The Best American Poetry

June is Bustin' Out All Over

Richard Rodgers was Jerome Kern's successor as the greatest melodist on the Broadway stage. From Carousel (1945), the month of June is saluted with this sweet song perfect for ensemble singing. Lyric by Oscar Hammerstein: "To ladies, the men are paying court." "All the rams that chase the ewe sheep / Are determined there'll be new sheep /And the ewe-sheep aren't even keepin' score!" Musically the part beginning "but it's cumin' by gum / you can feel it come," is extraordinary. Here are four recordings. First, from 2013, is the Klezmer Company Jazz Orchestra with soprano Jennifer Tipton and baritone Graham Fandrei.   -- DL

From the 2018 revival:

From the movie (I wish I could find a video track as the choreography is superb):

As the British do it:

Happy birthday, Doris Day: Big Band Singer Par Excellence

On April 3, let's celebrate Doris Day, a very great singer. 

Dorisb4day is a great screen name because
of Oscar Levant’s witticism (he knew Doris Day
“before she was a virgin”) but mostly because
of the voice of Doris at break of day or when
driving on Rte 17 and listening to her sing
“Sentimental Journey” with Les Brown (“and
his band of renown”) and “Dream a Little Dream
of Me” or “Someone Like You,” “A Hundred Years
from Today,” or “Love Me or Leave Me,”
the face cherubic, the flip side of Sinatra’s
brooding in Young at Heart, blonde
and relentlessly upbeat, but there is sex in that voice 

1 / 4/ 18

from Playlist by David Lehman (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2019)

Spring is Here [by Ella Fitzgerald and Rodgers & Hart]

 

 

Spring is here! Why doesn't my heart go dancing?
Spring is here! Why isn't the waltz entrancing?
No desire, no ambition leads me
Maybe it's because nobody needs me

Spring is here! Why doesn't the breeze delight me?
Stars appear, why doesn't the night invite me?
Maybe it's because nobody loves me
Spring is here I hear

-- Lorenz Hart

On Nelson Riddle [by Terry Teachout, 1956-2022]

Two excerpts from "The Man Who (Re)made Sinatra: The Riddle of Nelson" by Terry Teachout (February 6, 1956 - January 13, 2022) in Commentary (July / August 2021)

<<
Nelson Riddle was, perhaps, the greatest of all the arrangers who worked on the Great American Songbook, primarily because of the work he did in the 1950s with Frank Sinatra. The two men were brought together by Capitol Records in 1953 in the hope of updating Sinatra’s singing style, which still recalled his youthful crooning of sentimental ballads. Within a matter of years, Sinatra had recorded his two finest albums, Songs for Swingin’ Lovers! (1956) and Frank Sinatra Sings for Only the Lonely (1958), on which he emerged decisively as a mature artist, in part because of Riddle’s sympathetic backing. Riddle also wrote arrangements of like quality for Rosemary Clooney, Nat King Cole, Ella Fitzgerald, Judy Garland, Antônio Carlos Jobim, Peggy Lee, and Dean Martin. Riddle’s innovative work defined the predominant postwar style of arranging, which may be the defining sound of the American century. Such an artistic force is deserving of a first-class full-length biography. Alas, Peter Levinson’s September in the Rain (2001), though full of illuminating detail about his life, is musically uninformed, while Geoffrey Littlefield’s newly published Nelson Riddle: Music with a Heartbeat, nominally co-written with Riddle’s son Christopher, is a vanity-press disaster, besmirched by factual errors and even more musically ignorant than Levinson’s book. Still, September in the Rain does let us see how Riddle developed as an artist, in the process enriching our understanding of the life of the chronically melancholy man and his uncomfortable relationship with the greatest popular singer of the 20th century.
>>>

<<< Today, Riddle’s style, especially as documented in the albums he recorded with Sinatra, is universally acknowledged as the high-water mark of postwar vocal arranging. Their making was a nerve-racking process for Riddle, who confessed to finding Sinatra terrifyingly mercurial: “Frank contributed a lot to the orchestral part of his own records, just by leveling a hostile stare at the musicians, with those magnetic blue eyes! The point of this action was to make me, or any other conductor, feel at that exact moment as if he had two left feet, three ears, and one eye.”

But the resulting tension, he admitted, was “a positive factor that found its way into the record,” and it brought out the best in Riddle. More than a half-century later, their albums sound as vital as ever—and his ability to overcome his fear of Sinatra and rise to the occasion is a large part of what has kept them so. >>>

For the entire article, click here. For the record, many Frankophiles consider "In the Wee Small Hoirs" an even better album of ballads than the great "Only the Lonely." Teachout is absolutely correct when he says that song arrangers are underpaid, underappreciated, and sometimes unacknowledged. Other Sinatra arrangers worth more than a mention include Billy May, George Siravo, Gordon Jenkins, Don Costa, Axel Stordahl, Quincy Jones, Neil Hefti, and Johnny Mandel. >>>

 

Two excerpts from "The Man Who (Re)made Sinatra: The Riddle of Nelson" by Terry Teachout (February 6, 1956 - January 13, 2022) in Commentary (July / August 2021)

<<
Nelson Riddle was, perhaps, the greatest of all the arrangers who worked on the Great American Songbook, primarily because of the work he did in the 1950s with Frank Sinatra. The two men were brought together by Capitol Records in 1953 in the hope of updating Sinatra’s singing style, which still recalled his youthful crooning of sentimental ballads. Within a matter of years, Sinatra had recorded his two finest albums, Songs for Swingin’ Lovers! (1956) and Frank Sinatra Sings for Only the Lonely (1958), on which he emerged decisively as a mature artist, in part because of Riddle’s sympathetic backing. Riddle also wrote arrangements of like quality for Rosemary Clooney, Nat King Cole, Ella Fitzgerald, Judy Garland, Antônio Carlos Jobim, Peggy Lee, and Dean Martin. Riddle’s innovative work defined the predominant postwar style of arranging, which may be the defining sound of the American century. Such an artistic force is deserving of a first-class full-length biography. Alas, Peter Levinson’s September in the Rain (2001), though full of illuminating detail about his life, is musically uninformed, while Geoffrey Littlefield’s newly published Nelson Riddle: Music with a Heartbeat, nominally co-written with Riddle’s son Christopher, is a vanity-press disaster, besmirched by factual errors and even more musically ignorant than Levinson’s book. Still, September in the Rain does let us see how Riddle developed as an artist, in the process enriching our understanding of the life of the chronically melancholy man and his uncomfortable relationship with the greatest popular singer of the 20th century.
>>>

<<< Today, Riddle’s style, especially as documented in the albums he recorded with Sinatra, is universally acknowledged as the high-water mark of postwar vocal arranging. Their making was a nerve-racking process for Riddle, who confessed to finding Sinatra terrifyingly mercurial: “Frank contributed a lot to the orchestral part of his own records, just by leveling a hostile stare at the musicians, with those magnetic blue eyes! The point of this action was to make me, or any other conductor, feel at that exact moment as if he had two left feet, three ears, and one eye.”

But the resulting tension, he admitted, was “a positive factor that found its way into the record,” and it brought out the best in Riddle. More than a half-century later, their albums sound as vital as ever—and his ability to overcome his fear of Sinatra and rise to the occasion is a large part of what has kept them so. >>>

For the entire article, click here. For the record, many Frankophiles consider "In the Wee Small Hoirs" an even better album of ballads than the great "Only the Lonely." Teachout is absolutely correct when he says that song arrangers are underpaid, underappreciated, and sometimes unacknowledged. Other Sinatra arrangers worth more than a mention include Billy May, George Siravo, Gordon Jenkins, Don Costa, Axel Stordahl, Quincy Jones, Neil Hefti, and Johnny Mandel. >>>

 

Interview with Tzimon Barto: Languages, Poetry and Education [by Lera Auerbach]

 I am always fascinated by people who are masters of more than one profession.  I interviewed Tzimon Barto for the Best American Poetry blog. His passions and knowledge run deep. Tzimon Barto speaks seven languages fluently, reads ancient Greek, Latin, and Hebrew; his love of poetry is contagious, his ideas about education are inspiring.

      

For a taste of Barto's music-making here he is performing Mozart's Rondo for Piano and Orchestra in A major with the SWR Symphonieorchester and Christoph Eschenbach.

 

Borderless Creativity [by Lera Auerbach]

Insomnia © Lera Auerbach 2013

It is undeniable that creativity is one of the most important aspects of any profession. For an artist being creative is a matter of life or death. If you are not creative, you can't be an artist. Music emerges from silence, poetry from a white page, painting from a blank canvas. The artist brings to life ideas, sounds, images, giving form to that which was formless before. Yet that silence, that blank page or canvas - it is not empty, it is full of infinite possibilities.

I remember the first time I performed a piano concerto with an orchestra. I was 8 years old and very excited. Standing backstage, I was waiting for the orchestra to finish tuning. The chaotic, wild roar of the symphony orchestra tuning felt miraculous to me; it was my blank canvas as it contained limitless possibilities of music-making.

But the world of infinite possibilities can be also frightening, confusing and intimidating. The blank page can glare at you and leave you incapacitated, immobile, shrinking with each passing minute. How can one deal then with limitless freedom when everything appears possible, yet full of invisible walls that stifle your imagination?

The craft of an artist (and here I mean any artistic expression, be it a musical composition, literature or visual arts), requires building forms, structures within which a work of art can operate, the frames of space and time which it can inhabit. It involves creating certain restrictions within which the work can be free to emerge, and against which it can rebel, in other words, creating frames which can be altered, but nevertheless allow for creative thought to flourish and realize itself.

So, how does one sustain creativity in art when the Muses themselves are known for their disloyalty and fickleness? In my case this involved acting against the advice of my teachers, and following my calling against all odds.

I began playing piano and writing music when I was 4 years old. Soon my teachers presented me with a Solomonic dilemma: "Do you want to be a composer or a concert pianist?" I was told that in our age of specialization one cannot be both a virtuoso performer and a serious composer so I had better choose soon and focus." When I was 12, I wrote my first opera, which was staged and toured in Russia. When I mentioned this opera to my piano professor, who was a wonderful teacher by the way, he said rather sternly: "I don't want to hear anything about it. I don't care what you do in your spare time as long as long as it doesn't take away from piano practice."

Perhaps as a reaction to this, I started writing poetry and prose. Soon enough, my publishers informed me that I can't be publishing both poetry and fiction, that doing so would only confuse the readers and I would not be taken seriously. At the Juilliard School in New York, the pressures to choose only grew. Even today, after countless performances worldwide and with more than 100 compositions published, some of my well-wishers are still concerned that I may be spreading myself too thin. My response to that? I started creating visual art. As always -- I could not stay just with the paintings. Quickly I added mixed media, photography and sculpture.

It's not that I have not tried to limit myself to one form. And heaven knows, even one career in music is hard enough. But every time I tried to do so, the weight of a blank page became unbearable and I would feel depressed and accomplish less than when I allowed myself to fly freely with the child-like approach that everything is possible. My friends think that I am a workaholic, but I am not. I am a chronic procrastinator, always guilty of not doing something else. Yet somehow everything gets done with illusory effortlessness.

Experiencing art through its different forms helps to gain a fresh and unexpected perspective. Often we are unable to see what is right in front of us, but through the metaphor of art we recognize our own face. This is why a melody or a line in a book can move us to tears, as it becomes personal, and through sharing this experience we realize that we are not alone. Often enough, by immersing oneself in art, one may find solutions for seemingly unrelated problems.

And one more thought. There is no such thing as progress in art. Art does not follow the principles of Darwinism, at least not qualitatively. Picasso is not better than Rembrandt, Stravinsky is not better than Mozart, Pasternak is not better than Dante. Art changes and evolves so that the artist becomes an instrument and representative of his time. In one of his early interviews, Steve Jobs said that all his work will become obsolete by the time he is 50. Unlike art, technology becomes outdated almost overnight. Any scientific discovery, with time, will be found either obsolete or incomplete, whereas a work of art can remain relevant and whole throughout centuries.

In our fast-paced ever-changing world, art reminds us of our humanity, of that which is timeless and always relevant. Art communicates through the universal language of human emotions and thus, while representing its time, it is also capable of transcending it. Music of Mozart, words of Shakespeare, paintings of Da Vinci continue to inspire us, to move, to touch and to transport us beyond our daily routine; they are as powerful now as when they were created. Through these works we continue the dialogues between the centuries, as we individually attempt to answer some of the essential universal questions: Who are we? Why are we here? What is the meaning of life? What happens when we die? Why is there so much suffering, cruelty and war? These are the unanswerable eternal questions that define our existence. In the cosmic frightening vastness of silence of these unanswered questions, and facing the perpetual terrors of history, it is Art and Culture that become the frames allowing us to justify our existence and creatively flourish in any field we choose. Our art and culture give meaning to our lives and become our legacy. 

I know the price of Silence
When on the threshold of sound,
It congeals in the contour of emptiness
Blends with the beating heart.

The air is charged with fear
And opens into voiceless space.
Hypnotized by incorporeality,
The wind unfurls its wings in dance.

 ilence parches the mouth
As I catch it on my lips,
Mesmerized by the muteness of sound,
The dreary whiteness of the page.

From the archive; first posted February 28, 2014

Sinatra at the Sands, January 1966 [by David Lehman]

Ed. note: Jack Daniel's produced a limited-batch sour-mash whiskey called "Sinatra Century" to mark the singer's 100th birthday, December 12, 2015. Lehman's book Sinatra's Century: One Hundred Notes on the Man and His World was published by HarperCollins at the same time. An editor at The Wall Street Journal noted the coincidence and commissioned Lehman, who likes good bourbon, to review the new whiskey, which came in a gift box including a thumb drive containing the recording of a Sinatra show at the Sands Hotel in Las Vegas in January 1966.

1. The Background

Frank Sinatra discovered Jack Daniel’s one sleepless night in the early 1940s. “It’s been the oil to my engine ever since,” he later said. He famously praised “anything that gets you through the night, be it prayer, tranquilizers or Jack Daniel’s.” Frank always kept a bottle nearby, offstage, and he was buried with a flask of JD in his casket.

In her autobiography, Judith Campbell Exner —the moll who was mistress to both John F. Kennedy and the head of the Chicago mob—recalled a day spent with Sinatra. He “acknowledged the comings and goings of an endless string of visitors, growled at flunkies, drank martinis, ate lunch, drank Jack Daniel’s, ate hors d’oeuvres, drank Jack Daniel’s, ate dinner, and drank more Jack Daniel’s.”

By the mid-1960s, Sinatra could drink a fifth of Jack Daniel’s and still go on stage.

2) The Anticipation

Like any respectable Sinatra aficionado, I have imbibed my share of Tennessee’s trademark sour mash whiskey. And as the author of a new book on Sinatra, I had an extra incentive to try the latest ultra-premium Jack Daniel’s bottle sent to me by my editor at The Wall Street Journal: a limited-edition 100-proof whiskey aged in 100 “alligator-charred” oak barrels (so called for the scaly interior surface left by the fire, the deepest of all the chars whiskey producers use to impart flavor and color to the liquor). It hit shelves in October—in plenty of time for toasts to Frank Sinatra on his 100^th birthday, December 12, 2015.

The whiskey is called Sinatra Century. By serendipitous coincidence, my new book is called “Sinatra’s Century.” I wrote it, quite simply, because I have loved the singer’s voice, his musical savvy, his definitive versions of great standards ever since I heard “All the Way” and “Witchcraft” on the radio when I was eight or nine and grasped the essence of swing from Sinatra albums a few years later. Timing it to coincide with the centennial, I wrote the book in 100 parts, because Sinatra’s career exists in exquisite counterpoint with what Henry Luce called the “American century” and because the century is the perfect form for a subject with so many facets.

Jack Daniel’s already has a top-shelf whiskey with Sinatra’s name on it – 90 proof Sinatra Select, which is selling well, at twice the price of single-barrel bourbons that are just as good. So there was a part of me that wondered whether the same would be true with “Sinatra Century” – whether JD is selling a name, an event, and a future souvenir rather than a whiskey that can go head to head with A. H. Hirsch Reserve or the best of Buffalo Trace’s Antique Collection.

3) The Presentation

The presentation of Sinatra Century is as lavish as it should be, priced at $379 or more per one-liter bottle. It arrives in a deep blue-indigo lacquered carrying case with an engraved brass handle on top. Pop open the case, and the bottle sits in a custom groove, like a dark liquid jewel set against black velvet. Each bottle is numbered—mine is FAS 23095, the initials standing for Francis Albert Sinatra. Also in their own made-to-size grooves are a hardbound booklet devoted to Sinatra’s relationship with Jack Daniel’s and a tie clip that doubles as a thumb drive.

That last item comes loaded with a previously unreleased album of a live Sinatra performance: thirteen songs, two monologues and a coda, all recorded at the Sands Hotel in Las Vegas in January 1966. Frank had just turned fifty and was teaming up with the brilliant arranger Quincy Jones backed by the Count Basie Orchestra, and what better way to return to that evening than with a rocks glass in hand?

4) The Proof

           Isn’t “proof” a lovely word? It stands in one context for the potency of a potable, and in another it means verification: a geometrical proof, say, or the proof of the pudding. Both senses come into play here. Would Sinatra Century prove potent enough to provide the perfect accompaniment to belters like “Luck Be a Lady” and “Fly Me to the Moon”? At 100 proof, it had better. (The standard “Old No. 7” Jack Daniel’s bottle clocks in at a mere 80.)

As to color, I said amber, my wife said topaz. I said tongue of flame, my wife said Stradivarius. She described the taste as “warm orange afterglow.” I took another sip and said, “Cognac.” She sipped and said, “The Cognac of bourbons.” Goes well with dark chocolate. Warms the soul “in a drear-nighted December” (to quote Keats).

The whiskey is the best I’ve ever had from Jack Daniel’s.

How to drink it? Neat or with a few ice cubes. We stuck to Sinatra’s own recipe: “three rocks, two fingers, and a splash”–a Sinatra haiku, when you think about it. We omitted the splash.

5. The Playlist

Sinatra Century promises not merely a whiskey but an experience. So you’re sitting in your favorite reclining armchair sipping and playing the recording of that Sands appearance of January 1966. It opens with a trusty icebreaker, “Come Fly with Me,” then turns to a ballad he’s sung since his crooner days, the Gershwins’ “I’ve Got a Crush on You.” Self-consciousness spoils the verse intro. The skinny singer can scarcely keep a straight face when obliged to sing “I’m your big and brave and handsome Romeo.”

He’s on safer ground with Cole Porter’s “I’ve Got You Under My Skin.” Perhaps the most celebrated of all Sinatra’s up-tempo finger-snappers, it brings out his swinging best. In adapting Nelson Riddle’s 1956 arrangement, Quincy Jones makes miraculous use of reeds and muted horns to compensate for the lack of a string section.

Sinatra always maintained he was at heart a saloon singer and he proves it anew in “Street of Dreams” and Matt Dennis’s great, haunting “Angel Eyes.” As you savor another swallow, the pace changes with “Fly Me to the Moon,” a highlight of the night. Sinatra reinvented Bart Howard’s 1954 song: It wasn’t a sad wistful plea, after all, but an assertive proclamation of love. It was also a nod to NASA’s great decade, the conquest of space as a seduction song. Killer arrangement. Love that flute.

The timeless “You Make Me Feel So Young” shows Sinatra at his most buoyant, and then he turns up the warmth in Johnny Mandel’s Oscar-winning “Shadow of Your Smile.” Sinatra is dating Mia Farrow and Mia likes the song.

Frank Loesser’s “Luck Be a Lady” comes from the musical “Guys and Dolls.” In the movie version, Sinatra played Nathan Detroit, but it was Marlon Brando as Sky Masterson who got to sing this ode to gambling that marks the show’s heroic climax. Now, to correct the injustice, Sinatra demonstrates how the song should be sung. One of Sinatra’s anthems in the 1960s, a hymn to Las Vegas, here it’s as electric as “Fly Me to the Moon,” with a tail like that of “My Kind of Town.”

Time for another round.

The audience is hushed when Frank sings “It Was a Very Good Year,” where again the reeds do the work of strings, and then the Rodgers and Hart standard “Where or When,” not only a marvelous love song but also the greatest ever on the subject of déjà vu: “Some things that happen for the first time / Seem to be happening again.”

The nightclub act ends with a song Sinatra owns: “My Kind of Town,” the terrific tribute to Chicago that Sammy Cahn and Jimmy Van Heusen wrote for their boss to sing in “Robin and the Seven Hoods,” his last movie musical.

By now you’ve made a dent in the bottle and you’re robustly singing along.

-- from  "Author David Lehman Takes On Jack Daniel's Sinatra Century," in The Wall Street Journal, January 5, 2016

Igor Stravinsky: "I surround myself with obstacles. . ."

Albert Gleizes, Portrait of Igor Stravinsky, 1914, Oil on canvas, 129.5 x 114.3 cm. Muséum of Modern Art Collection

"My freedom thus consists in my moving about within the narrow frame that I have assigned myself for each one of my undertakings. I shall go even further: my freedom will be so much the greater and more meaningful the more narrowly I limit my field of action and the more I surround myself with obstacles. Whatever diminishes constraint, diminishes strength. The more constraints one imposes, the more one frees one’s self of the chains that shackle the spirit."

—Igor Stravinsky, Poetics of Music in the Form of Six Lessons

-- sdl

Let it Snow X 3 [by Frank Sinatra]

 

MARIA - Dialogues on Stabat Mater [by Lera Auerbach]

Some works have parallel lives. In 2006 Musikfest Bremen and Lucerne Festival commissioned me to write a piece for Gidon Kremer and the Kremerata Baltica. As soon as I started composing it, I knew that it would be reborn as a theater work one day. I did not know at that time how or when. I thought of Maria, the Grieving Mother, and the Other Maria – the mysterious one who remained in the shadows, the two outlines becoming one, blending their voices in never-ending dialogue where one voice echoes the other. This weekend, in Nürenberg, Germany, will be the world premiere of the new ballet Maria, choreographed by Goyo Montero with Diana Vishneva dancing the principal role. How did it happen?

On May 14, 2019, I met with Diana Vishneva for dinner in New York after attending an art exhibition together. I have known Diana for many years. I wrote my ballet Tatiana (after Pushkin's Evgeny Onegin), choreographed by John Neumeier with Diana in mind, and she has danced it numerous times since its creation. Diana visited me in Florida earlier that year to explore our future collaborations. That spring day, in 2019, on the lower side of Manhattan, we spoke about my idea for the ballet Maria based on the music of my Dialogues on Stabat Mater. We talked about different ways how to make the ballet Maria a reality and who could be the ideal choreographer to realize it on stage. We both, at the same time, breathed out: Goyo Montero. I called Goyo from that restaurant, and he said: "Yes!" 

Dialogues on Stabat Mater is an experiment. I wished to create a frame, a dialogue, an outlook from our own time on the same subject as Pergolesi's celebrated masterpiece. And to base this dialogue not so much on the differences of cultural and harmonic esthetics between the 18th and 21st centuries, but rather on their similarities, which is much more challenging. The image of the grieving mother is universal, just as pain is universal, although its expressions may vary based on cultural or religious backgrounds. 

Dialogue can happen at different levels. Is it a dialogue between different times, a beginning and an end, musician and audience, soli and tutti, loneliness and understanding? Perhaps, after all, the difference is not that great between vocal and purely instrumental, sacred language and the vernacular, monologue, and dialogue? Any prayer is a dialogue even though the addressee may not appear present. To whom am I addressing this?

 

Style: You've either got or you haven't got style

Happy birthday, Sir Francis

Thanks to Jimmy Van Heusen & Sammy Cahn:

and thank you, Cole Porter:

 

No Boundaries [by Lera Auerbach]

Sometimes I wish to press the knife against my skin and let out blood
because the world is growing within me, overflowing; it overwhelms me –
for how is it possible that the world is within me while I’m within the world?
Where are the boundaries between us?
Where do I end, and the world begins?
I step barefoot on the ground and feel the rotation of the Earth.
I’m falling through the universe at breathtaking speed while not moving at all.

 

The Audience [by Lera Auerbach]

 

If I were dead, I wouldn’t want to stay around. I would fly to some other realm where I would no longer be myself but everything else at the same time. A happy, joyful radiance of a realm. 

But I wouldn’t be able to jump there if my heart was too heavy with worry for my loved ones who are still living in this world. I would have to stay around to see how they are coping. The living become the responsibility of the dead. Maybe, if I stayed around, I could still help them somehow. 

My dead grandparents and their parents and the parents of their parents und so weiter slightly move their invisible bodies making room for the new arrivals. They watch how I write these lines in English – the language they never spoke and slightly shake their heads.

 

A Woman's Laughter [by Charles Coe]

On a recording of the Bill Evans trio,
Live at the Village Vanguard,
late June '61, during a slow, haunting version
of "I Loves You Porgy," at the quietest moment,
in the background, soft but clear, 

a woman's laughter.

At first the sound seems jarring, even sacrilegious.
But then again a jazz club's not a concert hall,
listeners in polite rows, knees together,
waiting to cough in the space between movements.
Jazz is cash registers and clinking glasses
and chairs scraping the floor.

And besides it's a pleasant laugh, full of promise.
Easy to see her hand reach out to rest on her
companion's arm. Easy to catch the whiff of lilac or lavender . . . 
Always, so many worlds within worlds.

In one world,
A man who follows Evans from gig to gig
sits at the bar alone, transfixed,
ice melting in the forgotten drink.

In one world,
The bartender counts his cash
while dreaming of the waitress's embrace.

In one world,
A woman's laughter.

In one world,
Evan's leans over the keys, oblivious to all
but the slow heartbeat bass,
the splash of brushes on cymbal and snare,
fingers poised for what seems like forever
before they settle gently over the final chord. 

                               -- from Memento Mori: Poems by Charles Coe

In addition to Memento Mori: poems, Charles Coe is the author of two previous volumes of poetry, both with Leapfrog Press: All Sins Forgiven: Poems for my Parents (2013) and Picnic on the Moon (1999). He's also the author of Spin Cycles, a novella published by Gemma Media. Charles is the winner of a fellowship in poetry from the Massachusetts Cultural Council and was selected by the Associates of the Boston Public Library as a "Boston Literary Light in 2014." He teaches poetry in the MFA programs at Salve Regina University in Newport, Rhode Island, and Bay Path University in Longmeadow, Massachusetts. Coe is a jazz vocalist who has performed and recorded with musicians throughout New England. 

Theme Music: Schubert's Rosamunde Overture

from "A Good Week for a Birthday" (in The Morning Line by David Lehman):

What would I choose as my theme music
if I were the classical music disc jockey
maybe Bernstein’s overture to Candide
or Louis Moreau Gottschalk’s “Cakewalk”
or Schubert’s overture to “Rosamunde”
in honor of John Scheuer
I have my Tolstoy to look forward to
and if music can stand for peace (the food of love)
today’s poem is a little tribute to the novel
summarized TV-Guide style:
Pierre loves Natasha and Napoleon invades Russia.

 

The Cat of Montserrat [by Lera Auerbach]

My memory: meeting a Montserrat cat –
she is sitting beneath Pablo Casals’ sculpture –
the true owner of his bronze cello
with whiskers sniffing mountain air.
It is Fall. It’s sunny, but the air is already
keeping a promise of the storms ahead.
I am now worried about this cat –
the cat that guards Casals and his cello.

Who will feed her during the winter?
Who will brush her tricolored coat?
Who will make her feel safe in the mountains?

I beckon the cat to follow, promising
to take good care of her if she lets me.
But the cat sniffs Casals’ dusty shoes,
raises her tail, and turns away.
I feel abandoned. I pray to the Black Virgin
to protect this proud feline. I ask Casals
to keep watch and play sometimes
for the cat’s hunting pleasures
El cant del ocells (The Song of the Birds.)

The air shimmers with hidden music.
The cat catches overtones – and the horizon shifts.

 

 

Sonnet [by Alexander Lazarus Wolff]

The sun hangs among tatters of clouds;
amber light slides through the interwoven boughs
of the tree beside my window. The day decays,
and a darkness pours into the room like a pool
of black liqueur. Who holds me in mind at this hour?
The question echoes like a knell hung from a tower.
Birds dart toward the darkening sky. The cool
touch of night is all this moment gives.
Lamps drop their light on streets stripped of life,
a quietude replaces the former bustle.
A passerby, laughing on her phone
and walking her dog, wades through the night,
oblivious to this speck of light. She carries on,
leaving me with this quiet room.

Alexander Lazarus Wolff, a student at the College of William & Mary, was born in Tallahassee, Florida, in 1998. He lives in Williamsburg, VA. His work has been published or is forthcoming in  South Florida Poetry Journal, Main Street Rag, Serotonin, The Citron Review, The Plentitudes, and Remington Review. You can find him on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/wolffalex108/ and on Instagram @wolffalex108

Silent Notes [by Lera Auerbach]

Silent Notes. Photo by Lera Auerbah

 

When pianos are not played,
they become very sad,
they collect silent notes.
Unplayed music floats –
invisible dust of overtones.
The dead are waiting expectantly:
so many keys – 88 – all untouched. 
The day of silent music
sheds the signature of uncaptured Time.

(“What are you practicing now?”
my mother asks me quietly.
Her eyebrows raised. I shrug.)

 

Louis Armstrong in 1934 & in Australia c. 1956 & on the Edsel Show

"I Cover the Waterfront" .  .

Now you has jazz. . .

with Crosby  & Sinatra & Rosemary Clooney: On the Sunny Side of the Street

Berlioz & the music in "The Shining"

From Berlioz's "Symphonie Fantastique," the music in "The Shining" by Stanley Kubrick:

On Gene Kelly [by David Lehman]

Here's an excerpt from "To Dance an Exclamation Point," a "talking pictures" column in The American Scholar:

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The best stanza of Carl Sandburg’s “Lines Written for Gene Kelly to Dance To” proposes a parallel between the languages of dance and speech: “Can you dance a question mark? / Can you dance an exclamation point? / Can you dance a couple of commas? / And bring it to a finish with a period?” Fred Astaire, my other favorite dancer, can climb the wall and dance on the ceiling, but if anyone can dance an exclamation point, it’s Gene Kelly.

Of Kelly’s four outstanding midcentury movie musicals, Singin’ in the Rain (1952) is the best-loved. In Hollywood history, the title number is second in popularity only to “Over the Rainbow,” and for sheer joy it’s hard to top “Good Mornin’” with Kelly, Debbie Reynolds, and Donald O’Connor. In Singin’ in the Rain, the late Clive James felt he encountered “the absolute concentration of an entire popular culture at its most powerful.” As for Kelly, James said, “it took the whole of America, including all its modern history, to create one of him.

In It’s Always Fair Weather (1955), the most underrated of the quartet, Kelly dances down the street in roller skates, Dan Dailey does a nifty tipsy song and dance, and the two of them and Michael Kidd—Army buddies who reunite 10 years after the end of World War II—dance on trash can lids in one number, and, later on, sing of their plight (as civilians of different classes and backgrounds, who don’t like one another) to the tune of the Blue Danube waltz. Add a Dolores Grey showstopper (“Thanks a Lot, But No Thanks”) and the dancing feet of Cyd Charisse, plus lyrics of Betty Comden and Adolph Green, and well, if it’s a lesser masterpiece, it’s a masterpiece nevertheless.

John Updike believes that On the Town (1949) was the freshest and had the most energy of the group. Kelly himself felt that “we”—the unit assembled by MGM genius producer (and lyricist) Arthur Freed—may have “made better movies,” but On the Town “was the apex of our talent.” Purists may register reservations if only because some of Leonard Bernstein’s sublime songs (“Some Other Time,” “Lucky to Be Me”) were dropped from the Broadway version and replaced with lesser, albeit still good, tunes by Roger Edens. Still, the film is giddy with infectious delight from the moment Kelly, Frank Sinatra, and Jules Munshin, playing three sailors on 24-hour shore leave, get off their ship, take in the sights of New York City, and pair off with Vera-Ellen, Betty Garrett, and Ann Miller, respectively. In the exhilarating opening sequence, shot on location in or near Chinatown, Rockefeller Center, Central Park, Wall Street, the Statue of Liberty and other such landmarks, the fellows sing their hymn of praise to “New York, New York, a wonderful town.”[1]

While I love all four movies, I would press the case for An American in Paris (1951) as Kelly’s best. He plays a painter named Jerry Mulligan, a GI who stayed in Paris after the war because, he says, if you can’t paint in Paris, brother, you might as well go home and marry the boss’s daughter. Jerry is pursued by Milo Roberts (Nina Foch), a wealthy American expat, who looks smashing in a dress she is “almost wearing” and in a brown suit with elegant earrings. She wants to sponsor Jerry; she rents him a studio and arranges a one-man show. But Jerry’s heart belongs to Lise (Leslie Caron), who is engaged to acclaimed music-hall singer Henri Burel (George Guettary).

Like Victor Lazlo in Casablanca, Burel may have the greater claim on the lady, because he protected her during the war after her parents, active in the Resistance, were deported by the Nazis. But being a man of honor, and not having a world war to fight, he lets true love take its course. The movie ends with a masquerade party, which segues into a full-scale ballet presentation of An American in Paris, arguably George Gershwin’s second greatest work for piano and orchestra. Vincente Minnelli directed the film, which won the Academy Award for best picture. Alan Jay Lerner wrote the Oscar-winning script.

Why do I defy the consensus in casting my ballot for An American in Paris?
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for the answer & for the rest of this article, click here

https://theamericanscholar.org/to-dance-an-exclamation-point/