Celebrity Series of Boston Blog

Anna Russell, singer and comedian, 1911-2006

Anna Russell, soprano, comedienne, author, died at age 94 yesterday in Rosedale, New South Wales, Australia. Ms. Russell toured widely and recorded her better known segments, including her 30-minute version of Wagner’s “Ring” and “How to Write Your Own Gilbert and Sullivan Opera.” She appeared first on  BBC radio as a folksinger and also appeared on television's The Ed Sullivan Show. Ms. Russell authored several books, including The Power of Being a Positive Stinker (1955) and the Anna Russell Songbook (1958).

Richard Dyer, reviewing for the Boston Globe, wrote of Ms. Russell's last appearance in Boston, (for the Celebrity Series), in 1985:

The lady knows her music; her parodies are dead-on (the French art song - "I don't want to make love this afternoon; I want to eat"). She knows every absurdity of platform demeanor, from the diseuse's affected delivery of mute "e" to the tuning difficulties and sweeping arms of the player of the Celtic harp. She knows the formulas of Gilbert & Sullivan as well as they did, and she is hilariously alert to the faulty prose logic of Wagner's epic poem. She has no use for the real pretentiousness that surrounds phony art, and respect for what is good and true. And she knows a lot of things about people - her simplest remarks can boomerang ("Things would be so different, if they were not what they are").

Anna Russell made four appearances for the Celebrity Series between 1978 and 1985.

Obituary from ABC Southeast NSW

The Anna Russell Shrine

Anna Russell's wikipedia entry

Anna Russell's Internet Movie Database page

Anna Russell's bio from Comedy College

UPDATE:

from Monotonous Forest

from The Standing Room

from The Boston Globe

Leonard Bernstein, Boston to Broadway (and sometimes to the Celebrity Series)

Leonard Bernstein, Bostonian

There's always something going on at Harvard and October is no different from any other month. From October 12 to 14, Harvard will present Leonard Bernstein, Boston to Broadway a dizzying parade of concerts, symposia, master classes, video screenings and exhibitions.

The opening concert, on October 12, is called “Boston’s Bernstein,” and it will feature Bernstein's Piano Trio (1937) and Sonata for Clarinet and Piano (1942), as well as works by his mentors.

Among those to be featured in panel discussions are: Harold Prince, producer of Bernstein’s classic 1957 musical West Side Story; dance critic and scholar Deborah Jowitt; actor/singer Marni Nixon, the voice of “Maria” in the 1961 film version of West Side Story; as well as members of Bernstein’s family: daughters Jamie Bernstein Thomas and Nina Bernstein Simmons, son Alexander Bernstein, and brother Burton Bernstein.

Read all about it here: Leonard Bernstein, Boston to Broadway.

If I know you, you're probably wondering how many times the Celebrity Series presented Maestro Bernstein over the years. Your answer: 3 times conducting the New York Philharmonic and once leading the Orchestre National de France. Oh, and we also presented Bernstein as an accompanist (!) for soprano Helen Traubel during the 1941-42 season. The concert also included BSO cellist Jean Bedetti and Conrad V. Bos, who shared piano duties with Bernstein.

Celebrity Series performance archive now online

It isn't many things: it isn't as pretty as it will be, it isn't searchable, and it isn't complete (there were lots of "add-on" performances that went largely undocumented back in the day), but the entire performance history - the confirmed bits, anyway - from the founding 1938-39 season through 2005-06, of the Celebrity Series is now online (whew!). I will be adding relevant links to web sites on the artists, adding performances and details as they can be confirmed, and generally beautifying the page in the coming months.

Celebrity Series Performance Archive

Also, another work in progress now online is a list of concerts presented by Aaron Richmond prior to his founding the Celebrity Series, or at least prior to calling his activities, a "Celebrity Series."

Early Aaron Richmond Performances Archive

Benny, Bojangles and Bernard Shaw from the vault

Milton, Mass., native Agnes Moorhead

I've been doing a little digging through the Celebrity Series archives this summer in preparation for putting our performance history online, and I've come across a few historical gems that I think are worth sharing. Older readers will, I trust, forgive my "gee whiz" reactions at realizing that icons indeed walked the earth, and that some of them even worked for a living.

Among the many finds: numerous recitals from the 1920s with a piano accompanist by the name of Arthur Fiedler, a 1943 duo-piano recital at Jordan Hall that was canceled because one of the pianists was drafted (!), the Boston debut of the Trapp Family Singers' (yes, The Sound of Music kids) in 1940 (they got through Edelweiss and got over here quickly), and in 1951, there was an engagement of the First Drama Quartette in George Bernard Shaw's Don Juan in Hell, with a cast that included Charles Laughton, Charles Boyer, Sir Cedric Hardwicke, and Agnes Moorhead.

Ditta Pásztory and Bela Bartók in 1937

And this...the exact billing in an ad for a concert from the 1940-41 Aaron Richmond Celebrity Series reads: "Benny Goodman, appearing with noted Hungarian violinist, Joseph Szigeti, and the noted Hungarian composer Bela Bartók." Say what? Who knew that concert had ever taken place? Well, not me. And how did one of the greatest composers of the 20th century rate third on the bill? (Well, I guess that part is typical). A few programs later, an ad related that Bartók's wife, Ditta Pásztory, was also on the bill. Quite a group.

The previous season, in 1939, the Celebrity Series presented an engagement of Hot Mikado, the jazz version of the Gilbert and Sullivan operetta, to benefit Masasachusetts Memorial Hospitals (this was before the Series was a not-for-profit corporation, of course, when Mr. Richmond actually pitched the Series as a fundraising vehicle for other organizations). OK, that's a charming enough bit of history as it stands, but the kicker is that the cast featured Bill "Bojangles" Robinson (that's him on the right). Yup, Mr. Bojangles was once presented by the Celebrity Series. Put that in your pipe.

Aaron Richmond, wikipedia subject

Aaron Richmond, our founder, at his converted piano desk

I assembled this biography on Celebrity Series founder Aaron Richmond from the archives. Enjoy!

Victor Borge got a gig today

Victor Borge

On this date in 1945 Danish concert pianist and comedian  Victor Borge premiered on NBC radio. The network gave the comedian/pianist the summer replacement slot for Fibber McGee and Molly.

The Celebrity Series presented Victor Borge 8 times between 1963 and 1999; he died in 2000.

The following quotes are attributed to Mr. Borge:

• "The difference between a violin and a viola is that a viola burns longer."

• "I'd like to thank my parents for making this night possible. And my children for making it necessary."

• "I don't mind growing old. I'm just not used to it."

• "Laughter is the shortest distance between two people."

Royal Ballet's 1957 Boston visit remembered

 
         Our logo in 1957

This just in from former Celebrity Series Executive Director Walter Pierce, a little missive on some of the not-so-good old days. I wonder if Walter tells us these great old stories of trials past to make us feel better about ourselves somehow . . . well, it works. I, for one, am relieved I wasn't present!

Dear Jack:

How is the Royal Ballet doing at the box-office? I am so looking forward to seeing that great company again -- my first attraction at the Celebrity Series when I joined Aaron Richmond in the fall of 1957. Total staff including me at the time: 4. What a nightmare for a first timer. The company was scheduled to play at the old Opera House on Huntington Avenue the first week of October, and tickets had been on sale beginning in the Spring with the mailing of the series announcement. The Shuberts, who owned the theatre, were facing mega-repair costs (rumor had it the facade was about to descend into the street below).

We had to request the return of tickets from the public while we sought an alternate site. We ended up renting a movie house, the Loew's State, on Mass. Ave. now a condo owned by the Mother Church. Terrible conditions. Shallow stage, no dressing rooms, minuscule orchestra pit. We rented the Fine Arts Theatre around the corner for dressing rooms. The dancers ran through an adjacent alley to enter the Loew's State.

Not everyone returned tickets, so people were showing up at sold out performances with tickets for the Opera House and I had to scurry around trying to find places for them. It was like Jesus and the loaves of bread as I shoe-horned people into two boxes I had at my disposal. Somehow we got through the engagement of "Sleeping Beauty" which at the time was the Royal's signature piece.

Anyway, that's the news from Lake Wobegon where the impresarios are pretty and the children are strong.

Best Wishes,
Walter

A subscription brochure from the fall of 1957 indicates that the roster of stars for that engagement included Margot Fonteyn, Michael Somes, Beryl Grey and John Field. The thought of those dancers sprinting across alleys off Mass. Avenue is horrifyingly funny. Or is it hilariously horrifying?

Choreographer and pioneering modern dancer Katherine Dunham dead at 96

Katherine Dunham, an early pioneer of modern dance, groundbreaking choreographer, anthropologist, and activist, passed away on May 21 at the age of 96. Ms. Dunham, along with Pearl Primus, was among the first performers to bring Caribbean, African, and African-American dance to American audiences. In doing so she inspired the likes of Donald McKayle and particularly Alvin Ailey. Dunham was hired by George Balanchine for the musical "Cabin in the Sky" in 1940.

A native of Joliet, Illinois, Ms. Dunham earned a doctorate in anthropology from The University of Chicago, and she did her field work in the Caribbean, later moving to Haiti and becoming active in Haitian political causes and eventually taking up the Vaudun religion.

Katherine Dunham performed in Boston at least once, when she was presented by the Aaron Richmond Celebrity Series (that was our original name) in 1944.

Here are a few selections from among her many tributes:

New York Times (login required)

Washington Post (login required)

Amsterdam News

Great Dance Weblog - Video Tribute (several video clips of Dunham)

Onward and Upward (blog)