Douglas Moore's birthday, August 10th

This weekend, Cutchogue had its annual Douglas Moore Festival concert. In honor of the birthday, here's a link to a Moore song from 1938, "Adam was my grandfather." Text is by Stephen Vincent Benet and the title of the poem is "For all blasphemers." Here's the full text.

LIZZIE goes to Tanglewood

Jack Beeson's dramatic and dark LIZZIE BORDEN will play at Tanglewood this summer at the end of July. Here's a link to a New Yorker announcement about it. And here's a more comprehensive one at Boston Lyric Opera. The production features a new orchestral reduction.

Day-Dream by Duke Ellington, Billie Strayhorn and John LaTouche

Opera folks know John LaTouche as the librettist for Douglas Moore's BALLAD OF BABY DOE. Given that the arias in DOE are some of the most moving in American opera, it's not surprising to learn that LaTouche was also a songwriter. He also collaborated with Vernon Duke and Leonard Bernstein.

I came across this in an old Ellington book from the 1940s that belonged to my father. 

You can purchase Ella Fitzgerald's recording of it here on Amazon. The instrumental only version is here.