Fully three years after I first contributed the article above to the Huffington Post, still accepting "cash only," the diner holds on. “Are you okay? Instead, my frothy showpiece was dealt a pasting. Progress commands that a 300-room hotel must take the place of the parking ramp at 219 South 17th Street in whose corner nestles one of Center City Philadelphia’s treasures. Little Pete's Restaurant. I'm afraid that the news is grim. A Philadelphia treasure, in October 2014. The final closing date has been officially announced and accepted by management, and a steady stream of customers has been coming in to say goodbye for months, said the owner when I stopped in this morning. He also serves as pianist for his wife, former Metropolitan Opera soloist mezzo-soprano, Brenda Boozer. This Wisconsin Boy, a tender nineteen years old, had only just moved to Philadelphia. As a concert organist, he has performed throughout the US, including major solo recitals at Lincoln Center, New York as well as Europe, including France, Holland, Switzerland, Italy, England, and the "Bach". The final movement, Sunday, revisited the Plague chorale. A native of Atlanta, Ford Mylius Lallerstedt began studying piano at age five. He had never realized how beautiful he was. The other night, my wife and young sons sat at a nearby table. The last fragment of Ford’s letter came to mind: “No motive. Somewhere in the Curtis library is a recording of the 1983 premiere. I knew at once that it would be a good day. He smiled the way that I once did, the way that my sons do. In time, the love affair sputtered. I could almost smell Shirley’s delicate perfume. I was a Brooks Brothers shirt and blue jeans sort of guy. Dr. Lallerstedt received his Bachelor of Music, Master of Music, and Doctor of Musical Arts degrees from the Juilliard School. I grooved to Stockhausen more than Rorem, Berio more than Barber, and Bernstein even more than the Beatles. 34 Followers. The Grace of Whomever had handed me a lottery ticket in the form of an invitation to study at the legendary, preposterously intimidating Curtis Institute of Music. In 1983, the Philadelphia Inquirer’s august music critic, Daniel Webster gave my string orchestra work, Prayer for Peace, which William Smith had just premièred with the Philadelphia Orchestra, a glowing review in the paper. The next movement, Friday, was surely the song of the mockingbird, a tender elegy for a fellow singer of songs. It was inevitable. Together, they have performed extensively throughout the US. Truly a musician's musician, he introduced historical performance practice to the orchestral studies program at Curtis, established and conducted the Curtis Chamber Orchestra as well as his own orchestra, Wahnfried. I was back at the scene of a hundred character-building experiences from my youth as a composition student “singing my heart out,” as Harper Lee once described a mockingbird, at Philadelphia’s famed Curtis Institute of Music. A few nights before, I'd sung my "Elegy for Ray Charles" at World Cafe Live in University City, a few blocks away, putting over my good friend Stephen Dunn's lovely words breathily into a hot mic and accompanying myself publicly in this town for the first time since the last time I touched the keys as the lounge pianist in the Barclay Hotel lobby in fall 1982. After the stuffy Owl Light of the Common Room, the sunshine outside dazzled. This is a piece about Closure and the closure of Little Pete's, a belovéd greasy spoon across the street from the Warwick Hotel in Philadelphia. Autumn 1981. Ford's musical career has taken him in many different directions. Brand new. Yes. Summary: Ford Lallerstedt is 70 years old today because Ford's birthday is on 01/22/1950. My song ended, I bowed, emptied, and felt nothing. After checking out of the Warwick, we celebrated by visiting Little Pete's a final time. His doctoral research into the notation of polyphonic keyboard music of the Renaissance led to the first complete inventory of all original sources of Iberian keyboard tablature. First, she took the stage and rocked the joint with a spiritual, and then rocked it again by singing the trumpet part(!) The sidewalk in front of it bristled with little Parisian-style café tables. To her, I am an old man, I mused. Tell others.”. I asked myself. A movement I called Thursday followed. I inhaled the familiar smells of wood polish and upholstery, winter coats, bay rum, and Chanel No. Sometimes Ford goes by various nicknames including Ford M Lallerstedt, Lallerstedt Ford, Ford Mylius Lallerstedt, Ford Lallersteot and Ford D Lallerstedt. Ford holds Bachelors, Masters and Doctor of Musical Arts degrees from The Juilliard School, where he won all prizes in organ performance and was awarded teaching fellowships in piano and solfege. We’re talking about a Genuine 24-Hour Greasy Spoon, Home to Collars Both White and Blue, an Insomniac’s Oasis in the Night, a Caffeine Addict’s Last Resort, a Trusted Purveyor of that mysterious mélange of grill top odds-and-ends, Scrapple. The results are surprising, unpredicted. The tune was a gloss on the melody of Ring a Ring o' Roses, a nursery rhyme which has come to be associated with the Plague. The next morning in the Common Room I seated myself next to the walk-in fireplace on the chair in which the school’s receptionist Shirley Schachtel had taken my hand 30 years earlier. I regarded the Other Daron—the brother who died after only a few days—tenderly. I imitated the sound of a heart monitor, "slap-tongue," in the clarinet, doubled with pizzicato in the viola. of Charles Ives' Unanswered Question in an arrangement by local composer Andrew Lipke. Oh, no,” I answered gently, looking up. Like her, she smelled of rain. At length, he rose, reached for my hand, held it fiercely in his small, strong one for a moment, smiled, nodded affirmatively, released it, turned, and walked slowly into Rittenhouse Square, never to return. In his early twenties, while still a student at Juilliard, Rudolf Serkin invited Ford to Philadelphia to join the faculty of the famed Curtis Institute of Music. Taken back in time by the music, I remembered the moment that I’d first been in the presence of talent as freely-flowing and endless as a pure, montain stream: the second movement, Tuesday, unfolded, painting with sounds the burgundies, blood-reds, and dirty vermilions a memory of the 1982 night I fell in love with my then girlfriend, sprawled out on the wine-dark, plushness of the carpet in the Horszowski Room, listening to her practice, from memory, illuminated only by light creeping in from a streetlamp outside in Rittenhouse Square, the Bartok Solo Sonata. (Photo by Neil Erickson). My life as it was then, almost impossibly full, was discussed, vivisected, celebrated, dreaded, and mourned at Little Pete’s. Arriving in Philadelphia that afternoon, I’d had a note from eminent organist and theorist Ford Lallerstedt in which he had written, “I’m thinking today of Curtis, of unmerited favor, of a sense of grace.” During my lessons, my mentor Ned Rorem casually dropped priceless aperçu and dry, acerbic criticisms while slashing through my compositions, his pencil waving this way and that like a rapier. Music did not. I shouldn’t be amazed by how much the place meant to all of us. I pushed the heavy door open. As a student at Curtis in 1982. Stream Tracks and Playlists from Ford Lallerstedt on your desktop or mobile device. BRINGING OPEN MINDS TOGETHER FOR OVER TWO DECADES. Click here to read it there. You can listen to, and learn more about, Book of Days here. June 2017. Search here: A Mockingbird Returns to the Curtis Institute, 11°38′11″ N 86°20′59″ W: The Sweet Water and the Salt, Cathedral of Dreams: Milwaukee's Oriental Landmark Theater, Composing as Gardening: How it Took Me 33 Years to Finish a Piece, "Now is the Time": Peace, Justice, Good Tunes, Learning How to Breathe Again: Leaving New York After 9/11, The Ink's Still Wet: How Composers Keep Score, Elegance, Intelligence, and Dignity: Remembering William Weaver. “So, you’re brand new,” I remembered her observing gently, and smiled inwardly. Seventeen years later—a lifetime, really—my alma matercommissioned a piece to celebrate its 75th anniversary called Much Ado. He studied organ with Vernon de Tar at the Juilliard School, where, in 1973, he won both prizes in organ performance and was awarded teaching fellowships in piano and solfège. His association with Curtis, now spanning over four decades, has brought him in close contact as instructor and mentor to many of the outstanding young artists of today, including conductors Teddy Abrams, Francesco Lecce Chong, Steve Hackman, Ludovic Morlot, Vinay Parameswaren, Michael Stern, Danny Stewart, Barbara Yahr, composers Daron Hagen, Jennifer Higdon, Jonathan Holland, Chris Rogerson, David Hertzberg, Andrew Hsu, pianist composer Sebastian Chang, violinists Johnny Gandelsman, Leila Josefowicz, Nicholas Kitchen, Maureen Nelson, clarinetist Johnny Teyssier, bassoonist and conductor Harrison Hollingsworth and pianist Yuja Wang, among many other prominent young artists. Afterwards, a bit shell-shocked by the enormity of Ned’s self-assurance, my best friend, and fellow Rorem pupil Norman Stumpf, and I would head for Little Pete’s, where we would debrief. As Chair of Musical Studies at Curtis, he introduced many innovative teaching techniques, especially in ear training. Ford calls Palm Beach, FL, home. You can read it there by clicking here. Saturday began, revisiting music I had penned to give a taste of the insomnia that set in like a piton during my Curtis years. He also studied electronic music with Vladimir Ussachevsky and Milton Babbitt at the Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center and Schenkerian techniques with Carl Schachter. He studied organ with Vernon de Tar at the Juilliard School, where, in 1973, he won both prizes in organ performance and was awarded teaching fellowships in piano and solfège. Ford continues his work at Curtis, developing a Cambridge-style tutorial-seminar program in Advanced Musical Studies. (Photo: Daron Hagen). I rose, strolled to the painting of Mary Louise Curtis Bok, smiled affectionately at it, and took a final look around before leaving. Enough time has passed that the Warwick Hotel across the street has passed back into private hands and out of the clutches of the chain that had demolished its once elegant lobby and replaced it with a hideous, Euro-trashy, neon-blue fishtank affair.
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