Latest news with #Porgy
New York Times
03-05-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Times
Opera History Was Made in This House. Its Future Is Uncertain.
The scholars, preservationists and historians had been strategizing for about an hour inside the salon of the charming cypress cottage they were trying to save. They all agreed that magic had been conjured in this very spot nearly a century ago. That's when the writers DuBose and Dorothy Heyward invited the composer George Gershwin to visit their retreat, nicknamed Follywood, on the cozy barrier island of Folly Beach. Gershwin was writing an opera based on DuBose Heyward's novel 'Porgy,' which was adapted into a play co-written with his wife. The story depicted Black life in Charleston, S.C., and the Heywards thought Gershwin should see firsthand the place, people and culture he was writing about. Although Gershwin composed some of the music in New York, his South Carolina visit resulted in eternal anthems like 'Summertime.' 'That does bring up the elephant in the room,' said Harlan Greene, an author and historian who has done extensive research on the Heywards and the opera. He looked at those around him in mid-March, taking note that there were no Black people among the hopeful preservationists. 'Here we are, a bunch of white people in a very diverse economy and you know, cultural appropriation.' 'Porgy and Bess" is largely celebrated as the Great American Opera. It is also weighted by the country's historical baggage. The opera is an elevated piece of culture that explores the dynamics of segregated African Americans; in depicting Blacks as fully formed people nearly a century ago — and not as mammies or Mandingos by performers wearing blackface — it was an outlier. Yet it also faced significant criticism for reinforcing degrading stereotypes. The Heywards were American. DuBose Heyward's great-great-great grandfather, Thomas, signed the Declaration of Independence. They teamed with George and Ira Gershwin, whose parents had immigrated from Russia. The opera's brain trust featured no one who looked like the people depicted in it. The house has been on the market since last June with no serious buyers on the horizon. Folly Beach, just outside of Charleston, has no safeguards for historic homes, raising the question of what a city's responsibilities, if any, are in safeguarding its own history. The cottage, which stretches about 1,600 square feet across two stories, is surrounded by a tall wooden fence and is a portal to a bygone era. It stands out among the modern vacation homes that now line the area. 'It hearkens back to a history that is visibly being erased on Folly Beach itself,' Greene said. The home would likely be the spot of one of those nondescript homes if it wasn't for the current owner, Myles Glick. His motivation is less historical and more personal; the home was cherished by his late wife, Kathy. 'I'm trying to preserve it for one reason,' said Glick, a retired architect. 'I want the house to stay exactly the way she knew it, which is the way it is right now.' It was headline news when Gershwin arrived on the barrier island nearly a century ago. 'Gershwin, Gone Native,' read a 1934 article in The Post and Courier in Charleston: 'Sleek Composer, Burned by Sun, Lets Beard Grow, Wears Only Torn Pants While Writing the Opera 'Porgy.'' 'I have become acclimated,' Gershwin declared in the article. 'You know, it is so pleasant here that it's really a shame to work.' Kathy Glick also adored the region. And she was an enormous fan of the opera. Myles estimates that she saw 'Porgy and Bess' more than a dozen times. He knew better than to resist when the cottage was up for sale. 'It was just a matter of finding out how to pay for it,' he said. 'When she wanted something, she got it and that's the truth.' They bought it for $375,000 in 1998. The home features small rooms, built-in bookcases, a second-story sleeper's porch with a two-sided fireplace and an unattached writer's booth. 'When I walked in here, I could feel the genius,' Kathy told The Post and Courier in 1999. The Glicks held onto the Heywards furniture and memorabilia, restoring the house by placing fresh wood in the foundation and locating appliances that fit the era when replacing the kitchen and a bathroom. Kathy opened the house for tours about a decade after buying the property. She kept index cards that discussed the cottage, the Heywards and 'Porgy and Bess.' Inevitably, she'd break into songs with tourists. Kathy never let her husband in for a tour, though. She was worried that she couldn't keep a straight face with him as a spectator. The Glicks also purchased another home across the street from Follywood. They dreamed of living in that home to be close to the cottage. But Kathy became ill with Lewy body dementia about a decade ago. Instead, their son moved into the other home. In 2022, Kathy died at the age of 73. The Glicks were married for 48 years. 'I'm glad I married her,' Myles Glick said. 'Because I was very happy.' Glick had planned to work until he was 80. 'But Kathy getting sick and taking care of her, it took everything out of me,' he said. Now 75, Glick spoke a day after he visited the cottage to fix some siding and rails and one day before a scheduled surgery. He is tired, he said, of working on the house. 'It's a wood house,' Glick said. 'Is it going to deteriorate even further? One of the shutters is rotted. I've got to get that replaced. The sooner the better to put it into somebody's hands that will take care of it and maintain it.' 'Porgy and Bess' was one of the first representations of Black life in American popular culture. The opera was exported across the globe when the U.S. State Department selected it to represent the country on an international tour in the early 1950s just as the Civil Rights struggle was taking root domestically. The Gershwins mandated that only Black performers play roles in an effort to avoid blackface. 'Porgy' supercharged the singer Leontyne Price's career. A young Maya Angelou toured the world in the traveling production. The opera's music found voice in Black jazz innovators like Billie Holiday, Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong. But the praise was far from universal. James Baldwin characterized 'Porgy and Bess' as 'a white man's vision of Negro life.' And while Harry Belafonte released a 'Porgy and Bess' album with Lena Horne in 1959, he declined a role to star in the film version because he found it 'racially demeaning.' Those complicated dynamics endure and were on the mind of the historian, Greene, when he looked around at those attending the meeting to help save the house. He would have liked to have seen some Black people in attendance. He'd like to have seen some young people. But he was conversing with several well-meaning white adults. 'I do think that that's an important conversation for us to be really transparent about,' said Layle Chambers, a community organizer who brought the group together. 'We're going to have to reach out and really be diligent in our efforts to bring all people to the table, because I think we've got to have it as a cultural arts center.' Lauren Waring Douglas, a producer who was not at the meeting, said she supports the house being preserved. Waring Douglas, who is Black, is working on a documentary about the first performance of 'Porgy and Bess' in Charleston. That moment did not arrive until 1970 because of local segregation laws. 'Because Charleston could be such a limiting place to so many Black people, saving the Porgy house doesn't hold the same meaning that it does to white people,' she said. 'I say this with all due love and respect: The history is the history. The complicity is the complicity.' The meeting closed with the promise to convene again soon. One person who did not attend was Myles Glick. Vince Perna, Glick's real estate agent, labeled his absence a reflection of the potential for conflicts of interest. Glick wants to preserve the house. He also wants to sell it. Perna's job is to find him the best buyer. Perna listed the house in June, and later sliced nearly half a million from the original $3.4 million asking price. There have been offers, but nothing concrete that would preserve it. Tom Goodwin, Folly Beach's mayor, joked that he would love for the city to buy the cottage and relocate his office to Follywood. About a year ago, the city talked to Glick, he said, without hearing any numbers on what it would take to land the house. Glick said he departed the conversations with the belief that city did not have the budget to purchase the home. Now, Goodwin is interested to see what the preservationists will propose. 'As far as the city goes, we're really in the infant stages of talking about what we would do or not do or can do,' Goodwin said. 'That's all I know right now. ' As the group met, the irony was not lost that Folly Beach is a short 20-minute drive away from downtown Charleston, widely regarded as the birthplace of the country's preservation movement. The Preservation Society of Charleston, founded in 1920, is America's oldest community-based historic preservation organization and Charleston passed the first zoning ordinance enacted to protect historic resources in 1931. 'Unlike the city of Charleston, there's really no preservation protections,' said Brian Turner, the president and chief executive of the Preservation Society of Charleston. 'You can see the character of these beach towns changing very quickly up and down the coast.' Glick has made indications he wants the home to be preserved, but he has yet to take steps to make that happen, Turner said. 'The ball is in his court to an extent,' he said. The city could enact ordinances, but that could take time, Turner added. 'And I don't know if that would work on the owner's timeline.' For Glick, the sooner the home is off the market and Kathy's memory is honored with a preservation plan — the better. 'I'd like to have sold it,' he said. 'Last year.'
New York Times
02-04-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Times
5 Minutes That Will Make You Love Billie Holiday
Billie Holiday is one of the foremost vocalists in jazz, whose emotional depth and unique phrasing inspired generations of singers to experiment with form and pitch fluctuation. Nicknamed 'Lady Day' by the saxophonist Lester Young, her star brightened in the 1930s behind a string of hit songs and notable live performances in Harlem. In what was the hottest jazz scene in the country, Holiday stood out, and in 1937 she joined the famed Count Basie Orchestra; a year later, the clarinetist Artie Shaw asked her to join his orchestra, making Holiday the first Black woman to work with a white big band. Holiday's legend grew in the late '30s during her residency at the Café Society in Manhattan. She was introduced to 'Strange Fruit,' a song by Abel Meeropol about lynching in the American South based on a poem he had written. Barney Josephson, the proprietor of Café Society, heard the song and brought it to Holiday, who first performed it there in 1939. It was a watershed moment for the singer: It's not only the most famous song in her repertoire, it's considered one of the most important in history, the track's vivid imagery a strong indictment of racism in the country. Holiday was officially a star after the recording of 'Strange Fruit,' and followed it with an impressive run of tracks in the early '40s that cemented her fame. While there's been a notion to only associate Holiday with pain and struggle, these accounts have dimmed her light as a firebrand artist whose creative bravery encouraged others to take similar risks. We asked 10 musicians and writers to share their favorite Holiday songs: Enjoy listening to their choices, check out the playlists and be sure to leave your own selections in the comments. 'Autumn in New York' Within the first two seconds of this song it's impossible not to be drawn into the spell of Billie Holiday's voice. Sailing confidently over lush chords by the pianist Oscar Peterson, Holiday pulls back the curtain on the beating heart of everyone who has loved, lost, loved again and (finally) lost themselves in that great city. A superb storyteller, Holiday explores every nuance of Vernon Duke's paean to autumnal introspection in the city that never sleeps. Through her knowing delivery, every detail becomes vivid, cinematic: couples holding hands in Central Park, clouds reflecting off endless steel buildings, sundown in Greenwich Village, the wry smile of the maître d'hôtel at the Ritz, a lipstick-stained empty cocktail glass left behind at the bar. Billie was queen of it all, one of the highest-paid Black entertainers of her time, who left no stone unturned on her journey toward the self. This is beyond jazz singing; this is mastery in its highest form. With this song, Billie takes her place among the greatest of all balladeer improvisers in the jazz canon, creating the definitive version of an American classic. ▶ Listen on Spotify, Apple Music or YouTube 'Porgy' 'Porgy' — particularly her 1948 recording on Decca Records — is one of the best demonstrations of all that Billie Holiday is capable of. It highlights her vocal range (often criticized as 'limited') along with her renowned ability to convey complex emotions. The song is a heartfelt plea from one lover to another, asking for protection from an abusive ex, and you can feel how deeply the lyrics resonate with her — they fit her like a glove. Here, her voice effortlessly floats between deep dread and a tenderness reserved for the most intimate lovers. As ever, the vulnerability in her delivery adds a raw, personal layer to the performance. Holiday's ability to project seemingly opposing emotions simultaneously is remarkable, moving between languor and a regal stillness with effortless grace. This performance encapsulates the essence of her artistry, revealing the depths of her emotional landscape and solidifying her legacy as a true vocal powerhouse. ▶ Listen on Spotify, Apple Music or YouTube 'Sophisticated Lady' Talk about a woman who lived. I remember first hearing her voice as a girl on vinyl at the library, and how it sparked curiosity about the pain I detected in her voice though I couldn't yet name it. Somewhere along my journey as a woman I found my way back to this song, this time knowing love, loss and the ravages of life more intimately. I nod slowly in recognition as I listen to the stories in Billie's tone, alone. The lyrics are the cherry. I could nerd out about how special her phrasing is, too, but this one for me is all about her longing, like she's singing into a mirror. Duke Ellington composed this before lyrics were written, and it's been recorded so, so many times. His version is bright and charming and impressive (like he was). Billie's version is no less masterful in its depth in my opinion. Hers gets me right in the guts. Sonically, it's a teary-eyed smile thinly veiling an ache at the back of the heart. It's a quiet, wistful ride after a fancy night out to find yourself alone. But for all its melancholy, there's a wink in there. Maybe even a shrug. ▶ Listen on Spotify, Apple Music or YouTube 'Good Morning Heartache' This song is a perfect example of Billie Holiday's mastery of nonchalant, effective and ultimately human storytelling. Before she sings a single note the instrumentation sets up a somber tone, from the low winds to the aching strings to the taunting piano lines. Her tone and delivery immediately embody all that the intro has alluded to. She works in tandem with everything; she never oversings or overshadows the elements around her, but shares the space with the orchestration creating the melancholy atmosphere. She delivers the lyrics without flashy performance. It's a straightforward conversation, which is exactly how you might imagine someone deeply heartbroken would speak to you. The bridge presents a bit more urgency, and with the slightest of vocal variations from Billie, a plea is delivered — a little more volume and a slightly more nasal placement to fill out the sound is all it takes. Her impact is certainly still felt today; vocalists who employ a deeply personal, soul-baring approach can trace this style directly back to Billie Holiday and the blues singers of the early 20th century. ▶ Listen on Spotify, Apple Music or YouTube 'God Bless the Child' It's a coldblooded line. Deriving from an argument with her mother over money, one or the other of the women (it's unclear which) said 'God bless the child that's got his own' when it became clear that the parent could not — or would not — provide. The line might have referred to a Bible verse, but the offer of Scripture instead of material assistance had to have felt like bitter bread. It became the silvery narrative thread for the song co-written by Holiday and the composer Arthur Herzog Jr. in 1939 that's since become a standard of the American songbook. Holiday's versions, with sly lyric tweaks and varied pacing, show her brilliance as an interpreter, in this case of the hard-knock gospel of self-sufficiency. There's her arch nod to the stinginess of some forms of charity — 'Rich relations give, crust of bread and such / you can help yourself, but don't take too much' — that always makes me wonder if she's touting the virtue of meekness or offering a grifter's advice: Don't draw attention to a con you might run again. In the chorus, that mama and papa 'may have' is treated as inconsequential: That's not our business. But there's a sweetness, a knowing salute, to the self-sufficient child in the way Holiday stresses and stretches the word — CHI-iiild, ch-EYE-ld — that centers our concern. The repetition that ends the phrase ('that's got his own, that's got his own') lands like a pat on the head to underscore the lesson. Holiday could stroll the ballad or turn it bluesy, lagging a step behind the beat or dialing up her vibrato like a trumpeter. But I always thought of it as a melancholic lullaby (as in this 1950 rendition with the Count Basie Orchestra): She gathers us chirren for a message. The earlier you learn it, the better. ▶ Listen on Spotify, Apple Music or YouTube Find the full playlist on Spotify and Apple Music: 'Strange Fruit (Live)' Billie Holiday died July 17, 1959. This version of 'Strange Fruit' was recorded just prior. She first recorded the song in 1939. The words come from a poem by Abel Meeropol, a Jewish American who was moved to write it after seeing images of a lynching in a newspaper. All the pain of the world and Billie's beleaguered life under rampant racism can be heard in this 1959 rendition. 'Strange Fruit' was and is a protest song nonpareil, unfortunately still relevant and resonant today. Billie's world-wounded voice compels us from beyond the grave. As America fractures and frays, I turn to the artists and ancestors who remained truth tellers despite oppression, abuse and violence. Billie was hounded by government agencies who tried to silence her — specifically they did not want her singing 'Strange Fruit.' For 20 years she resisted and closed every set with it. You cannot listen to this recording and remain unmoved. A lament and a freedom song for the ages from one of the greatest artists and freedom singers America has ever produced. ▶ Listen on YouTube 'Fine and Mellow' This staging of Billie Holiday singing her own tune 'Fine and Mellow' is a performance I like to think of as Billie's blues essence mode. It's taken from an immortal document in the annals of televised jazz, the 1957 CBS production 'The Sound of Jazz.' In this performance, Lady Day, who appears easeful and in splendid spirits, is surrounded by a cast of fellow hall of famers, including Roy Eldridge and Doc Cheatham on trumpets, Coleman Hawkins, Ben Webster and Lester Young on tenor saxophones, Gerry Mulligan on baritone sax, Vic Dickenson on trombone, Milt Hinton on bass, Osie Johnson on drums, and Billie's then-current pianist Mal Waldron. Billie is in good voice, exhibiting a true sweetness in her expressions, the cameras capturing her priceless facial nuances as she luxuriates in several solos during the performance. It's all here: the expertly crafted mellow blues, Billie's loving, quite telling facial expressions (particularly telling as her dear friend Lester, whom she nicknamed 'Pres,' solos and a cameraman captures her love throughout his break), and her supremely relaxed vocal and aesthetic command of the blues. She positively inhabits 'Fine and Mellow.' This is Billie truly as 'one of the cats,' thoroughly immersed in the music, demonstrating perhaps her purest jazz performance on tape. ▶ Listen on YouTube 'Solitude' Billie Holiday sings masterfully about sadness and longing for what's gone in 'Solitude.' The songwriting is special in its vagueness, allowing the question of 'who' or 'what' to arise within us. The sparseness of the music and her pauses let the ideas linger in such a beautiful way. The haunting melody and her tone evoke a deep questioning — what of longing, loneliness and grief? Her voice is like a deep well, not just filled with pain but also genuine curiosity. There's a self-awareness that makes her delivery so special. For some reason when I listen to this, I don't worry so much, for her or for me. I sense the possibility of new beginnings in her voice. Her words are steeped in despair, yet she still feels solid, confident and somewhat protected from the pain she sings about, carrying a secret strength that resonates with me. I love this doubleness that occurs when Billie sings. Vulnerability and strength become one and the same. ▶ Listen on Spotify, Apple Music or YouTube 'Detour Ahead' 'Detour Ahead' was the first Billie Holiday song that really hit me between the eyes. I'm not completely sure why; I had heard other, better-known tracks of hers before this one. I think it's something about the opening words of the lyric — 'Smooth road, clear day' — and the way her voice slides up the syllables and back down the other side. To use the song's road-trip metaphor, it's like cresting a little hill and being able to see the whole horizon spread out. 'Detour Ahead' is the inverse of a tune like 'Lush Life,' where Johnny Hartman radiates warmth even though he's telling a bleak story; Holiday here sounds like she sees black clouds following her on sunny days. But the narrator has hope that maybe this time it won't all end in a wreck — the lyric changes to 'no detour ahead' — and you want that for her. ▶ Listen on Spotify, Apple Music or YouTube 'I'll Be Seeing You' I have a soft spot for songs that fool you in their delivery, attaching themselves to whatever association you most need. I tend toward the melancholy and relish nostalgia — Billie Holiday's 'I'll Be Seeing You' lies in the crux of that emotional breadth. You could be slow dancing with your first love for the last time, or riding a bike with your dad in the sun on a Saturday, or grieving a best friend in your later life, or sitting by the window on a spring day with incense going and a good novel in your lap. The same song can lie perfectly underneath a variety of beautifully nostalgic scenes of our lives. This song has accompanied me, personally, through a long list of bittersweet goodbyes. Packing up my first flat, hugging my first deep adult relationship goodbye, sharing a eulogy at my grandfather's funeral … for me, this song gently holds grief, cloaked in sweetness. Billie's delivery is so relaxed, so tender, and the gentle arrangement could only be described as joyful — but to me, it's a confession of being haunted by the thing you wish most to have, that can no longer be yours. ▶ Listen on Spotify, Apple Music or YouTube
