Performers Tell Their Stories: 40 Years Inside the Arts

Opera singers and directors, ballet dancers, classical recitalists, jazz and pop artists have all visited Philadelphia in the last four decades. Tom Di Nardo had the opportunity to interview many of them, discovering the stories behind the artists who fill the halls. There are adventures with Luciano Pavarotti, Mel Torme, Betty Comden and Adolph Green and Denyce Graves, and interviews with Renee Fleming, Stephane Grappelly, Sarah Chang, Bill Evans, John Williams, Andres Segovia, Eric Owens, Max Roach, Ignat Solzhenitsyn, Peter Schickele, Andre Watts and so many more, each providing personal insights into their lives as performers. The book also provides many other fascinating details: how to produce an opera in Philadelphia’s Academy of Music, how to produce a CD of orchestral music for Naxos records, and notes on the perils and realities of a freelance career. In addition, it also includes journeys to Hollywood, for adventures in the creation of music for the movies. Wrapped around the narrative is the zany world of the newspaper business. The Philadelphia Evening Bulletin and the Philadelphia Daily News, where many of these interviews were originally published, were teeming with brilliant and idiosyncratic characters, with enough colorful stories to be a book unto itself. Di Nardo’s journey takes us along through these adventures, many serious but some hilarious, during four decades of investigation, fascination and wonder.