This is one of two love duets I sang with my wife, Kathy. As I say in my spoken introduction, she sang this at the end of every performance of the RTG's production of "Glorious" in which she starred as the infamous amateur singer Florence Foster Jenkins. My own history with this wonderful Cole
My 2015 voice recital was dedicated to 400 years worth of love songs. The one moment when I stepped away from that theme was when I sang a song in memory of a former voice student of mine, Nic Sluss- Rodionov, who was killed in a car accident earlier this year. This poignant masterpiece by
Two weeks ago today was the first day of classes here at Carthage - and I think for me (and probably for a lot of my music colleagues) it was a First Day fraught with more uncertainty than usual. The reason is simple: On a day filled with the joy of welcoming back returning students
Mary Pflum Peterson is a producer for ABC's Good Morning, America - and used to work for CNN. Unbeknownst to anyone who knew her or worked with her, Peterson grew up in a complicated household with a mother who struggled with various mental and emotional issues- most seriously "hoarding." In this portion of the
I've had the privilege of speaking with best-selling author Buzz Bissinger on two previous occasions, but I was especially thrilled to be able to speak with him - at a great length - about his most famous book, "Friday Night Lights," which has just been re-released in a special 25th anniversary edition. The book- which
Here is a portion of my conversation with heavy metal artist D. Randall Blythe, lead singer for the band 'lamb of god.' This is one of those cases in which I was decidedly out of my comfort zone (to say the least.) Before I saw this book, I had never even heard of Mr. Blythe
On commencement day this past May, my Carthage studio looked like it had been ransacked by robbers .... or like something from a disturbing episode of "Hoarders" ..... or both. It had been an intense spring semester, which is how the mess came about in the first place (actually it was a mess that
When it came time to introduce Beethoven's "Ich liebe dich" ("I love you") I decided to preface the performance by saying something about how a figure as stormy as Beethoven surely would have something very turbulent to say about love. But then .... violinist Ann Heide began playing what can only be described as an
I'm not sure there's a more wonderful musical than Rodgers and Hammerstein's "The King and I" - and I wanted to include two of my favorite songs from that show on this program to highlight what I called the "unique pain" experienced by lovers whose relationship, for whatever reason, must remain clandestine. I'd never sung
Robert Schumann's "Widmung" has to be among the greatest love songs ever composed. I like to refer to it as one of the Mona Lisa's of music- one of those masterpieces that everyone needs to know and - if they possibly can - sing themselves. I give to many of my students without apology- and
