February 22, 2007
The Grammy’s, An Amazing Tenor, Life in the ‘Pits’, and
Karaoke on your iPod
The Three Tomatoes love music,
all kinds of music. And while you won’t find us downloading rap to our iPods, we do think some of the rappers are fun to
watch. Which is one of the reasons we really love the Grammy’s where you actually get to see the nominees perform, hear new
music, and see performers who may not be on your radar screen. And compared to the Grammy’s the Academy
Awards just seem to get more boring every year, although most of you who who voted in last week’s poll prefer the Academy Awards. Now if your iPod is stuck somewhere in the ‘70s, here are a
few “new” artists whose music we recently downloaded; Corrine Baily Rae’s CD includes a favorite song, “Put Your Record On”. (She is just awesome; if you like Nora Jones you’ll like her too); John Mayer, who has been around awhile, but we’re just starting to
appreciate him; and one song we love from Gnarls Barkely,
“Crazy” (and no, it’s not the old Patsy Cline number)… the rest of his CD is a little too alternative for
us.
An Amazing Young Tenor, and life in the
“Pits”
As we said, The Three Tomatoes music
tastes runs the gamut from low brow to high brow and we recently enjoyed a special evening on the high brow side. We had the
thrill of hearing (and then meeting) a wonderful young tenor, Brian
Cheney in a private performance for about 70 people. Brain delighted the audience with a range of
selections from La Boheme, The Student Prince, and Broadway show stoppers like “My Boy Bill”.
Brian has appeared in numerous lead roles in performances produced by the Salt Marsh Opera, a wonderful company in Stonington, Connecticut, just one of the many venues where he has wowed
audiences. He has been described by his music mentor, the legendary tenor (and three-time Grammy award winner) Jerry Hadley, as “the real
thing.” And now all of you tomatoes can hear him too. Brian is adding to an already amazing
resume with his Carnegie Hall debut on March 4th as the tenor soloist in the Mozart Coronation
Mass. Get your tickets now. He is terrific and pretty darn cute too!
We also got to meet Brian’s pianist that evening, Cathy Venable, a beautiful
and talented young musician. While you may not know her name, you may well have heard her music from the pits of Broadway shows
like Les Mis, Wonderful Town (where she got to play rehearsals for Brooke Shields, and treasures a coat that Brooke gave her as a
thank you), The Light in the Piazza , Radio City Christmas Spectacular, and the Salt Marsh Opera Company to name but a few. We
asked Cathy, who hails from Tulsa, Oklahoma, how she got to New York and onto Broadway. Well aside from practice, practice,
practice, Cathy, like thousands of hopefuls before her, came here in 2003 to pursue her dream. She got a list of the music directors in the New York
theater and sent her credentials to all of them -- including head shots of herself, she told us, laughing at her own naiveté.
But low and behold, a few months after the mailing blitz she got a call to audition for a Broadway Show that was looking for a substitute
pianist. They recognized her from her photo (sometimes it pays to be naïve), listened to her play, and she was
hired. It’s all been curtains up since then. It’s great to meet terrific
and talented young people like Brain and Cathy who are living their dreams.
iPod Karaoke
Now one of our dreams was to be great lounge singers, but truth be told, The Three
Tomatoes musical talent lies mostly in our ability to download music to our
iPods. But we’re such wanna be’s. So we were so excited when we heard about a new little
gadget that let’s you turn your iPod into a Karaoke machine. It’s called the iKaraoke from Griffin Technology. It works through your
stereo system or FM radio and lowers the lead vocal so that Ella fades into the background and you become the star! It
retails for $50 but we found it online for $24.99.
Hey you never know…Karaoke today, the Grammy’s, Carnegie Hall, and
Broadway tomorrow.
'til next week,
The Three Tomatoes
Copyright©2007. The Three Tomatoes. All rights reserved.
