Today is Stephen Sondheim’s 84th birthday and I offer my heartiest birthday greetings. He is one of my favorites composers. I mentioned this in yesterday’s post, but something on my facebook feed this morning prompted me to write this post. It offers me an opportunity to spread the word about something which has brought me such joy since it debuted in November.
After Dan and I married, we lived in Connecticut for a couple of years. On weekends, we listened to Jonathan Schwartz on WNEW radio. We would tape his show on cassette tapes and after we moved away we would play the tapes whenever we felt homesick. His “Salutes to Baseball” on Super Bowl Sunday wore out from play.
In November 1, 2013, the Jonathan Channel debuted. It is an internet radio station available on WNYC’s website. It’s on around the clock. I am always amazed by Schwartz’s encyclopedic knowledge of baseball, Frank Sinatra, Sondheim, and other erstwhile denizens of the Apple (a line from a Dave Frischberg song, Do You Miss New York?, which we first heard on Jonathan’s Saturday Show many, many years ago).
This morning, I just listened to a snippet from the 2005 celebration of Sondheim’s 75th birthday. Schwartz interviewed Sondheim, James Lapine, and John Weidman. It is available at http://www.wnyc.org/story/wall-wall-sondheim/. His show later today will be a tribute to Sondheim. The Jonathan Channel is available at http://www.wnyc.org/series/jonathan-channel/. Several radio shows, including Radio Deluxe with John Pizzarelli and Jessica Molaskey and Michael Feinstein’s Song Travels are also part of the Jonathan Channel’s line-up.
Stephen Sondheim
Here is the link to the post I did last year about Sondheim, a member of the Beta Theta Pi chapter at Williams College http://wp.me/p20I1i-be. Sondheim’s mentor was Oscar Hammerstein, II, was a member of Pi Lambda Phi at Columbia University. Yesterday, March 21, was Pi Lambda Phi’s Founders’ Day; the fraternity was founded in 1895 at Yale University. I was remiss not to mention it in yesterday’s post.
© Fran Becque, www.fraternityhistory.com, 2014.
