MARK AUERBACH
So You Like Broadway Musicals!
Goodspeed Musicals, our nation’s living museum of the American musical theatre, loves a good musical, and they’ve sent several to Broadway, including Annie, Man of La Mancha, and Shenandoah. Their 2014 holiday hit, Irving Berlin’s Holiday Inn is Broadway bound and will light up Times Square next Fall.
So, theatre professionals and musical fans head to East Haddam every winter (this year, January 15-17) for the 11th Annual Festival of New Musicals. The festival kicks off on Friday, at the Goodspeed Opera House with a staged reading of a new Southern Gothic musical, We Foxes by Ryan Scott Oliver. On Saturday, the musical comedy Milo at the Movies by Tom Diggs and Mark Gaylord debuts. The final day of the festival, it’s Jane Austen meets Downton Abbey in Only Anne by John Dietrich and Will Buck.
Michael Riedel (Photo by Anne Wermeil)
Some of the seminars include: “Spotlight On: Alfred Uhry”, An up-close interview with the only American playwright to have won a Pulitzer Prize, an Academy Award and two Tony Awards.; “Razzle Dazzle: The Battle for Broadway” – Michael Riedel, Broadway’s most respected (and feared) commentator, shares stories from his new book revealing the shocking drama, intrigue, and power plays that happen off stage; theatre historian John Pike talks about the History of Dance in Musical Theatre.
You can make a full weekend of it, as Goodspeed offers several tickets and dining options. For details: 860.873.8668 or www.goodspeed.org.
Cinderella
Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Cinderella, the 2013 Broadway musical version of the fairy tale classic, kicks off the New Year at The Bushnell in Hartford from January 12-17. With a revised book by Douglas Carter Beane, and staged by Mark Brokaw, Cinderella picked up 9 Tony Award nominations, and won for William Ivey Long’s sumptuous costumes.
Rodgers and Hammerstein wrote Cinderella for television, where it was broadcast live on CBS in 1957 with Broadway’s newest star, Julie Andrews, in the lead. It was revived on TV twice, once in 1965 with Lesley Ann Warren, and again in 1997 with Brandy Norwood. Beane updated the script for the recent Broadway run with some new characters and some re-thinking of the major ones. Some other Rodgers and Hammerstein music was added to the score as well. Of course, Cinderella has been adapted as animated film, opera, and musical many times over the years.
For details: 860-987-5900 or www.bushnell.org.
Remembering Robert Schrade
Robert Schrade
Robert Schrade, the pianist, educator and co-founder of the Sevenars Music Festival in Worthington, passed away on December 14, at age 91. He and his wife, Rolande, who passed away last January, and their children, all talented musicians, turned Sevenars, a festival which attracted major chamber music ensembles and instrumentalists to western Massachusetts every summer, into a world-class venue. But what separated Sevenars from other festivals was its informality. You felt like you were enjoying good music in someone’s summer cottage.
Hailed across the globe as one of the important pianists of our time since his Town Hall debut in 1949, Schrade pioneered unusual and thoughtful themed programs, both in New York recitals and numerous tours of Europe, Canada, and the US. Along with Schrade’s performing, he maintained a distinguished teaching career at the Manhattan School of Music (where he had himself been a pupil of Harold Bauer), and also at the Chapin School and privately.
Among those who studied with Schrade and his wife, composer-pianist Rolande Young Schrade, were his five children, several of whom distinguished themselves as musicians individually. Performing together, they started the series known as the Sevenars Music Festival in Worthington, now approaching its 49th season. Appearing in critically-acclaimed recitals at Lincoln Center and other venues in New York and elsewhere, the group became known as the Schrade Family Pianists, the first family ensemble to be listed on the Steinway global artist roster and referred to as “the Schrade dynasty” of pianists by the New York Times and WOR-TV.
It was at the Manhattan School of Music that he met the love of his life, Rolande Young, whom he married in 1949 and with whom he shared 65 years of love and devotion until her death this past January. Schrade is also pre-deceased by eldest daughter, pianist Robelyn Schrade-James. He is survived by three daughters, a son, and three grandchildren.
Sevenars 2016 season returns to Worthington on July 10-August 21 in Worthington. For details: http://sevenars.org/
Keep in Mind…
Illeana Douglas
Illeana Douglas, actress and author, discusses her memoir, I Blame Dennis Hopper: And Other Stories from a Life Lived In and Out of the Movies at a reading/booksigning co-sponsored by The Mark Twain House and Museum and Hartford Stage on January 13 at the Mark Twain House and Museum in Hartford. Douglas, a one-time member of Hartford Stage’s theatre for young audiences, got a job “screaming” for Martin Scorsese’s The Last Temptation of Christ, which led to a long working relationship in the films, New York Stories, Goodfellas and Cape Fear. She received critical acclaim as the suspicious sister of Matt Dillon in To Die For and an Emmy nomination as “Angela” on Six Feet Under. For details: 860-247-0998 or www.marktwainhouse.org
