I figured Danielle Woerner deserved another opportunity to announce her
recording which caused me to write the reply about a mineshift below.

>Yes, I'm not only a lieder enthusiast but a singer of same.  I'm an
>American soprano who sings music from Monteverdi to the present day,
>and I'm particularly fond of Schubert, Alma Mahler (wonderful passionate
>harmonically interesting stuff!) French repertoire from Berlioz to Poulenc,
>Spanish songs, and have worked a lot with contemporary American composers:
>Luening, Rorem, Cage, DeKenessey, Starer and many others.
>
>If anyone's curious about my own recording, it's called "She Walks in
>Beauty: Soprano Danielle Woerner Sings Chamber Music and Songs of Otto
>Luening and Robert Starer" -- Parnassus Records # PACD-96012.

How wonderful to have real professional performers joining in with
amateurs.  It reminds of the early days on Prodigy.  Martin Bookspan was
host.  A fine pianist who I won't mention by name was active.  I heard him
give a wonderful performance of the Beethoven #4 Piano Concerto at the LI
Summer Beethoven Festival with (I think) the orchestra of St. Luke's.
One day he made the "mistake" of boasting about his son.  We--well I was
ringleader--played the boast for all the humor we could squeeze out of it.
Not mean, just slapstick.  He took a walk and, boy, were we disappointed,
because he really was a nice guy.

Then there was the strangest thing of all.  The board was a little less
academic than this one, so more of my take-offs on PDQ and Blini got
through.  Suddenly, I found a really delightful fellow posting to me
personally.  He, too, loved to joke about music.  It lasted a couple of
months.  Now, I have absolutely no knowledge of the contemporary opera
scene.  Later, I recognized that it was Sam Ramey, which is how he signed,
who was exchanging these notes.  Boy, was I ashamed of myself.  I thought
of writing to Sam, but how could I tell him I didn't know who he was when
he would compliment me from time to time about my taste in classical music.
So I left it as one more lost friend.  We also had the grandson of
Schoenberg on the list.  He was a lawyer and actually litigating at the
time claims between the family and the UCLA of his grandfather's papers.

But that Sam was the best!

Andy C.