Zhivago

I've just spent a wonderful week work-shopping a Lucy Simon masterpiece: Dr. Zhivago The Musical.

It was a magnificent week 'Love-Triangle-ng' with great pals Tam Mutu and Sierra Boggess (my “Shar-Bear” and I have never worked together before— just shared that epic dressing room in Master Class. It was magic. We called it "Sophie and Sharon Go To Russia, Sing a Power Ballad and Share a Husband"...)

Suffice it to say: Tonya, Yuri and Lara sang their faces off...

But there was no joy comparable to exploring one of my favorite (exquisitely touching) characters in literature: Yuri Zhivago's childhood best friend and wife, Tonya. (Я тебя люблю, Tonya!) Boris Pasternak wrote a masterpiece (I have waxed lyrical about his virtues and influence before), what an honor to bring it to musical life, however fleetingly. 

"You in others - this is your soul. This is what you are. This is what your consciousness has breathed and lived on and enjoyed throughout your life - your soul, your immortality, your life in others. And what now? You have always been in others and you will remain in others. And what does it matter to you if later on that is called your memory? This will be you - the you that enters the future and becomes a part of it." - Boris Pasternak 

The Return of Sophie and Sharon!

Tonya, Yuri and Lara (with Tam Mutu and Sierra Boggess)

It's better on the other side of fear.

No but really. You should.

a Family 4th

Nothing like force-feeding your nieces some good, hearty, patriotic musical theatre on the 4th of July... Someone oughtta open up a window...
A Musical 4th from Alexandra Silber on Vimeo.

30

Here it is.
The big Three-O.
Dirty 30.
The milestone of crazy women everywhere.
Let's review.

Thirty is:

- The sum of the first four squares, which makes it a square pyramidal number.
- The code for international direct dial phone calls to Greece
- The total number of major and minor keys in Western tonal music, including enharmonic equivalents!
- A semiperfect number (adding up some subsets of its divisors --e.g., 5, 10 and 15-- gives 30)
- The atomic number of zinc. 
- –30– is used to indicate the end of a newspaper (or broadcast) story, a copy editor's typographical notation.
- The number of days in the months April, June, September and November (and in very strange and unusual circumstances February—see February 30)
- The number of cars in the F-Zero franchise.
- The minimum age for United States senators
- The pearl wedding anniversary!
- The number of tracks on The Beatles' eponymous album, usually known as The White Album

But I think one thing is certain. When I look back, I will always know that I spent my 20s "figuring it out"-- and hadn't truly figured anything out, until now.
Not really.
... aaaaaand I am also pretty certain I will be saying THAT sentence again... many times over. For the rest of my life.

29 was a year of great overturn-- over the last year I have made some new resolutions, taken a conscious new course of action in my life, my career and my relationships...

Crucially this: this may come a surprise to those of you who know me as a "person who sings," but for whatever reason, singing has been a source of extraordinary emotional potency for me, and not always in a positive way.


I am going to let you in on a very personal experience, and I think you shall relate on some level. 

There is hardly a time I can remember when did not sing, with purity, and coming from a place of utter spiritual exuberance. I would sing around the house, in the shower and in the car almost unconsciously, I poured and poured over role models, I Singing was, in truth, my primary source of joy.

When my father died in 2001, my mother made an observation: I had stopped singing entirely.
No more did I sing blithely about the house.
No more recordings.
No more music, it would seem, at all.
For you see, there was nothing to be joyful about. 

It was entirely subconscious, but as I look back and unfold the deep layers of so complicated a time, I recognize that I stored the enormity of those feelings--all my confusion and anger and sorrow and grief-- in my voice. It was lodged there, a ball of delicate string growing more tangled and entrenched in itself every day... and I didn't even know. 

So what did I do?
I denied I was a singer.
I denied more lessons, any formal higher training.
I sewed up my throat and (with no regret whatsoever) got my degree in classical acting (and even subconsciously suggested I choreograph the Christmas pantomime so I could avoid singing one of the leads!)
My true nature caught up with me when Andrew Lloyd Webber's The Woman in White would not allow me to hide anymore... and I suppose the rest is sort of history. Whoever would have thought? Not me.

But here is the crucial revelation:

If I continued to say "I am not a singer" over and over again, that statement accomplished a few things:

1. It sent that exact message to The Universe, (and The Universe raged against my mind, and responded with a palpable vengeance...putting me into more and more confrontational situations with this GIANT LIE!)
2. It declared that everything I DID achieve as a singer was a "miracle" and...
3. ...everything I did NOT achieve was "not my fault" because I was "not a singer..."

But basically: it was not mature. 
It was a shallow attempt to "get off the hook" to absolve me of any form of personal responsibility. 
It was not the behavior of a woman.
It was not in line with my true nature, my deepest desires, or the essence of my morals.
It was the behavior of a scared little girl.

So, with the help of a few dedicated (and very compassionate) people, I decided, quite consciously (and with gut-wrenching, sometimes literally paralyzing terror), to become the singer I knew I was.
To throw myself in head first, and know that if I truly failed, at least I would always know, without a shadow of a doubt, that I failed honestly.

To accept responsibility.
To accept myself.
...isn't that what this whole business of life is all about?

We all do this-- with our careers, our relationships, our everyday interactions with our inner-consciousness. There's a wonderful quote from Nora Ephron's You've Got Mail where Meg Ryan's character Kathleen says

"Sometimes I wonder about my life. I lead a small life - well, valuable, but small - and sometimes I wonder, do I do it because I like it, or because I haven't been brave..."

After a few months of soul-crushing work:
Carnegie Hall called...
Then Caramoor Music Festival...
...and then what for me was the job of a lifetime singing Maria in West Side Story with the San Francisco Symphony on the history making, first-ever symphonic recording of the iconic piece.

I dunno.
Somehow?
Somehow I think The Universe might have been saying

"...Well...? FINALLY..."

...Not that anyone probably believed my bulls*** in the first place...

And so, I, like so many before me, have spent my 20s truly becoming myself.
I stand before you today truly owning it all.
Owning my strengths.
My power.
My Achilles-heels.
My insecurites.
My needs.
My deepest and more profoundly wished-for hopes and dreams.

As I spent the very last day of my 20s singing "Tonight" and "One Hand, One Heart" and "I Feel Pretty" out across the San Francisco Symphony, I felt my cells actually turn over. At the stroke of midnight, when some of the greatest musicians in the world sang "Happy Birthday" I felt it: life would not, could not, ever be the same. For when you not only take responsibility for you life, but for who you truly are, the world unfolds itself before you like a flower.

It is my belief that it is our primary objective, our most crucial human vocation, to continue this process throughout the course of our lives.
I vow to do so.

That is what a true birth-day, is all about.

"San Francisco Symphony's Tony & Maria..."

Opening tonight at San Francisco Symphony's Davies Hall, until July 2.  

From the Huffington Post:

"Say it loud, say it soft -- West Side Story. And there's music playing. It's just there, deep in the heart, engraved in the culture and playing somewhere right this moment. San Francisco Symphony is presenting five performances of West Side Story, June 27-30 / July 2, and like you've never seen or heard before. They are the first to present the complete 1957 musical on a concert stage. And hold on, the production is being recorded. It may prove to be the most significant recording of the show since the Original Broadway cast. Conductor Michael Tilson Thomas worked with Leonard Bernstein and is internationally renowned for being the composer's champion interpreter. In the roles of the star-crossed lovers, popular Broadway and TV personality Cheyenne Jackson as "Tony" and the fastest-rising soprano in musical theatre, Alexandra Silber as "Maria." It's the stuff that dreams are made of."

Read the full article HERE.

An Open Letter to Rebecca Luker

Dear Rebecca,

So, Hi.
This is weird.
I think I know that.
I mean, we're sort of 'colleagues' now, though we haven't worked together (yet!), and we know each others' names and have come to each others' shows, but here is the thing:

I feel like I have to tell you something. Truth is, when I dig deep down and reeeally give it a good think, there really is no other single person who has influenced my artistic life as profoundly as you.

[*takes a deep breath... exhales...*]

I know.
I know that is an intense thing to say.
It is a "fan girl" thing to say and I am not, nor have I ever actually been a fan girl.
Not in real life.
Only about Angela Lansbury really (but I admit that falls under the category of "Crazy Love" and doesn't count... at least I hope not...)
Because first of all I'm of the pre-Tumblr generation, and on top of that I'm actually quite shy (I couldn't even come to meet you at stage door when I came to The Sound of Music in '98) plus, I dunno, I was born in LA, something about seeing celebrities at the bank and grocery store and all that...

But, listen, this is the crucial part:

you taught me how to sing. 

You didn't know that you were doing it, but you did.

I would listen to recordings of you and pour over them with a fine tooth comb, ear pressed close to the speaker, completely in astonishment of how you don't really seem to have a break, how your vibrato is so even and natural and "spinny" and how your tone is like velvet, and in attempting to emulate it, I learned how to sing. In addition, your depth of feeling oozes through your voice in a way that says you trust not only your own depth of spirit, but the depth of those that hear you--it is the ultimate in creative dignity. You make old songs sound fresh and vibrant as if they were written yesterday. You make new material soar. You showed me how a soprano could be a leader in the modern era and, I am unutterably grateful for everything you inadvertently gave me.

But I am even more grateful that you are the loveliest, most gracious person in real life, who clearly loves her husband and family, who allows people to share their toothpaste (and forgives them for being super weird about it weeks later), who comes to shows Downtown, who then waits around to be generous with praise for those that are coming along behind her legacy. I am grateful for your humility, genuine, charming self-effacing sense of humor, and for your deep well of inner beauty, as much as for your talent.

When I was growing up, the classics of Broadway were the stories that shaped me; Rodgers & Hammerstein, Lerner & Lowe, Jerome Kern, Bernstein, Irving Berlin, the Gershwins, and those that picked up their batons. And interestingly, when I began my career in England (where I never dreamed wind would blow me) I never really came across the people that I spent so much time listening to in my bedroom, in the car, mimicking in the shower, or on a bunk bed at summer camp. I suppose, when I returned over three years ago now, I couldn't stop reeling from how commonplace it seemed to "run into" these iconic people, to share stages and Greenrooms with them-- it felt like a veritable "Whose Who" of teenage theatrical appreciation.

     "Oh hey, Brian Stokes Mitchell, thanks for clasping my hands so sincerely, welcoming me to Broadway and then telling me casually as we exchange Voice Over stories that you were ONE OF THE VOICES OF THE CALIFORNIA RAISINS. Because the world just got THAT much better."

     "Heeeeey Marin Mazzie, allow me to sing at Carnegie Hall opposite your husband and you can just sit next to my Mom in that box up there and you and Peter Freidman--stars of the first Broadway show I ever saw--can just, you know: come backstage afterward and we can all just pal about like this happens ALL THE TIME." 

     "'Sup, Sheldon Harnick? Thank you for being my real life 'Dear Friend.'"

     "And hey there, John Cullum, allow me to just call you at home on the 5th of July after weeping over 1776 which was on cable last night, and we can have a real heart-to-heart about your legacy and how much it and the theatre means to both of us..."

WHATEVER. NO BIGGIE.
JUST SOME MAJOR LEADERS THERE.
I AM TOTALLY KEEPING IT TOGETHER.
And I mean, I am. I basically know how to keep my cool. At a certain point all these people become people because they are, and you grow up (and to) realize that we all have similar processes, and the show must go on and everyone has bad vocal days and dry spells and relationship problems and coffee addictions and cellulite and its actually really marvelous. I just hope that my inner child never stops finding joy in encountering these people--never stops marveling at how I got to be so fortunate. And if I am ever so lucky to be one of those people for the generations to follow, may I be as down-to-earth-elegant as you about it.


And this is where I suppose I open this letter up to everyone-- we all have these people. Not "idols," though I am certain we have those too, but I am speaking of the real, true Role Models present in our lives in the purest sense of the word. Those individuals who form and shape the people we become by their example by simply being themselves and allowing the world to observe and edify their own paths from their precedent.

May we all revere such people, and, no matter what we do, how public or private, may we all endeavor to become role models ourselves for those we may never even know to be watching us...


So Rebecca, it occurred to me the other night at 54 Below when I came to see your glorious cabaret of Jerome Kern tunes, how much I wanted to be there. How much I wanted to hear you sing with a capital 'S.' But what really grabbed me by the collar was in fact after the show, when I came up to you and you said, sweetly as ever,
     "Alexandra, hello! Thank you for coming!"
... and we had a really nice, lovely, cordial exchange because... I don't know, I guess we're in this together now. When did that actually happen?
And I felt it--right there in the bar.
I felt that moment more than ever that I had somehow Arrived. 
How glorious. 
How commonplace.
How simple a little 'hello--'
--a greeting that could never, ever fully articulate my appreciation for all of the above.
And how perfect that that precise moment of clarity, should come from you.

So (not at all creepily, but in an utterly normal manner), I thank you.
For all of it.

Sincerely,

Al

x

Caramoor Opening Weekend [à la mode...]

Opening weekend at Caramoor!

Plus, a grand little sneak peek at "Vanilla Ice Cream..."

Enjoy!

She Loves Me at Caramoor

Dear Friend,

Please join us in the beautiful woods of Katonah New York with an INCREDIBLE Broadway cast in what has fast become a full-fledged production directed and conducted by Ted Sperling with the stunning Orchestra of St. Lukes-- hear the original orchestrations in the FULL glory. "Dear Friends" Sheldon and Margie Harnick will be there, so should you. 

The Vanilla Ice Cream is on me. 

 Sincerely Yours, 

Dear Friend.
xo

"It All Turns on Affection"

I will say, from my own belief and experience, that imagination thrives on contact, on tangible connection. For humans to have a responsible relationship to the world, they must imagine their places in it. To have a place, to live and belong in a place, to live from a place without destroying it, we must imagine it. By imagination we see it illuminated by its own unique character and by our love for it. By imagination we recognize with sympathy the fellow members, human and nonhuman, with whom we share our place. By that local experience we see the need to grant a sort of preemptive sympathy to all the fellow members, the neighbors, with whom we share the world. As imagination enables sympathy, sympathy enables affection. And it is in affection that we find the possibility of a neighborly, kind, and conserving economy.

-Wendell Berry from “It All Turns on Affection”, 2012 Jefferson Lecture

A Father's Day Email

The Miracle Worker

Three years ago, I received an email from one of my oldest, dearest friends, David Fetzer. It moved me so much, it inspired a spout of memories that I wrote about here.

This is what it said:

"Three things I miss about your Papa:

1. Hearing him shout "Fetzer!" either from across a room, or hallway, or on the other end of the phone, in the background.

2. His talent for singing ever-so-subtly off-key.

3. His crazy infectious perma-smile, especially in the context of watching his daughter when she performed on stage. Which I did get to witness.

Thinking of you both today.  =) "

Emails like this always arrive out of the blue from Fetzer-- just one of those guys. He'd show up magically in your inbox, and every so often on your doorstep in Detroit, Glasgow, London, or at the stage door in Los Angeles, beaming with pride.

I've written about Fetzer a few times on this blog-- remember the adorable Salt Laker who sat next to me in Junior year directing class at Interlochen? The curly-haired one with open, knowing eyes, jaunty hats, and hands that fit so perfectly in my own, when we held them they made a suction noise? I gave him a mold of my hand when we parted ways at the end of school, and after reading the post linked above he sent me this photograph to show that the hand still sat upon his desk.

He gave some rousing performances at Interlochen-- some were in scene-work the world never got to see (a stunning Prince Hal soliloquy, and Oswald in Ghosts come to mind). Then there was the time he staged a particularly naughty experiment with his Senior Directed One-Act of Lord Byron's Love Letter, in which he rehearsed his actors in a fully staged version of the show for his professor, only to wheel out a movie projector and play a silent FILM version of the play that his cast narrated out loud below the screen, to everyone's complete astonishment (and, to the professor, complete horror).

Then of course, some of his brilliance was worked in the main-stage shows-- a tortured and annihilating James Keller in The Miracle Worker, where, in one performance when everything at the end of Act 1 went terribly wrong when the door Annie Sullivan was supposed to be locked in "miraculously" opened, he saved the day with his signature wit asking,
     "What'd she do--JUMP?"
to rapturous applause.
Not to mention the silent Waiter in She Loves Me--(in fact, I'm having a lot of fond memories of both my Dad and Fetzer this week as I rehearse for She Loves Me at Caramoor.)

He played guitar left handed.
He drew beautiful cartoons.
He smiled with a sweet little smirk.
He wrote gorgeous, hand-written letters and sent them in the actual mail.
He had a wonderful band with his best friend (called Mushman).
He created a theatre company in Salt Lake City to provide culture to the town that was his home.
He believed in, and supported his friends.

He also gave me one of the very best Father's Day memories in recent history.
I am grateful to him.
I have thought of him every year on the occasion since he sent that message. 

Isn't life marvelous like that?  How a day that once provided joy, in the absence of a father presents so much heartache, but now, I think less of the heartache-- I think of Fetzer's Father's Day Email. 

And I think, as the above memory insinuates, that David Fetzer was always sort of Dad's favorite. They shared a sort of quiet innocent, "watching" quality--both very young souls I think. Despite all their intellect and wisdom, they shared a sense of wonder about being here; Alive and in The World, that is. They went for walks and didn't do a lot of talking. They "got" each other. And I recall how Fetzer dropped absolutely everything to make his way to Detroit for Dad's funeral. Something about his presence there was the tipping point of difference for a lot of us.


David turned 30 on December 17th last year...
     a few days later, he was gone.
Too soon.
Far too soon for anyone, but beyond comprehension for a star so bright.
I am fortunate to have know him and called him a friend.
Anyone that knew him I am certain feels the same. 

I hope that in whatever lies beyond, he could hear Dad shout "Fetzer!"from 'across a room, or hallway' as he entered, and I like to think of them taking nice walks out there, without saying a lot, just as they always did.

See you in the stars, David. 

And thank you.

The Cello Sang

The cello sang from the corner.

Dmitri’s hands had been aching to play whilst waiting several weeks for his fingers to heal after the long winter had ravaged them.  Now, in the flushes of Siberian spring the men sat idly about Shura and Mikhail’s open front room within the Volosnikov house as they were want to do most Sundays. Grigory Boleslav smoking in one corner, Anatoly and Yevgeny playing cards in another. Andrey Tenderov lay prostrate, legs sprawled blithely in the center of the room thumbing through a pile of novels and pamphlets, thoughtlessly adding his own  melodies to Dmitri’s concert.

    “Oh Mitya do play the Bach Suites—number 3, the Sarabande, please, it is my very favorite. Oh, say you will.”
    “Yevgeny,” sighed Dmitri Petrov, “I cannot do the 3rd, my thumb is still healing.”
    “The second then. Even just the Prelude. Come! No one does mournful cello better!”
    “Yevgeny, I am almost as weary of the Bach as I am of you. Now be still, stop nagging, and don’t let Anatoly beat you with a pair of fives yet again.” Anatoly smiled broadly at this—he loved to win.
    “I wouldn’t know a Prelude or an Allemande if it jumped up and bit my arse but I like the sound of Sarabande—is she spoken for?” joked Tenderov not even looking up from his books still sprawled upon the ground, his hair gleaming even in the ambient light. The men chuckled approval. Yevgeny was unfazed.
    “Please…” he pleaded, head inclined, eyes batting, smiling with his signature endearing influence.
There was a very deep sigh from the corner.
    “Oh very well,” he grumbled, agreeing only to silence his nagging, though the sincere light in Yevgeny’s face was, admittedly, charming, “but the Second—and only the first movement.” They cheered at the predictable delights of the mismatched bunk-mates.


There was a lull in the air in anticipation. And then at last Dmitri began to play.

There are times when we witness a creature being essentially itself—it happens when we watch beavers build their dams, when birds launch into the heights of the open skies, or as mothers feed their young. In this we witness a kind of glory, not with our senses but with something else entirely: the essential parts in us respond to it, our nerves tremble, and we are ignited with a kind of knowing.

So it was when Dmitri Petrov played his cello.

There was no visible shift in the men. They soaked in long strains and mournful chords as they continued to sit and read and stew and smoke. But the shift was there; real and present, the Cellist crying out to the essential with these inessential men.

Sometimes, you just need more of The Good Stuff...

...what do you need more of?