there was a particular sporting event that Mickey wanted to watch on pay per view. But the show was 10 minutes too long and he wouldn’t make it home in time for the start. We had a juggler in the show and he was doing so well that the producers gave him two spots. Mickey offered him $10,000 to cut 10 minutes off his routines — a thousand for every minute cut. Mickey saw the beginning of the game. I once got a page on the intercom during intermission. “Mr. Roven to Mr. Rooney’s dressing room.” I panicked, quickly running through the first act in my head. Did I do something wrong? Was a tempo too fast, too slow, did I miss a cue? I gently knocked on his dressing-room door. There was Mick (as he liked to be called) in his underwear, jumping around. “Glen, I just thought of this great movie. I want to do it for you.” And Mickey Rooney then proceeded to act out this entire movie musical in his dressing room — all the parts, all the songs, all the choreography. I was 19 and there was Mickey, performing just for me in his underwear. My favorite bit of his in the show was the end of the first act when he was in drag playing Francine. (“Someone just asked me if that was Hortense? I said, ‘Why no. She looks perfectly relaxed to me.’”) Mickey knew I loved it, so he would do anything to crack me up, and of course the funnier he was the more the audience laughed. One inspired evening Francine, completely out of the blue, took an improvised world tour, announcing she had gotten a group rate from the Hadassah girls. I nearly fell off the podium. I remember the night after the Oscars, the year he was nominated for “The Black Stallion.” We had canceled a performance so he could attend. After so many decades in show business, he was the favorite, but he ended up losing to Melvyn Douglas for “Being There.” The night he returned, when the spotlight found him as usual, he received the biggest ovation ever, bigger than the first preview in San Francisco, bigger than opening night in New York. It simply wouldn’t stop. He tried to start the show but the audience wouldn’t let him. Finally as the applause begin to die down, one woman shouted out, “You should have won!” And the applause started up again. Mickey start to tear up. I started to cry. I saw the entire company crying. That’s the performance I will always remember.

A rave from Opera News for ANDREW GARLAND

This is our third rave from Opera News in Four Months! WOW. Andrew Garland: "American Portraits" Song cycles by Cipullo, Heggie, Laitman, Paulus; Loewy, piano. No texts. GPR This collection of four contemporary song cycles by American composers merits repeated listening, for the works themselves as well as for the highly accomplished performances by baritone Andrew Garland and pianist Donna Loewy. Garland, a highly communicative performer with an attractive, clear, ringing tone, has wowed New York Festival of Song audiences and appeared successfully in opera (largely Mozart, Rossini and American works) at NYCO, Fort Worth, Boston, Philadelphia and elsewhere. Clearly, song literature is one of his strengths; he bids fair to continue the tradition of such connoisseurs' singers as Donald Gramm, Sanford Sylvan and William Stone in this still-expanding repertory. The cycles — by composers born in the dozen years 1949–61 — are in recognizable, tonal idioms, influenced by Barber, Bernstein, Britten and Poulenc but each with its own composer's stamp. They include: Jake Heggie's Moon is a Mirror, to poems by Vachel Lindsay (1879–1931), given its premiere by Bryn Terfel in 2001; Stephen Paulus's Heartland Portrait, dedicated to and first performed by Thomas Hampson (2005), with texts by Ted Kooser (b. 1939); Lori Laitman's 2000 Men with Small Heads, originated by David Daniels and here transposed, with verse by Thomas Lux (b. 1946); and America 1968, a 2008 group by Tom Cipullo, words by Robert Hayden (1913–80), commissioned by Garland and Loewy. Garland's diction is exceptionally clear and well-inflected, but for such a project, the lack of texts represents a serious oversight, unfair to listeners (especially non-native speakers) and to the poets, composers and performers alike. Heggie's engaging cycle pushes no stylistic envelopes but captures with remarkable fidelity the plain-spoken Lindsay poems, five life-revealing responses by man and beast to the moon. Garland's utterance is very keen here, though a few of the words ("burning," "ants") sound too contemporary in inflection for the implicit early-twentieth-century context. He skillfully handles the melismatic lines demanded by "The Old Horse and the City." "What the Forester Said" shows a seamless legato that suddenly betrays a small crack, surely warranting a retake. Paulus's songs call for expert impressionist pianism. Kooser's long-phrased verses, quite moving, sometimes elude natural-sounding musical scansion, but "At Midnight" packs a wallop, and the lyrical "Porch Swing in September" is pleasing. Baritone and pianist both capture the right tone for Laitman's musically allusive, thoughtfully calibrated yet crowd-pleasing treatment of Lux's drolly observed quotidian pictures. The Cipullo cycle offers the highest drama (Hayden's takes on America's decade of social change can be almost graphically violent) and the most challenging vocal line, with many leaps to register extremes, unlike Heggie and Laitman's more center-based tessitura. Other baritones may struggle to equal Garland's bravura performance here. The cycle concludes with a heartfelt evocation of Frederick Douglass's legacy; its final parlando utterance seems miscalculated on a recording; perhaps it works heard live? Loewy, a sensitive pianist with a clear tone capable of impressive dynamic gradation, is full partner in the whole enterprise. DAVID SHENGOLD