A Tale of Two Writing Websites

I have been writing on Substack recently. It's so easy as far as including videos and images and such, and I would like to keep doing that.

However I always enjoyed this site and I want to keep updating it.

There was always the feeling here that you could write anything and not overthink it. I started this out as a way to talk about my Leonard Pennario writing project. When I kicked off this blog, he was still with us.

I used to mention Pennario every day in the blog at some point or another. It was the little hook. 

My book about my months in California with Leonard Pennario is 400 pages however the people who have read it have told me it is a great read. It is not your normal book about a concert pianist, I will tell you that. I welcome all comments about it and all feedback.

I am working on a new book, of his friends' recollections of him. I think it could round out my narrative. This is an easier project. Heck, I can just look back on this blog and remember all the people I tracked down and spoke with. 

Perhaps go back to writing about Pennario on this site?

That is a thought!

In addition, here are some things I have written on Substack recently:

How I want to bring back the Buzz column. This is the column I wrote for something like 15 years in The Buffalo News. I still have that voice -- how could I forget it? I started writing the column yesterday and it was just like hopping back on a bike.

 My stroll through the Albright-Knox Art Gallery, now known as the AKG. I am sorry, I prefer the stentorian old name. I like the name Albright being spoken. Letters aren't as much fun.

My dream where I saw Franz Schubert and he was really handsome.

Got to write, you know?

Born to write!

I guess the important thing is ... 

Keep writing!

 

 

 

 

 

 

Drawing Every Night

 

Every night I go out and draw something. Typically I get on my old made-in-USA Huffy Harvard Limited and just start pedaling aimlessly and see what I find.

You cannot overthink it or else you will not do it at all. That is what I have learned!

These days with school being out, I am doing a lot of aimless pedaling around the Canisius College and Medaille campuses. I draw this and that, great buildings and ridiculous buildings. Colleges are fascinating, you know? They are often a blend of beautiful old architecture and modern stuff.

Last night I drew the picture up above, of the old St. Vincent de Paul Church on the Canisius campus. It is now the Montante Center although I did not put the banners on the picture. I was afraid they would clutter it up too much.

There was a fountain handy across the street where I could sit.

For years, St. Vincent de Paul was where the city's only Latin Mass was held. My father tried to drag me once when I was a teenager. I mean, he did drag me. I do remember that. But I was oblivious.

As I was telling a friend, my dad certainly got the last laugh!

From looking in Leonard Pennario's diaries I saw that whenever he was in town giving a concert, he would go to Mass at St. Vincent de Paul, no doubt for the Latin Mass. Perhaps he was there when I was sitting there sulking! He was probably next to me in the pew. Who knows?

That is a word you cannot use too often, pew.

Anyway, a lot to think about, as I drew.

There always is!

West Side story: Sketching Holy Angels

I hate New Year's
What's wrong with the old one?
Resolutions...
Who could ever hold one?

Our great friend the cabaret artist Guy Boleri penned those immortal lines in his musical version of "A Christmas Carol." Scrooge sings them.

Much as I love Guy's musical, I am no Scrooge. I love Christmas and I love New Year's.

Resolutions? I am full of them!

One is to write in this Web log every day in 2020.

Another is to sketch every day.

OK, with both resolutions I think I will make it six at least out of every seven days. Because there will be one day once in a while when you just cannot get to it and then you do not want to bog down.

But so far on the sketch front I am doing pretty much perfectly!

I have gone out every day in 2020, minus one because it was impossible. And I sketched the last three days of the old year as well.

One thing I drew was Holy Angels Church, pictured above, on Buffalo's West Side.

Now I will sound like my old Web logger self and point out that this was Leonard Pennario's church when he was a boy. And when he came back to Buffalo in the last year of my life and I met him, he asked to go back to the church and have a look. We did that.

Pennario had his moment and gazed at Holy Angels. He said, "She looks beautiful."

That is an old-fashioned thing that I love. Ships and churches are feminine and so are a lot of other things.

My great-uncle Andrew, the Rev. Andrew Kunz, was treasurer of the order of the Missionary Oblates of Mary Immaculate (Pennario always referred to them by that full formal name) and was at Holy Angels for something like 50 years starting in 1905 or thereabouts.

All these things were in my head as I sketched. So was F. Scott Fitzgerald who also went to Holy Angels School, for a little while anyway. I kept thinking of him, of Leonard, of my Uncle Andrew.

I also brooded about Holy Angels closing. It is scheduled to close next year, I mean this year. What a crying shame. I am glad it was still open when Pennario went looking for it. So I thought about that too.

Then gradually as happens, all the thoughts fell away and all I thought of was shadows and angles. That is a wonderful thing about drawing. Your mind gradually clears of everything except what you are working on.

Here is a photo I took when I was through in case I needed to refer to it. I try to remember to do that when I am folding up and getting ready to go home. The sun finally came out!

After drawing all week I can say that the sun has been out during that time for all of 10 minutes, total. This is bogus, you know? I can see why John Singer Sargent liked to work in Italy. I tried to get the sun in there when it came out. You always have to work fast because it will not be there long!

That happened again to me today, the sun coming out late and just for a bit, when I was drawing a shopping strip with a hair place and a halal market. Buffalonians can try guessing where I was. I think I will post that one tomorrow.

This is my year!

I will be unstoppable!

The art of Kmart

I did another Buzz column -- yikes, what is this, week five?

I cannot believe I can be this consistent! Of course miracles happen when someone is holding you to a deadline and Howard is. I am like a trained horse. I need deadlines.

One thing I loved about this week's column is I got to work in my sketch of Kmart, up above, which I am crazy about. Urban sketching at its finest!

Kmarts are falling right and left but ours here in North Buffalo has been dodging the bullets rather well. I did the above picture from my car on a cold day last winter.

Kmart is not Monet's pond of water lilies but it is something. I loved drawing the carts. I always love the details.

I did the Kmart sketch for my friend Ryan who loves Kmart but I would have drawn it in any case and Ryan knows that.

One day I will paint Kmart in the style of Monet, Van Gogh, and John Singer Sargent.

That reminds me.. I may have mentioned, I have that kind of New Age-y habit of writing my goals, every morning. You write things in the present tense, as if they have already happened. And lo, it comes to pass! At least that is the idea.

Every day I write: "I draw and paint like John Singer Sargent. I play the piano like Leonard Pennario."

Now we shall wait and see!

Sleepless at the computer

A lot of today went into working on my Leonard Pennario project.

Come heck or high water I am going to have it done and out by this fall. I will have something out by then anyway. It might be more than one volume.

There is one thing I can do that always gets me psyched and that is listen to him. Today I tapped into Pennario performing the Rachmaninoff Second. 

The only trouble is, it is amazing and distracts me.

Just the opening chords. Did any other pianist get them perfect like that? Every one builds on the one before, so perfectly.

Pennario!!

He is just so great!

Well, I got through some work anyway. I should mention this work began at 5 a.m. I was up early! I could not sleep and so I got up.

May I say that sleepless that I was I managed to work for two hours without spilling coffee all over the computer keyboard as Howard did this morning when he sat down at it after a full night's sleep. You should see me trying to type this now. Not pretty!

While Howard was working on his stuff and spilling hs coffee I went for a walk in the park to wake up. The sun was out!

There are worse times to do editing, which is pretty much what this has come down to, than when you have not had much sleep. You are a little impatient and tend to cut stuff more willingly than when you have slept soundly. Do not worry however. It is like clothes bound for Amvets. They sit in the car trunk for a few days to give me time to reconsider.

Things that are deleted may always return.

In the meantime things are going well. It helps not working this huge job, you know? You have a little more time to think. Also, I have to say this, I love to write about music. I love to draw too, and I do not have to cut that out, I cannot. But I can do both.

Speaking of music and art is that not a dandy portrait of Pennario on the cover of that album?

The maestro!

I can hardly wait for the book!

The Appassionata and me

A little while ago, just because I had dinner ready and Howard was not home yet, I sat down at the old Steinway and played Beethoven's "Appassionata."

Just because I could!

Well, I did not know it would go as well as it did. Aside from running through the first movement yesterday, I had not played it in yikes, 15 years. But it came back pretty easily, I have to say that.

Something is almost funny in a way. I think I play better than I used to. Which does not make sense considering I have played hardly at all in 10 years or whatever. When I went to California to see Leonard Pennario I stopped playing. I do not know what it was. I think it was that I loved Pennario and when he died I just did not want to play, because what was I next to him? Maybe it was something like that, who knows.

Who cares, at this point. The long and short of it is, I have been going back to it a little bit here and there, and oddly enough, I am a lot better. Every time I leave the piano for a few years and go back to it I am way better than I was. Another thing, it might be now that I have become a better listener. Part of that comes from listening to Leonard while I have been working on his biography. Part of it comes from working so long as The Buffalo News' classical music critic. I had to listen to a lot and listen carefully and with an open mind.

Not to brag, but when it comes to music, I amaze myself with my capacity to listen. I got better at it over the years. I can sit through entire long, long concerts and never cough or move or fall asleep. I sit there motionless but wide awake, listening, listening, listening.

So maybe that has made me a better pianist when I was not looking. Another thing, my teacher, Stephen Manes, he was great with me. Now and then through my life I have met people who, their teacher told them over and over how great they were, and they have these big egos as a result and it stunts them. Stephen never told me I was great. Heck, he never told me I was good.

Instead he worked me hard. As I was reading through the Appassionata just now, there were signs of a struggle. Faint signs, in pencil, but eloquent all the same. Stephen always wrote freely in my scores, but his writing was always very faint and in pencil and I was finding it hard to read. It was a victory when, at one point, I made out "Rich tone."

My writing was no picnic either. Mostly what I wrote was notes. The notes in the Appassionata get really high, way above the treble staff, and really low, below the bass staff. Now, as opposed to then, it occurs to me that Beethoven was pushing the envelope of what was the normal voicing of the piano. He had the hands very far apart, or else very close together high up or low down. Anyway, I would count up the lines and the spaces, and pencil in "E flat," or "C," or whatever. I seem to remember Stephen was kind of disgusted by that.

And now I can kind of see why. Often these notes are part of arpeggios or something, and you can figure out what the notes are without counting up the lines of the staff or having to write them. Well, having said that, I have to say that my old notes did come in kind of handy.

Anyway, the Appassionata. Because I can!!

I am going to get it back under my fingers and never let it go. I decided that. A half hour every couple of days to run through it, how much is that? After all...

Play the piano daily and stay sane!

Working squid

All day today I was working on a story about St. Joseph's Day. I will link to it when it runs in the paper!

I have strong feelings for St. Joseph. Maybe it goes back to when I bought that statue at that estate sale in Amherst. That statue is still here in my home. St. Joseph has been making new friends as you can see from this picture.

When I got home today I just had to have Italian food. I went and got out one of my old coffee table Italian cookbooks. I loved these cookbooks. There was a series of them and I would get them at Barnes & Noble. You could find them in the discount section, probably because I was the only person in the world who would actually cook out of them. 

The "Italy" cookbook in this series was by Lorenza di Medici, a cookbook author I loved because I had another book she wrote, another coffee table book I must point out, on Italian cooking. Again I could not imagine anyone else cooking out of this book. I would have it propped up on the counter behind plastic so I wouldn't spill anything on it. Howard laughed at me once when he came home and there I was with this insane beautiful book, trying to cook out of it.

Anyway tonight I made di Medici's recipe for Seppie in Zimino. It is Squid With Vegetables! "In Zimino" means "with vegetables." You learn something new every day!

Being German I had to sub in a little green cabbage, I admit, because I did not have the spinach that was called for. Otherwise I think I am in the ballpark.

I would like to get back to cooking more out of these cookbooks. I was 10 pounds skinnier back when I did. This kind of food is good for you.

One other thing happened today that I must note. At one point I was in the home of these two Italian sisters, and with a friend from church who is also Italian, Sicilian. And I began talking about Leonard Pennario.

And I Could. Not. Stop.

It is amazing this still happens to me. I have been on this project for so long. I am kind of embarrassed about it because the world at large does not know that things like this sometimes take so long to complete, especially when you have this all-consuming full time job. I do not mention him every day on the Web log on account of that. But it still happens. There is something beautiful in that, you know?

And there is something beautiful about this Seppie in Zimino.

Mangia!

Amvets By Starlight

It is funny, the last time I wrote was about Amvets, and this weekend I was at Amvets again.

It was a lucky trip! The line was long and so I went to kill time looking through the records. And what jumped out at me but ...

Gershwin By Starlight!

That is this Leonard Pennario record I do not have. Pennario gave me these records and Gershwin By Starlight was supposedly among them, but inside was some loser's record, I can't remember who, but it was not Pennario. That was the one situation where the record inside did not match the jacket.

So I wanted this record, and I knew Pennario had liked it, but I had not gotten around to ordering one special as I have on many other occasions. Now, today, here it was!

It is extremely rare to find Pennario in a thrift shop so I was laughing later to myself about how casual I was.

"Oh, goodie, Gershwin By Starlight," I said to myself, and put it in my basket along with a Nancy Wilson album that was already there, and a Better Homes and Gardens Fix and Freeze Cookbook that I had selected because it had an AM&A's price tag..

Then I kind of did a double take.

Gershwin By Starlight!!

What a lucky day!!

A historic choice for the Buffalo Mass Mob

It is exciting that the Buffalo Mass Mob is going to be mobbing Holy Angels. At 10:30 a.m. Dec. 7. I just marked my calendar.

I assume Holy Angels was chosen because it was Leonard Pennario's parish when he was a boy, up until when his family moved to Los Angeles. Hmmm, that is something. He went from Holy Angels to The Angels! Anyway Holy Angels was where he started to play the piano, because the nun who taught his kindergarten class saw how gifted he was. And when he was 19 and appeared with the New York Philharmonic at Carnegie Hall, that nun was there!

So there is that. And I have my family connection too. In the 1940s and '50s and '60s, my Great Uncle Andrew was pastor of Holy Angels. There is a portrait of him in the social hall.

Here is a picture of the inside of the church.

I think Holy Angels was part of how Pennario and I became friends. The first time we talked on the phone, we talked about the church and got it sorted out, our family connections with Holy Angels and who was pastor when. When Pennario was there the pastor was Father Stanton.

When Leonard came here to Buffalo he wanted to see Holy Angels again and so we went there

One more thing about Holy Angels, as I just wrote on the Mass Mob Facebook page, it is the only church I have ever encountered that has heated seats. There are radiators under the pews! At least there were last time I checked. I hope they are still there.

We could use them this winter!

Cool cat

Not sure if this is progress but someone has posted on YouTube a video of a cat dancing to a Leonard Pennario tune.

It is "March of the Lunatics."

I guess every bit of publicity helps!

Pennario praised on California Web log

The distinguished Oberlin-trained California piano pedagogue Shirley Smith Kirsten has written on her Web log a comparison of three pianists playing a waltz by Chopin, pictured above.

It is fun to read! She explains why she admires Pennario's performance and she compares it with the British pianist Stephen Hough. I love how she prefers Pennario's rendition. That is a most excellent thing in a piano teacher.

She even videos herself playing the waltz! I love that. Her version of the waltz is lovely and very personal and, speaking of personal, it is fun to look around her studio. That is a lived- and worked-in studio! I love the rugs and the books lying around.

It is annoying to see a studio that does not look lived-in and played-in just as it is annoying to see a kitchen that does not look cooked-in.

Smith Kirsten does go on to give the brass ring to Arthur Rubinstein's performance though which, Pennario would not mind but I do. Rubinstein horses with the melody and plays a few different notes that are interesting. I would like to know where they came from! But Pennario's playing of the waltz is just so much warmer and stronger. I am sorry.

I will not rest until I have taken all the hills.

No compromises here at the Leonard Pennario desk!

The mystery picture

A nice gentleman wrote to me and said, "Is this the picture of Leonard Pennario you bought on eBay?"

Because yesterday I wrote and said I could not find the picture to post because I had bought it and it was gone from the site. This is the picture of Pennario with the conductor Eugen Jochum.

This guy who wrote to me, unlike me he had two brain cells to put together, so he went and looked under "Completed Auctions."

Voila.

SO cool.

I have a dream

It would not be the morning without my taking a solemn vow that today is the day I get some exercise. So here goes:

Today is the day I get some exercise!

It has been something like a week. I am turning into a schuft! And lastnight I made pork roast and ate it. Including the fat because I am German and I cannot help it. I will have to find out what "Oink" is in German because that is what I am saying today.

And as usual I start my day behind the eight ball.

At midnight lastnight I was still on the phone with the mysterious Mr. Idaho. He is the pianist in Idaho I have become friends with as a result of writing my book about Leonard Pennario.

Mr. Idaho and I have gotten to the point where we speak freely.

"Horowitz was not half the artist that Pennario was," he said once. That is the spirit! Plus it is the truth. I am sorry, but it is.

Mr. Idaho asked for my address because he wants to send me a video of him performing. He told me my address was like something out of a movie. Note to out-of-towners: In Buffalo even our normal addresses sound like something out of a movie. Life here is like that.

I am anxious to see a video of Mr. Idaho performing because I would like to know what he looks like. When I refer to him as the mysterious Mr. Idaho I am not kidding. There is something about him I do not have a handle on. I would like to see what he looks like and one day I would like to meet him, too. Perhaps one day Howard and I will journey to Idaho and we will meet with Mr. Idaho and his girlfriend in front of a roaring fire drinking goblets of red wine. That is what I imagine. I have never been to Idaho but I think that is what people do there.

This all makes me think of a daydream I have.

At Pennario's funeral it was odd, seeing people come to life whom I had known only as names. Now I imagine having a convention of all the people I have talked to for my book. I imagine us all meeting each other, talking about this great artist who drew us together. It would be a surreal occasion!

Maybe we could gather at Big Blue. The inside of the place is not up to it but the terrace is not too bad. The terrace of Big Blue is painted bright orange and red. It has a kind of Spanish look. Once in the summer I had a group of reporters from work over for a happy hour on the terrace. We have actually entertained there.

Photo taken by our fallen "502" soldier, Jay.

So that is where we could convene: Mr. Idaho, Pennario's old flame Diane, and Diane's sister Eleana, when she gets back from Antarctica. And we would also have to have beautiful Doris who would flirt with Pennario backstage and once sat all night on Frank Sinatra's lap. And Chuck and Susan from Honolulu, and Pennario's cousin Liz, another person with whom I have long, late-night conversations. And the great cellist Lynn Harrell. And you know who else I would like to invite? The pianist Seymour Lipkin. I had a great conversation with him one Saturday morning when I was in my pajamas drinking coffee. Seymour Lipkin's picture was with Pennario's and 10 other pianists on the cover of the November 1958 Steinway News. They were the only ones in formal white tie.

That is a picture of Byron Janis up above. He was on that cover and he is not wearing white tie! What is up with that?

What about Byron Brown?


Byron Brown could be at the party, too. Seeing that City Hall is right across the street from Big Blue we would be happy to have him.

Anyway, all of us, musicians and non-musicians, old and young, Jew and gentile, gay and straight, would all mix and mingle and enjoy finding out what each other looked like. And we would celebrate this marvelous man, this miracle of nature named Leonard Pennario, who was the center of so much. There would be a rightness about it, all of us gathered in the town of his birth.

I am looking forward to that.

Rhapsody under the Tonawanda stars

And I thought that encounter at the buffet was weird. Wait till you hear what happened to me yesterday. This is Wednesday we are talking about.

Yesterday I did what I have never done and I called a number in The Buffalo News' Thrifties column. There was a Magnavox record player for sale. My record player kicked a couple of weeks ago and going without it is like going without oxygen. I mean, I talked a good game the other day about playing "Song Without End: The Fabulous Life, Loves and Music of Franz Liszt," but the truth was, I wasn't actually able to play it.

I wind up driving all the way out to the deepest recesses of Tonawanda, out by the 290, where I never go. I got lost once and had to pull into the Delaware Plaza parking lot and call Howard. He had to use GPS technology to get me back on track.

Finally I get to this little ranch house on this dark little street. This woman answers the door -- I never did get her name. Her little grandson and this great little white dog come running up. I pet the kid and the dog and then all of us go back to the back porch, where this stereo was.

I forgot to mention the ad said the stereo came with 130 records. The price was $50 for everything, stereo plus LPs. "My husband bought this estate," the woman was explaining. "He picks up all kinds of stuff. These records aren't our kind of music," she shrugged. "But I'll let you hear what this sounds like."

It was unheated on the porch and you could see everyone's breath. There was a record on the stereo's turntable and it made me smile that it was a Capitol record. Capitol records have been on my mind so much these days because Leonard Pennario was a Capitol artist.

The woman puts the needle on the record. And this beautiful, nostalgic music filled the room. Chopin's D flat waltz.

Pennario!

What are the odds????

"Wow, this is a funny coincidence!" I think that is what I said. "I am writing a book about this pianist. He is ... He was my friend," I said.

I am sure she thought I was nuts.

She had no interest in hearing about Pennario. (Imagine that!) Neither did her husband, who showed up after a few minutes. They wanted to talk about other things. One thing they mentioned was their church. They go to St. Timothy's. This is a Catholic radar signal -- it was my cue to confirm that I was Catholic by mentioning my parish, and from there, we would segue into what priests we both knew, etc. And normally I love talking about the Catholic church. But I was so floored by the Pennario coincidence that I missed my cue totally. I could have been Methodist for all she knew! I was just standing there staring.

Then they told me about the people who had owned the stereo and the records. But that is a very strange and romantic story for another day.

I did have the presence of mind to appreciate the scene: me, this woman, her husband, the kid and the dog, all standing there with steam coming out of our mouths, listening to Pennario play one waltz, then another. "This isn't my style. I like cowboy music," the husband confessed. But the little boy seemed fascinated by the stereo and absorbed in Pennario's artistry.

Well, sorry, kid, you're doomed to a life of dull pop music. Because, needless to say, I left with that stereo, and Pennario's Chopin waltzes, and the rest of the records. Years from now this little boy will be dealing with this traumatic memory on some analyst's couch. He will realize how deprived he was.

That is a picture up above of my new stereo.

Here is another view. Observe the Capitol label.



The stereo has a beautiful warm sound. And when Howard saw it he complimented me on my good taste. "It is so cool," he said. "Look at its legs. It's like out of the Sputnik era."

Plus, among the records I got with the stereo was Pennario's "Rhapsody Under the Stars," which I didn't have!

I can't wait to play it tonight.

I've gotta crow

Rejoice with me!

Gramophone Magazine printed my letter correcting the obituary they ran about Leonard Pennario. Gramophone is considered by many to be the world's top classical music magazine, so this is a big thing for me. It was gracious of them to run my letter, especially because Gramophone is a British magazine and I have been given to understand that they do not take easily to being set straight by Americans.

They even ran a picture of Pennario! Not surprising, because Pennario is such a good-looking man. He sure beats Myaskovsky, a composer someone else wrote a letter about. Myaskovsky is pictured on the same page and he looks OK, I mean he is not terrible looking or anything, but he has this glowering look and I know who I would rather go out on a date with, I will say that.

I used to tell Pennario, "Leonard, I am counting on your face to sell my book." That would make him laugh but it is true.

How did I get onto all that?

Oh, my letter in Gramophone. I wish I could link to it but you cannot get Gramophone online. My friend faxed me the page which is how I was able to see it. The new issue is not in Borders yet -- I checked yesterday -- but it should be soon. At which time I hope everyone gets out there and opens it up and checks out my letter. I am not asking you to buy the magazine because it costs $10. But check out what I wrote. And the picture of Pennario. Share the joy.

Meanwhile, here is my letter. Don't worry, it is only a couple of paragraphs. Ahem:

As the authorised biographer of the great pianist Leonard Pennario, I often heard the handsome old man talk about how proud he was to have won the admiration of British audiences, particularly in an era when American artists were not readily accepted overseas. He also delighted in his collaboration with the violinist Jascha Heifetz, which he considered another highlight of his career. Knowing his feelings, I hope you will let me correct an error in your obituary article.

Pennario did join Heifetz and cellist Gregor Piatigorsky in the early 1960s, as you noted, for a historic series of concerts and Grammy-winning recordings. But your assertion that "Pennario's style was not ideal for chamber music and he left" is wrong and unfair. With his extroverted, passionate playing, limitless virtuosity and uncanny reading skills -- in addition to charm and tact -- Pennario was a master of chamber music. Heifetz understood that, and so did other stellar musicians who sought out Pennario as a collaborator, including violinists Ruggiero Ricci and Henri Temianka and cellists Lynn Harrell, Joseph Schuster and Nathaniel Rosen.

The Heifetz-Piatigorsky-Pennario trio was never intended to be permanent. All three musicians, who remained close the rest of their lives, had schedules that would have made such an arrangement impossible. They had a good run, though -- from 1961, when Heifetz first phoned Pennario to suggest they team up, through their sold-out Carnegie Hall appearances in the fall of 1964. Their collaboration proved more enduring than the much-earlier trio of Heifetz, Piatigorsky and Arthur Rubinstein, which began in 1949 and lasted only a year.

-- Mary Kunz Goldman
Buffalo, N.Y., USA

How about that? Remember, I wrote in here about writing that letter. They ran it exactly as I wrote it except they changed "authorized" to the British "authorised." I love that.

So much excitement! Thank you, Gramophone!

What with all this excitement, I almost forgot to write about the supernatural story of the day. But now I remember. The Tarot cards!

Once I went to this party. I was about 18. This person was there who announced she was going to do Tarot card readings. Being ignorant back then, I stepped right up.

She laid out those creepy, spooky Tarot cards. Then she stared at them.

Then she packed up the cards and said she did not want to do this reading. She looked really dark and upset and refused to attempt to tell any more fortunes. Shortly afterward, she left the party.

How is that for showmanship? At least I hope that is what it was!

Maybe she foresaw the erroneous obituary Leonard Pennario would get in Gramophone magazine. If so, I can understand what she was so upset about.

I wish I could reassure her that everything turned out fine.

The haunted elevator shaft on Delaware Avenue

Yesterday I realized it had been a year ago, exactly, that I called Leonard Pennario for the first time. I remember I had putting it off forever, because you now how it is in life, you never have time to get as prepared as you want to be for something. It got to the absolute last second I could interview him and still make my deadline, and that is when I called him.

I uttered the fateful words: "Mr. Pennario, do you mind if I ask you a few questions?"

And he said no.

And then I asked if this was a good time?

And he said yes.

And then I surprised even myself by starting to talk about my Uncle Andrew. I had not planned on this but it is a Buffalo thing: you instantly have things in common. Pennario went to Holy Angels School and my great uncle, the Rev. Andrew Kunz, was in charge of the Holy Angels complex for decades. He was the national treasurer of the Missionary Oblates of Mary Immaculate. And I always wondered why we had so much money growing up! Just kidding.

To this day if you go to Holy Angels, which I do every year for their fabulous Lenten fish fry, you will see a big portrait of my Uncle Andrew in the social hall. That fish fry is great. Last year when I went, I met Jon Lehrer from LehrerDance, the great modern dance troupe. He had just moved here and understandably made the Holy Angels fish fry his top priority. We sat next to each other eating mountains of haddock and drinking jug wine. That is how I knew he was now living here. I got the scoop.

Pennario did not know my Uncle Andrew. But he told me about the pastor who was there when he was there, a priest named Father Stanton he kept in touch with his whole life, along with several of the nuns who had taught him. That helped break the ice. Considering my Uncle Andrew went to his reward when I was a very little girl I have gotten a lot of mileage out of him over the years. I think sometimes that he likes that I think of him. Anyway, he did that problematic first conversation with Pennario a world of good. A lot of Pennario's life was about priests and nuns. That is true of most people from Buffalo, even Howard and he is Jewish. Howard went to Niagara University.

How I ramble! Sitting here early in the morning with my coffee getting cold.

It is time to tell the weird October story of the day.

Yesterday I promised the story of the haunted elevator shaft on Delaware Avenue. This is a creepy one! This comes to us courtesy of my sister Katie, the left-winger. Katie's husband, David, knows these two other guys who, as teenagers, wound up in the vicinity of the Jetsons building. You know the Jetsons building. It is that '60s-looking powder blue 12-story (I think) apartment building on the west side of Delaware Avenue near Utica Street. It has that great mod arch over the doorway, with little lights. Jazz pianist Ruth Killeen lives there in her penthouse.

But at the time our story takes place, the Jetsons building was just going up. Something else had been there before.

Construction had paused for the night and no one was around. The kids noticed a pop machine there to service the workers, and being in that phase of their lives when they were pursuing an ignorant agenda, they decided to see if they could rob some money from it. They went in and were kicking and shaking it when ...

They saw something!!

It was a black shape and it came at them out of nowhere and vanished. This is a true story. I am getting chills just writing it. Without saying a thing, without even looking at each other, they just ran.

It was weeks before they could talk about it, even with each other. That is a detail that makes the story believable to me. David told me that. That is how shaken they were. Neither of them even wanted to mention it.

Well, they finally talked about it, and then they looked into it, where the ... thing ... would have come from. And they figured out that it came from the building's elevator shaft.

What do you make of that?

Every time I go to visit Ruth Killeen I think about it.

In the land of dreams

Lastnight I had the kind of dreams that make you sit down the next morning and say, "OK. What did I eat lastnight?"

You would not believe these nightmares. Attic rooms, sighing ghosts, hobgoblins! Slime oozing out of the bathroom ceiling! On retrospect I can see that I ripped the slime off from Dickens. In "Bleak House," when Mr. Krook spontaneously combusts, they can tell in the room underneath that something terrible was happening by this slime that oozes through the ceiling.

But still. Why am I having dreams like this? Everything in my life is going so well.

Number one, it seems those pale tomatoes are getting ripe on the kitchen counter. Perhaps yesterday I kvetched too soon.

And here is something else. I may have mentioned that Mr. Idaho is valuable to my book especially because he was the only person I have found who coaxed a few piano lessons out of Leonard Pennario? Well, Mr. Idaho will always be valuable to my book. But now we have found one other person who managed to get Pennario to give him a lesson.

Would you believe, it is New York City's Cardinal Edward Egan? Oh, excuse me, Edward Cardinal Egan. I like the medieval word order better.

Cardinal Egan appeared over the weekend on a big New York classical music radio show, in which guests talk about five pieces of music that are important to them. One piece he chose was Beethoven's "Pathetique" Sonata. He chose the piece in Pennario's honor! He told that to the host, Gilbert Kaplan. Kaplan is a superb interviewer, by the way. He asked great questions.

"Leonard had a marvelous personality, an ebullient, smiling, happy, enthusiastic personality," Cardinal Egan said about Pennario.

And this is a quote I love: "Very few people I know loved to perform as that man did."

I am going to request that Edward Cardinal Egan grant me an interview for my book. I do not think he will mind. He sounds as if he loves to talk about Leonard Pennario the way I do. Well, no one loves to talk about him the way I do. But he comes close.

Cardinal Egan sounds like a brilliant man who knows a lot about music. The music he mentions is the same music I would mention, that I love. The slow movement of the Schubert B flat Piano Trio. The final trio from Strauss' opera "Der Rosenkavalier." Try to find a few minutes to listen to these links. What sheer, unbelievable beauty. That is some of the music I love the most, too!

Have I been Cardinal Egan all these years and just never knew it?

I had better watch it with the surreal thoughts. Now I am back in dream territory! One more thing about my dreams lastnight.

I was calm, even cheerful as I dealt with all those ghosts and hobgoblins. I remember that. I was looking forward to morning because I hoped they would go away, but I was smiling at them and the situation stayed under control. That is an important detail. When you remember your dreams is always important to note how you are feeling and reacting.

All I can think is that means whatever is on my mind will turn out OK.

Either that, or it was something I ate.

Yuri and me

Lillie - from Lenoard Pennario's private photo collection.

This morning I set the alarm for 5:30 a.m. I am not sure how early I can push it, because my job sometimes makes me work nights, but I worry that I'm getting so behind. My friends are getting mad at me because I can't make time to get together. I have a new nephew I haven't even seen since I got back from California. I mean, I saw him before that, but only once.

Right now I am looking into a summer Leonard Pennario spent at Tanglewood where he gave recitals and had a hilarious conversation with the composer Olivier Messiaen, who was the big composer in residence that summer. I love how Pennario goes through life. His sense of humor will be the big reason this book will not be stuffy like other books on music I have run across.

Working on this chapter, one thing I did was call this conductor with an extremely long Russian last name who was studying conducting with Bernstein at Tanglewood the summer Pennario was there. I would need another cup of coffee if I were going to try to spell his last name this instant, so let's just go with his first name, which is Yuri. Come on, what else would it be?

Yuri and I ended our phone interview with this exchange:

Me: "Maestro, thank you so much for taking the time to talk to me."

Maestro Yuri (In devastating accent): "Madame, the pleasure is all mine. You have allowed me to relive a part of my life I have not thought about for a very long time." He accented the second syllable of "Madame." I was swooning.

I called Pennario. He said, "Yep, that's him." He said Yuri has always been a big charmer.

I'm thinking Leonard, what about you??

I guess it is worth getting up at 5:30 a.m. if I am going to have conversations right out of "Dr. Zhivago." This book is turning my life into a movie.