Sparks from the Fire

Note: It’s been a month since my last post.  That’s my first pause of its kind in nearly five years of writing this blog.  Sometimes ya’ just got to refuel, I guess.  I didn’t plan it; it just happened, but I’m back.  Thanks for your patience and understanding.

Poem by Peter Link

You can’t sell imagination in jars.
So what?
It’s already ours.

You can’t buy it in a box
Or learn it in the school of hard knocks

You won’t find it in the attic
Or in any way limited to just the aristocratic
Nor is it in any way idiosyncratic
It’s just a blessing to us all

Call it a gift from God
A flight of fancy
The quixotic muse of the heart
The mythic invention of wishful thinking
A fantastical work of art

An ingenious moment of genius
The conceive of make-believe
The romance that burns between yus
The extravagant dream we weave

Michaelangelo, the sculptor
Really got it right
He looked beyond the eyes
Beyond what the eyes could see
He saw the angel in the marble
And carved until he set her free.

Imagination was the key
And the door opened wide
To the treasures of the mind
That lie inside

Imagination!
Mind’s eye to the world of make-believe
The most wondrous of inventions
Designed to make the world believe
What we perceive

Imagination!
The rising of the curtain
On creative mind
The visionary’s chance
To define the undefined
And leave the world of physicality behind

Imagination …
The chance to stand in God’s shoes
And schmooze with the Muse
And fabricate a world
Out of nothing

Bonnie Guidry, Linda Lawley, Marion Ramsey, Pamela Pentony

This is Part 6 of a multi-part series of posts.  I suggest that you start with Part 1 if you have the time and really want to appreciate the full effulgence.

London:

The plane ride to London was a blast.  An excited cast of twenty some gorgeous theatricals hangin’ over the seats, yellin’ and laughin’ back and forth and so excited about flyin’ to London.

I always kept my guitar in the overhead when I traveled and at one point I took it out and we serenaded the passengers for about a half hour with songs from the show.  At one point half the ladies were struttin’ up and down the aisle singin’ and doin’ their makeshift choreography to a bewildered, but totally entertained and enthralled audience of passengers.

A number of those people on that flight even came to see the show and came backstage afterwards to reminisce about that memorable flight.  Two months later on the flight back to NYC everyone slept the whole way home.

Theater in London is a whole different world than in the U.S.  There, there is history – a rich deep culture to draw from that the people – especially London’s theater lovers – are proud of and most knowledgeable.  After all we were now doing our classic show in the home city of one Will Shakespeare and this was a fact that meant so much to all the members of our cast.

Also at the time, Vanessa Redgrave was largely considered to be the leading actress in the Western world and everyone knew she lived in London, and on top of that her pictures adorned the walls of the Old Vic where she had starred in many of their productions.  So the girls were always a-buzz about Vanessa this and Vanessa that.

There was also some nervous speculation by all of us Americans as to how our show would be accepted in London, this great city of culture and theatrical history.  Would they put us down for being American and trivial?  Would they castigate us for turning Euripides masterpiece into a rock opera?  Would they turn up their British noses to us? (more…)

Joe Papp

This is Part 4 of a multi-part series of posts.  I suggest that you start with Part 1 if you have the time and really want to appreciate the full effulgence.

One afternoon about a year into my tenure as composer-in-residence at The Public Theater, Joe Papp called me into his office, sat me down and announced, “It’s time you did a work of your own – a musical.  As part of your education, I’m going to give you the works of three playwrights.  Read their plays and choose one that you think you can convert into a musical.”

He went on, “By doing this, you will have the opportunity to both study and work with the masters.  Have it finished in six months.”  Whew!  A rather heady assignment for a 26-year old man-child who was already pretty busy with everybody else’s works as well.

The three playwrights he gave me were William Shakespeare, Aristophanes and Euripides.  Fortunately, I had aced a terrific course in college on the works of Shakespeare, so I did not have to read all his plays, so I went back to my study notes and picked a few possibilities.  The trouble, of course, with Shakespeare was the language.  It would have to be a modernization of his language for a musical and who would want to mess with the master’s words.  It would be like writing pop songs from the works of Beethoven.

So I turned to the Greeks.  Long story short, after about a month of plowing through Aristophanes, I turned to Euripides who I had barely even heard of.  There I found not only a master playwright, but one of the great creators of the art of the playwright and a weaver of tales that have fascinated me since.

Weeks later I returned to Joe’s office and announced that I had, at last, made my choice.  It would be Euripides’ Iphigenia In Aulis, the classic story of Agamemnon and Clytemnestra and how, when King Agamemnon, mired with his army on the shores of Aulis because he had no wind to sail his ships to Troy to bring Helen back, decided to sacrifice his daughter, Iphigenia, to the gods to get his necessary wind.  He then plans a ruse and orders his queen, Clytemnestra, to Aulis with Iphigenia in tow for she is, he lies, to marry Achilles, his greatest of warriors.  Settin’ her up to let her down and definitely a tragedy!

But musicals are rarely tragedies – usually they have happy endings – so it was my choice to write the show as an opera, and a rock opera to boot. (more…)

This is Part 3 of a multi-part series of posts.  I suggest that you start with Part 1 if you have the time and really want to appreciate the full effulgence.

The summer before my senior year in college I, on a whim, auditioned for a job in the chorus of the St. Louis Muny Opera, the largest outdoor summer stock musical theater in America.  I don’t know why it was called “Opera”, as far as I know they never did anything other than musicals.

It’s an entirely different story, but, as luck would have it, I got the job.  There I learned about musicals, having the opportunity to play and understudy in 10 shows a summer for two summers.

I sat in between two male dancers in the dressing room in assigned positions for both summers and for the first time in my life, got to know and became fast friends with two gay men – one, Michael Shawn, who later became my choreographer for several shows that I wrote and directed in NYC and at whose bedside I sat as he died of AIDS.  The other, Nicholas Dante, like Mike, went on to be a working Broadway dancer and was always dabbling with playwriting.

One evening, after the show in St. Louis that first summer, Nick invited me to participate in a reading of one of his plays.  I gladly accepted, knowing that I would be attending the Neighborhood Playhouse School of the Theater that next fall in NYC and I thought that I might get a little more experience under my belt.

I don’t remember much about the reading – the play was OK and the food was much better.  I do remember that we all got to play actors auditioning for a musical and that’s about it.

Years later, when I was Composer-In-Residence at The Public Theater, Joe Papp asked me to work with the director of a new experimental piece that was work-shopping in one of his theaters.  It seemed that the composer was in Hollywood finishing a film-scoring job and would not be able to attend auditions, so Joe asked me if I would help the director run auditions and sit in for the composer.  Of course I agreed.

The day of auditioning started and just before we saw our first victim, in walks my old pal Nicholas Dante.  I said, “Hey Nicky, what are you doing here?”  He answered, “Oh, this is my play – you know, the one we did the reading of that night back at the Muny in St. Louis.”  He had actually gotten that show on and now was work-shopping it at the most powerful developmental theater in America.  I was so happy for him to have such a lucky break.

In the ensuing years I was to become even happier for my old pal Nick, for the director of that workshop was Michael Bennett, the composer who I subbed for was Marvin Hamlisch, and the show was A Chorus Line. (more…)

Life has its tragedies.  For some they come all too often.  Others seem to live blessed lives, but for all of us, they come.

They’re never any fun, but they do have a purpose in this life on Planet Earth.  They teach us.  They teach us the yin to the yang, the dark to the light, and from this teaching we learn how polar opposites or seemingly contrary forces are interconnected and interdependent in the natural world, and how they give rise to each other in turn.

Without tragedy many of us do not appreciate the sunlight.  How often do we hear someone who faced a near death experience and survived say, “I never appreciated my life the way I do now.”

Living through tragedies is often a rehearsal in survival techniques.  Through it we learn how to cope, how to begin breathing again when the breath is knocked from us.

It’s a part of life and it builds muscle.

Tragedies come in all shapes and colors.  Sometimes we see them coming.  Sometimes we don’t.  The unexpected ones are often the toughest.  For me, when Mindy died, I sat in a chair for four hours and looked at the wall in the darkness unable to comprehend.  I was shocked into a kind of coma.  Here yesterday; gone today.

Tragedies stay planted in memory.  They are simply unforgettable.  Where were you when Pearl Harbor was attacked?  What were you doing when JFK was assassinated, when your father died, when you caught your husband cheating?  In a way, we remember them more vividly than the triumphs.  They are simply a huge part of the fabric of our lives. (more…)

American Songwriter Magazine’s music critic and blogger, Paul Zollo, has just thrilled us all with his comprehensive and beautifully written rave review of our CD, Goin’ Home – On Heaven and Beyond. 

It appears in American Songwriter Magazine and is most easily found at their website.  You can go here: http://www.americansongwriter.com/category/blogz/paul-zollo-blogz/
to read it, or read it below printed in its entirety.

Having such a powerful review as this will certainly give us tremendous impetus going forward.  It’s long, but incredibly fulfilling.

I just thought that each of you would like to catch up and hear the good news.

REVIEW: Goin Home

AmericanSongwriter.com
BlueRailroad.com

•May 11, 2012

 Goin’ Home
On Heaven And Beyond
Peter Link

By PAUL ZOLLO

It’s a rare and timeless moment, a moment of grace, a drive-off-the-road-and-stop-the-car kind of moment. A time to turn off the engine and listen. It’s not something people do a lot of anymore; even when people listen to music nowadays, usually it’s while doing many other things. But music like this – and sung by singers like this – well, it’s worth taking a moment. This is something inspirational, something brave and new. It’s called Goin‘ Home. 

It sounds wrong, somehow, to characterize this as a celebration of death, but that is what it is: a celebration of the natural grace of death in our lives. It’s about rising above the fear all humans share regarding this final transition. It’s a cycle of songs about the enduring spirit of man, the spirit that lives on beyond our bodies do, the eternal spirit that exists beyond the easy grasp of words, but lives always in music.

The brainchild of Tony Award-nominated songwriter-producer-singer Peter Link, Goin’ Home is a phenomenal celebration of life really, more than death itself – but within this cycle there exists an elegant and inspirational acceptance of death, and ways by which we can realize a true acceptance of death. It’s an album which crystallizes the idea that death is not the end, but a birth into the beyond. Bravely creating a whole song cycle on a subject that few, with the exception of Lou Reed and Jacques Brel, have approached so fully, Peter Link has created a remarkable exploration of human finality, reflecting musically the full gamut of emotion experienced by those approaching death and those caring for and ultimately losing loved ones. There are sad songs here and  joyful ones, and it’s in that span of emotion that the genuine experience of death comes alive. This is not an easy road to walk, but Link’s songs and spirit go a long way in making you feel less lonely walking it.

Because as well all know, no matter how progressively spiritual one’s ideas about death might be, when the time comes – either for a loved one or for yourself – it’s frightening. It’s more frightening than anything, an encounter with the unknown in the most extreme way humans experience. This collection of songs is directed at those at death’s door, forced to integrate lifelong beliefs with an acceptance of the inexorable reality of this transition, and also directed at those forced to confront one of life’s toughest challenges: helping loved ones make a peaceful, fearless transition. (more…)

Norman Lewis as Porgy

In my very early childhood my family owned the Broadway Cast Album of the Gershwin’s opera Porgy And Bess – in a beautiful collection of 78s – that would be played around the house periodically for a decade.  When record players no longer came with the ability to play 78s, the collection was probably thrown out (along with my baseball cards) by my mom.

I rue the day.

But I grew up with all those great songs coursing through my head.  I’m not sure I ever really knew the story, but I certainly knew the songs.

Since then I’ve had the opportunity to see 5 different productions of the opera, all on Broadway.  My favorite, until yesterday, was the first I saw back in the mid 70s presented by the Houston Opera Company starring Kathleen Battle.  She was simply magnificent in the role – one of the best performances by a vocalist of anyone I’ve ever seen or heard.

Until yesterday, it had been about a decade since I had seen a production and had the tickets not been a gift, I probably would not have gone.  But the gift enabled both the Missus and me to attend a Wednesday matinee starring Audra McDonald and Norman Lewis.  Another friend who had seen it had warned me away from this production because it’s a musical adaptation of the opera – meaning that it has dialogue between the songs and is not sung through as an opera.

So I went thinking that if I didn’t like it, I could always leave at intermission and not be out the $85 ticket price since the tix were free.

At intermission you couldn’t have dragged me out of the theater.  It was, for my money, by far the best production of the Gershwin’s work I’ve ever seen. (more…)

“Thoughts On ‘Today’” is the last of a 12 part series of posts reflecting on the songs of Julia Wade’s CD, Solos, with lyrics from the writings of Mary Baker Eddy and Music by Peter Link.

The most important books I’ve read over the last couple of decades besides the Bible and Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy are, without a doubt, The Power of Now and The New Earth by Eckhart Tolle.  In his The Power of Now, Mr. Tolle sets forth reasoning on living in the nowness of life in such a compelling manner that it changed my life, changed the way I thought and acted, and along the way changed the way I look at life.  I can easily say that it brought to me a way of living that made me a much happier man and one who is much freer of two dramatic issues that haunt human beings daily – regret and fear.

Basically, I learned and understood that regret is living moment to moment in the past and that fear is living moment to moment in the future and that both are totally wrong choices and complete mistakes.  I had a preface to this understanding through the reading and study of Science and Health.   Mrs. Eddy talks about living in the now and deals with it several places in her book.  What took me over the top in my thinking in The Power of Now is that Tolle dedicates his entire book to the concept.

Mrs. Eddy, however, begins her book with these words that set forth the speculation that living totally in the now of life is the only way to practice life when she writes,

“To those leaning
on the sustaining infinite,
today is big with blessings.”

Though she does not use the word “now” she clearly means it.  This short statement of truth is packed with portent and has been a mantra for me for six decades.  The understanding of the truths contained therein has righted many a day for me that got off the track.

Lean on the infinite and you will be blessed.  Right now. Get out of the past and keep your thought out of the future and the blessings will flow.

So when I began this great adventure of writing songs from Mrs. Eddy’s iconic prose statements, it seemed only natural to start at the beginning with one that had played such an important part of my life. (more…)