Paul McCartney and Peter Martins. Photograph by Bill Bernstein
the lives of the African-American women who work for her neighbors. (It’s now also a feature film.) Though it may come as a surprise to many buffs, classical musicians generally don’t listen to classical music in their downtime. While Kafavian rounds up the usual suspects in naming her favorite composers – Bach, Mozart, Mendelssohn, Brahms – in her spare listening time she favors old radio series, ’40s standards and Barbara Streisand. As she says in her CMS interview: “I find that classical music is like listening to work.”
Branford Marsalis
They are the first family of jazz – patriarch/pianist/educator Ellis and offspring Wynton, Branford, Delfeayo and Jason, with their singular gifts and accomplishments. This season, saxophonist Branford shines a light in our area as he performs the Glazunov Concerto for Saxophone with the Westchester Philharmonic at Purchase College’s Performing Arts Center. Unfortunately, you’re going to have to wait until May 19 and 20 to hear it. Still, it will no doubt be well worth the wait. This piece for alto sax in E-flat major was written in 1934 when the sax was already about 90 years old but still something of a novelty in the symphonic world. Pestered by German saxophonist Sigurd Raschèr for a new work, Alexander Glazunov took up the challenge, delivering a piece filled with romantic yearning that also contains the kind of rhythmic fluidity often associated with the jazz idiom. Branford Marsalis would seem to be admirably suited to it, seamlessly bridging as he does the worlds of jazz, blues, funk and classical music with an accessible virtuosity. But whereas Wynton has given up classical music to devote himself full time to jazz, Branford Marsalis has increasingly made a home for himself on the classical stage, performing not only Glazunov but Copland, Debussy, Ibert, Mahler, Milhaud, Rorem and Vaughn Williams with the Chicago, Detroit, Düsseldorf and North Carolina Symphonies and the Boston Pops. (In other ways, the two most famous Marsalis siblings also strike us as complements: Wynton, for all his Jazz at Lincoln Center, is more laidback New Orleans; Branford, more button-down Westchester.) Nevertheless, Branford Marsalis’ roots are in the family’s native New Orleans and in jazz. He first garnered attention in the early 1980s with Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers and Wynton’s quintet before creating his own group. He has performed with such jazz greats as Miles Davis, Dizzy Gillespie, Herbie Hancock and Sonny Rollins. Branford Marsalis has toured with Sting and was the 24
Branford Marsalis. Photograph by Palma Kolansky
leader of the “The Tonight Show” band. In 2002, the three-time Grammy Award winner founded Marsalis Music, to produce his own music as well as that of up-and-coming jazz artists.
Peter Martins
It is, as Yogi Berra would say, a case of déjà vu all over again – a cool, authoritative blond taking on one of ballet’s most iconic roles in George Balanchine’s “Apollo.” The blond in question is our cover guy Chase Finlay. But flash back 44 years to the Edinburgh Festival when Balanchine
As the company’s ballet master in chief and key choreographer, Martins has gracefully walked the fine line between being the custodian of Balanchine’s and Jerome Robbins’ ballets and a catalyst for new works. entrusted the role to another big, beautiful blond, Royal Danish Ballet principal Peter Martins. It was not only the beginning of a new chapter in the career of one of the 20th century’s greatest dancers but the foreshadowing of a new era at the New York City Ballet as Martins eventually became “Mr. B’s” heir apparent and then successor. As the company’s ballet master in chief and key choreographer, Martins has gracefully walked the fine line between being the custodian of Balanchine’s and Jerome Robbins’ ballets and a catalyst for new works. The City Ballet’s Sept. 22 gala is a perfect example. It features Balanchine’s salute to Britannia, “Union Jack,” as well as the premiere of “Ocean’s Kingdom,” which Martins has choreographed to Paul McCartney’s first-ever ballet score. “Ocean’s Kingdom” is something of a family affair. Fashion designer Stella McCartney has created the costumes. Perhaps the only thing that would make this hot ticket even more enticing would be if Martins were still dancing. Though in his autobiography, “Far From Denmark” (Little, Brown and Company, 1982), Martins is candid about his early struggles to adapt to Balanchine’s idiosyncratic style – which relies on the tricky combination of speed and amplitude and an inversion of the traditional classical ballet vocabulary – it would be hard today to imagine
Scott Pelley
him outside the front rank of all-time City Ballet danseurs that includes Jacques d’Amboise and Edward Villella. The turning point was, I think, the triumphant 1972 Stravinsky Festival. Paired with the petite, dark, intense Kay Mazzo in Balanchine’s moving “Duo Concertant” and witty “Stravinsky Violin Concerto,” Martins demonstrated that he could move beyond playing the god or the prince and still be noble, even divine. Indeed, when Balanchine muse Suzanne Farrell returned to the company three years later and was once again partnered by Martins, who had a reputation for making every ballerina look even better, they were dubbed “Mr. and Ms. God” in the popular press. Absorbing Balanchine like a sponge, he moved on to choreography with the electric “Calcium Night Light” (1977) and tried his hand at Broadway, collaborating with Andrew Lloyd Webber on “Song & Dance” in 1985. Among his more than 80 ballets are full-length stagings of “Romeo & Juliet,” “Sleeping Beauty” and “Swan Lake” – this in a company whose adage, as per Balanchine, was “There are no mothers-in-law in ballet.” The Westchester resident has also found time to champion other choreographers through the Diamond Project and the New York Choreographic Institute. In 1983, Martins was made a Knight of The First Order of Dannebrog by Queen Margrethe II of Denmark, an acknowledgement of one of the greatest Danes this side of Hamlet.
Scott Pelley
Talk about a hot seat: On June 6, Scott Pelley took over from Katie Couric as anchor and managing editor of the “CBS Evening News,’’ a post that is among the most venerable in broadcast journalism (see Walter Cronkite’s tenure) but not without its controversy (see the careers of Dan Rather, Connie Chung and Couric herself). If anyone is up to the challenge, it is Pelley, the veteran “60 Minutes” reporter and Fairfield resident. He has covered the Japanese tsunami, the attempted assassination of Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, Monica-gate and the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and the Persian Gulf. His consummately professional reporting is so acclaimed that since he arrived at “60 Minutes” in 2004, half of all the major awards won by the venerable broadcast have been for his stories. Those stories may find him treading the corridors of power, as he has done for interviews with Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke and U.S. Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens. But they also take him to the unher-