A better reason for me to remember 9/11

If you have never heard my friend (well, acquaintance and perhaps future friend) Shaun Tirrell play, please take a few minutes and listen to him take on Liszt (I need to get Shaun to pull a Bugs Bunny; "Franz Liszt?  Never heard of him.").  Last night, Shaun made my year because he gave my daughter something she will never forget.

It was not out of disrespect for those killed ten years ago or for those who have given their lives and so much more in the war since then, but I actively tried to avoid anything related to the anniversary of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.  I didn't want to watch any memorials.  My hope was to insulate myself through my DVR-space-eating Turner Classic Movies library or a book.  But my wife, Jen, talked me into taking her place accompanying our eight-year-old to the Savannah Philharmonic's annual 9/11 show, "The American Spirit."  Because Jen begged off, embellishing her "injuries" from a sterling performance in her first 5K run the previous day, September 11th is a date I will cherish.  A day many associate with terror is now the day an exquisite artist became an angel to my little girl.

Our daughter, Katie, has autism, Asperger syndrome to be exact.  It was not caused by anything, regardless of what charlatans like Jenny McCarthy tried to tell us for years in their effort to make themselves more stupidly wealthy.  It is just who Katie is.  Like many people with autism, Katie has had a gift for music since she could barely walk.  She attempted to sing before she could properly speak, and at the age of three, Katie stunned Jen and me when, after getting her first electronic keyboard, she almost immediately tried to play songs by ear.  When we bought Katie a children's book about how George Gershwin wrote his most famous piece, "Rhapsody In Blue", George became Katie's imaginary friend - his brother Ira arrived later because we needed another player for our soccer games.  When Jen saw that Shaun Tirrell would play the Rhapsody at "The American Spirit", she knew Katie had to be there.

Getting Katie to the show was no small task.  While she adores music, she also is terrified of the dark.  There is nothing worse, in her world, than a power outage, and Jen and I feared that she may not be able to handle the dimming of lights necessary in a theater.  But last year, Jen took her to a rehearsal of the Philharmonic's performance of "The Nutcracker" just before Christmas, and Katie handled it.  As many times as Katie has made us watch the God-awful Gershwin biopic, also called "Rhapsody in Blue", we knew she would be thrilled to hear the piece live.  Who better to deliver it than Mr. Tirrell.

Jen and I had twice before seen Shaun play with the Savannah Philharmonic, most recently at the previous 9/11 show.   That program featured another Gershwin tune, the final movement of his Concerto In F, most famously played by George's pal Oscar Levant in "An American In Paris" (in a dream sequence in which Oscar also conducted, played all the instruments in the orchestra, and was every member of the audience).  After the show, I told Jen that Shaun should have also been the emcee - in asking the audience to support the Philharmonic, he spoke with more passion and conviction than anyone in Savannah ever had, save for conductor/music director Peter Shannon.  In an "ask and ye shall receive" moment, Jen informed me that this year's "American Spirit" master of ceremonies would be Shaun Tirrell.

Still, she had to talk me into going, as it was a 9/11 concert, and  - and part of me feels horrible for thinking this - I was 9/11'end out a long time ago.  But Katie and I went, and during one of his emcee breaks, she perked up when Shaun began talking about "Rhapsody In Blue."  He told the story about how George found out he was writing a concerto for a concert of "American music" at New York's Aeolian Hall three weeks prior to the show - Ira read George the notice in a newspaper.  I expected Katie to pipe up, "Yeah, he was shooting pool with Buddy DeSylva when Ira told him," but she was too excited.  Shaun told of how George picked up rhythms for the Rhapsody from the sound of the train he rode from New York to Boston, where he was working on a new musical.  I kept waiting for Katie to say, "He also got inspiration from the Klezmer band at Ira's bar mitzvah and from the ragtime he heard outside the Barron Wilkins Club in Harlem when he was a kid" - I swear she would've said all that if I had been telling the story.  Instead, she was glued to her seat, smile touching her ears, whispering, "I know," to herself, or maybe to George.

After two other pieces, the Rhapsody began as it always begins, with the trill of a lone clarinet.  For the next 13 minutes, Katie was mostly hands, half-conducting, half fingering her own imaginary baby grand during Shaun's solo parts.  The performance, as is always the case when listening to American music's greatest composition, defied description.  The standing ovation was enormous, but no one was more animated than my daughter, jumping, screaming, clapping overhead as if she were at a Selena Gomez show (which proves I watch too much Disney Channel).  But, as they say (you know, 'they!'), the best was yet to come.

As the show ended and the crowd filed out of the ever-gorgeous Lucas Theater, I was about to text my wife when I noticed I had received a text from Mary Catherine, a family friend who works for the Philharmonic.  Holy crap, she was offering Katie a chance to meet Shaun!  We made our way backstage, and after introducing himself, Shaun offered to let Katie play for him in what served as his dressing room.  Katie, a mixture of nerves and thrills, sat down and played something I didn't recognize.  When Shaun asked if she wrote what she had played, she relaxed a bit and, as she has told us countless times, "no, I just made it up."

Dad was too stunned to move - I forgot to take even a single picture, though in retrospect I chalk it up to the words of one of the wisest men I know, children's book author Mo Willems.  During an appearance in Savannah a few months ago, Mo told us grown-ups to turn off our cameras during his reading to our kids because, "we often get so busy chronicling life that we forget to take the time to experience life."

As we exited, stage right, we saw Peter Shannon briefly as much of Savannah attempted to be photographed with His Maestroness.  Peter and I have been friends for a few years, though we didn't get a chance to continue our ribbing of each other - me making fun of his lack of follicle fortitude on his head, and he reminding me that he is wildly successful and I am not.  But Katie did get to tell him how much she enjoyed the show, particularly Shaun's playing and her chance to meet him.  So, if I didn't say it loudly enough last night, thank you Peter for bringing Shaun to Savannah time and again.  Thank you Jen for making me go to the concert, and thank you Mary Catherine for setting up a thrill for our little girl.

Most of all, thank you Shaun Tirrell for being a nice guy, an ambassador for good music and for giving Katie something that will inspire her for a long time.  More people outside the world of classical music should have heard of you by now, and it won't be my fault if the rest of the world doesn't know about the person and the musician you are.

As we left the stage to head toward the exit, Katie exclaimed, "This was the best time ever!"  That goes for both of us, kid.

Shaun Tirrell vs. Mike Manhattan; Sorry, Mike, but you lose

Mike Manhattan, newsman for Savannah's number one TV station, is by all accounts a fine person. He is to be greatly admired for his thus far successful personal battle with cancer, and his voice is of the quality that make women swoon and make men wish for a little additional testicular fortitude. But as a sales pitchman, Mike Manhattan could have partnered with the island of Manhattan and still have been decimated this past Saturday by a fast talking and faster playing piano man who claimed to be a poor salesman.

Mr. Manhattan was emcee for the Savannah Philharmonic's "The American Spirit" September 11th show at the eternally gorgeous, if slightly toasty warm, Lucas Theater. Part of Mike's job was to ask people to support the organization built from scratch by conductor and music director Peter Shannon in ways other than buying tickets to shows; the good old membership drive well known to fans of public radio and TV. In fact, Mr. Manhattan's appearances began to resemble those infamous pledge breaks - his third trip out elicited a whisper of "Lord! Him again?" from a patron seated behind me and my wife.

Mike's intentions were, nonetheless, noble, and there was nothing incorrect about what he said. If we don't support this orchestra, Savannah won't have the music Mike very accurately described as beautiful, exquisite, effervescent, pulchritudinous (okay, he didn't use that one, but dang, with his voice, that would have sounded marvelous). Mr. Manhattan made the requisite request to check out the table in the lobby during intermission or after the concert to inquire about becoming a member and all the benefits of membership, though unlike public TV, membership doesn't get you Dr. Wayne Dyer's latest book "How Bald Gurus Make A Killing Off This Shtick."

Then, during the second half of the show, a man whom some Savannah Philharmonic fans saw at a show last year appeared on stage. Concert pianist Shaun Tirrell, having waived his usual fee to perform, played the bejesus out of the third movement of the Concerto In F, one of George Gershwin's least appreciated compositions among the general public. Tirrell, with a multitude of awards and honors that only the serious music fan knows or cares about, was amazing, not to mention Maestro Shannon and the accompanying orchestra. Almost as stunning was the brief speech and, as it turned out, sales pitch Mr. Tirrell made afterward.

With an 'aw, shucks' attitude more in tune with Johnny Mercer's Savannah than Mr. Tirrell's home of Gaithersburg, Maryland, he made a pitch to support the Savannah Philharmonic that was by far the most effective of the evening. Well, as if Mr. Tirrell's playing wasn't an effective enough pitch, Shaun told us that Peter Shannon was the finest conductor he had played for. Not "a pretty good conductor", not "one of the finest", not "a bloody good musician and a fine consumer of the fruit of the vine", THE finest conductor. You don't have to be a calculus expert to know how many conductors Mr. Tirrell has probably played for.

Even more telling was that Mr. Tirrell missed his son's birthday, which was the day before the show, for the chance to play with the Savannah Philharmonic. That made me want to immediately whip out the check book and join the Philharmonic's "Conductor's Circle", which gets you great tickets to the shows, your name in the concert programs, and car washes for life from the percussion section (I think). Since that check would have been more rubberized than a Goodyear plant, I didn't.

Still, I'd like to think that an endorsement from the likes of Shaun Tirrell would make folks realize that we don't have to wait for the Savannah Music Festival every year to see world class musicians. We already have them here, and helping them put on several shows in a season doesn't really cost you as much as tickets to one Music Festival show.

Mr. Tirrell ended his pitch by talking about his grandfather and how he had introduced him to the music he loved. His 'Pop' was a salesman by trade, Shaun said, an excellent one despite his eighth-grade education, and Mr. Tirrell claimed he could never sell anything as well. Mr. Tirrell was wrong. In my book, he outsold not only his Pop but also Mike Manhattan, who was there in part to specifically sell the Savannah Philharmonic. No offense, Mr. Manhattan, but Mr. Tirrell had me with the first note he played. Let's hope he had most everyone else there by the time he left the stage.

Okay, Maestro, we love you, but where's George?

The Savannah Philharmonic Chorus, conducted by the always effervescent Peter Shannon, brought holiday cheer blah blah blah, yappity yap yipperoo, etc., et al, and all that flippin' jazz. So goes what would be a normal review of the Chorus's "Carols In The Cathedral" show on Friday. The show was indeed excellent, all that and a keg of Allagash White (which, if you haven't ever tried it, oh...my.....goodness). But while Maestro Shannon and his legion of wonderful musicians have now conquered the tunes of Santa and The Lord, after successful previous conquerings of Beethoven, Mozart and other purveyors of the classics, it occurred that 'The Phil' has not yet taken on one of music's most important people, Gershwin.

George Gershwin is a great pianist and composer. Yes, he died 72 years ago, but I use the present-tense 'is' because George lives in our house. He is the imaginary friend of our daughter, the first-grader. He taught her how to play a good chunk of "Rhapsody In Blue" by ear on her keyboard, not to mention "Swanee." Thankfully, she hasn't tried to do a blackface Al Jolson performance at the elementary school yet. I often wonder what George truly thought when I made the mistake of recording the horrifically inaccurate biopic "Rhapsody In Blue" off of Turner Classic Movies. He must have lied and told the first-grader he was thrilled. She drew us a picture of George watching the hideous film exclaiming to her "Look! I'm on TV!" Useless fun fact: George in the movie was portrayed by Robert Alda, father of Alan Alda.

Despite the ignominious biography, Gershwin and his contemporaries were American music for much of the previous century. Shoot, in addition to the obvious Gershwin successes (Rhapsody, An American In Paris, Porgy and Bess), he was so good that he wrote "Let's Call The Whole Thing Off", "They Can't Take That Away From Me", "A Foggy Day (In London Town)" and "Nice Work If You Can Get It" in the last year of his life while suffering from excruciating headaches caused by the brain tumor that would kill him. So, Maestro Shannon, where's the concert with George? Or, for that matter, Cole Porter, Jerome Kern, Irving Berlin and, of course, Mr. Mercer? Toss in some Duke Ellington/Billy Strayhorn if you want.

"The Phil and The Great American Songbook." Sounds like a show idea to me. At the Lucas Theater with some of the musical numbers performed on stage. Shoot, I'd even put on tap shoes for that one, and would bribe Stratton Leopold to put them on with me. I'd bet Stratton's money (since I don't have money) that we'd bring down the house, but not nearly as much as our wonderful orchestra conducted by the indomitable Mr. Clean. So, Maestro, you game?