Tag: Music

Rosanne

“I am Rosanne,

When I was very young, my uncle owned the largest night club in Philadelphia and helped to start the careers of legends such as Frank Sinatra, Sammy Davis, Jr., Martin and Lewis, and Tony Bennett.  They would always come to my aunt and uncle’s home for dinner, bounce me on their laps and sing me lullabies. I really didn’t know that they were not the norm!

Frank was so special . . . even then.

I brought a very favorite photograph as it represents one of my most exceptional experiences.  It was taken during the last thirty seconds of Mr. Sinatra’s brilliant and only concert at Boston’s Symphony Hall, 1987.

Frank, for years, had declined many invitations to entertain at Symphony Hall from each conductor.  Some thought it was because Serge Koussevitzky, the Boston Symphony conductor from 1924 to 1949, rejected Sinatra in the early part of his career.

One of the most exciting memories of my PR career was when he enthusiastically accepted our offer to exclusively perform for an important benefit concert, which we were producing, which I believe was one of the great concerts in history.  The evening and Frank were absolute perfection!”

John

“I’m John

I love all kinds of musical instruments, strings, drums but I particularly like electronic musical instruments.

This is a Buchla modular synthesizer, made by a mad scientist by the name of Don Buchla who lives in Berkeley California.

It’s kind of my obsession, instead of a midlife crisis buying fancy automobiles; I ended up on eBay buying fancy synthesizers. You can patch it together like a telephone box with all these cables. There’s one section that I really like called the source of uncertainty.  You plug it in and you never know what you’re going to get, as the name implies.

I just want to turn it on.”

Tidbit:

The inventor was a member of the Merry Pranksters back in the 60’s. He hung out with Ken Kesey and the Grateful Dead and took lots of LSD.

Leslie

“Hi, my name is Leslie.

The cello is not an easy instrument.

I’ll probably never be able to perform the andante in Brahms Opus 60, but I own the music and I’m practicing my scales.

I’ll probably play the cello till the day I die.”

Tidbit:

“My mother had introduced me to the Gramercy Trio. I heard them play Brahms C-Minor-Opus 60. It was a fine Quartet. They were very good musicians and when they got to the andante movement that began with a cello solo I lost it.

I’ve never heard anything like this in my life and I’ve become obsessed with the andante in Opus 60 – It lives on the wall of my kitchen where I look at it everyday and wake up in the middle of the night thinking about it.”