Hot Town...

Hope everyone's holding up during this crazy heat wave. I'm hanging in...even braved it at Yankee Stadium last night! I got amazing tickets through my job, so my dad (the biggest Yankee fan I know) and I toughed it in the 100+ degree weather to see our boys get a victory and move into first place. Fun night! Actually, it's been a fun couple of nights. On Saturday, I stopped into Marie's Crisis for a little bit to see Sheldon Forrest and help him celebrate his 4th anniversary as a pianist there. After that, I headed to Hoboken to join in the festivities at Phil Geoffrey Bond's birthday party, which was lots of fun! On Sunday, I pulled a double header at The Metropolitan Room. First at 4 p.m., I saw Alisa Schiff's show, Mama Said, which was a very well put together show about Cass Elliot, better known as Mama Cass. This show won the MAC award for "best female debut," and from what I saw, it was certainly well-deserved. The music was great, the arrangements were great, and Alisa did a terrific job of delivering the material. At 7 p.m. that same night, I saw Lennie Watts in his show, And Further More. I must say, it was a highly entertaining hour. Lennie chose great material for his show, and sang his butt off...and all that aside, he is a funny, funny man and a very entertaining performer.
On Monday, I ran dashed from my voice lesson in order to make it to the Laurie Beechman for New Mondays, which, on this particular night was featuring the music/lyrics of David Zippel, Deborah Abramson and one of my personal favorites, Stephen Schwartz. What a fabulous show. David Zippel had two terrfic singers on hand to perform a couple of his pieces, and then he performed the "Critic Song" from the upcoming musical "Pamela's First Musical," on which he collaborated with the late, great Wendy Wasserstein and the late, great Cy Coleman. Deborah Abramson was unable to be there, but her music was masterfully delivered by Michael Winther and Sally Wilfert. Stephen Schwartz accompanied himself on piano. He did one new song, followed by "Corner of the Sky" from Pippin. He explained that he thought the song should be performed in every cabaret room, so he felt it was his obligation to christen the Laurie Beechman with his performance of it. Finally, he led the audience through the evolution of "The Wizard and I" from Wicked, which started out as a completely different song before morphing into one of the biggest hits of the show. After that, I headed over to Cast Party for another fun night.
Whew. Didn't realize quite how much I'd crammed into the span of a few days until I typed it all out!
Stay cool, and I'll have more updates soon!