185: Frank Sinatra, ‘High Hopes’

046: James Taylor, ‘Never Die Young’

“Never Die Young”, for me, is the multifocal prism through which I squint at the golden days of my youth. It contains all the love and pain and hopes and disappointments and optimism and disillusionment that my hoodlum friends and I have traversed, like all golden boys grown old. But we were fortunate enough to be children of a very special time.

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083: Ezio Pinza, ‘Some Enchanted Evening’ (“South Pacific”)

Several regular readers of SoTW were gracious enough to write and ask why there were no postings for the last two weeks. The reason is that I went to the Old Country to bury my mother. I’m back, and I can’t say it’s easy to talk about music. I’m in a very dark and depressed place, as those of you who have been through this will understand, with no taste for mirth or fun or entertainment. Not even for music.
But in the five days since I’ve returned from the proscribed mourning period, I’ve been reluctantly thrown back into the Musical mode.
In September, I joined the Light Opera Group of the Negev for their annual production, which this year is Rogers & Hammerstein’s “South Pacific“. I’ll be playing Emile de Becque, the male lead…

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