Hello Stephen, how are you tonight?

We just got back from the most AWESOME concert in Heinz Hall...with Marvin Hamlisch and Michael Feinstein, doing songs of Sinatra!  They were great!  And after the show ended, they had a meet and greet for Q&A, which was very cool too. Here are a couple photos I took...

 Here is the inside of Heinz Hall, and we were sitting up in the side boxes, so it was a great view.  It's a huge stage, a huge symphony and an amazing place.  I wish you could have been there, I think you would have loved it.  If you haven't heard Michael Feinstein sing the Sinatra Project yet, I highly recommend it.  Marvin Hamlisch told the story of when he first met Sinatra, the phone rang, and a woman said, "I have Mr. Sinatra on the line to talk to you..." and Marvin said, "Uh, yeah, right! Sure you do!" (thinking it was a joke), but the woman said, "Seriously Mr. Hamlisch, he wants you to do a program for him."  So Marvin was floored, and invited to play piano at a private recording studio with Frank and Judy Garland. They both showed up wearing casual clothes, jeans, and Frank had a black zippered jacket on with red letters, FRANK on the front of it.  Marvin wore a blue suit and tie, nervous, and jittery the whole time.  A photo was taken of the three of them at the end of the recording, and he asked Frank to sign it.  So, he signed it, "Guess which one is the lawyer?"  Funny huh?

Michael Feinstein also told the story of when he first met Sinatra.  He was scheduled to show up at a private party, with all sorts of celebrities that Sinatra hung out with, including Judy Garland and Sammy Davis Jr., and lots of others.  Feinstein was only 20 years old at the time, and every time he played some piano tunes of Sinatra's old music, Frank looked over at him with a quizzical face...eventually he walked over to Michael and said, "How the hell do YOU know those old tunes, what are ya, TWELVE?"  And that started a friendship that he had with Frank for many years.

  This is the cover of our program for this evening. He was really great, and had two encore's at the end, with standing ovations.  He told us how he was invited to Sammy Davis Junior's house once and Sammy asked him what he wanted to drink.  He answered, "Do you have any white wine?" to which Sammy replied, "Baby, we've got EVERY color of wine in THIS house!"


 This one, I've been meaning to stop for months and do this, actually, when I lived near it.  So, today, having to drive by it again, this time I actually had to pull the car over, get out, and walk back to it a ways to take the picture...then I sent it to Kevin Chalfant, and he commented:

Kevin Chalfant commented on your photo.

Kevin wrote: "... and God knows Chalfants needs to be protected by Crime Watch!"

I thought that was pretty cute, so what the heck. Probably gave him a chuckle, if nothing else.  I like keeping in touch with him, he writes back every time I send him a message.  Unfortunately, his sister Melva June is not doing very well, and might not live very much longer.  This is a very sad thing for me to talk about, so I'll change the subject.

Actually, it's late and I have to go to bed. Got an early morning, taking my mom to the doctor, then dropping off Florence's Mercedes to get more Free-on for the air conditioning, then going to the chiropractor and THEN taking Florence to get an x-ray of her hip area...she fell 2 weeks ago and it's still sore and hurting her, so I'm afraid she may have a hairline fracture or something.  I hope not, but it's been too long to keep hurting like this.

Well, anyway, that's my day tomorrow. Hope you have a great TGIF and I'll write again soon.

Love, Rebecca