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WPCNR STAGE DOOR. By John F. Bailey. October 2, 2006: The Irvington Town Hall Theatre was filled to capacity two nights in a row over the weekend thanks to the uncanny sensitivity of what the public wants from a non-profit theatre-producing team that has been entertaining Westchester for 27 years. They’re “The Schuberts of White Plains” The First Lady of Westchester Theatre, Susan Katz and the thorough and meticulous “phantom in the wings,” her husband, Peter Katz. Ms. Katz is the lady with the intuition for programs that pull in the audiences. Mr. Katz is the marketing genius who puts the customers in the seats. The pair of impresarios have been quietly running Westco Productions for 27 years. Westco is Westchester’s first non-profit professional theatre group, and the Super Producers have never had to explain deficits to their Board of Directors – because Westco has never run a deficit.
That Old Smoothie, Livingston Taylor — the Victor Borge with a guitar — and fingers that make one guitar sound like a bunch of sidemen, and can make a keyboard sing entertained, charmed and inspired with his satire, wisecracks, and soulful songs of the human spirit Saturday night before another sellout for the Super Producers. Photo, Courtesy, Westco Productions.
Because The Katzes Know theatre. The hyper-enthusiastic Susan Katz chooses the programming for the public events, while her husband, Peter Katz handles the marketing. Though Westco is the beneficiary of some 22 public foundations, the public events have to work and draw patrons, because the proceeds of these performances like Livingston Taylor and Judy Collins pay for the staging of performances in hospitals for children, kids theatre workshops, Broadway Babes, and other Westco firsts.
Artist Livingston Taylor, with The First Lady of Westchester Theatre, Susan Katz after Mr. Taylor’s performance Saturday night. Photo, Courtesy Westco Productions.
There was tangible evidence that Westchester’s “Super Producers” know what the Westchester audience wants in the Friday and Saturday evenings in one of Westchester County’s theatre masterpieces, The Irvington Town Hall Theatre.
When Livingston Taylor strode on stage in his Brooks Brothers blue shirt, preppy sweater, sharp-pressed slacks and bowtie, reminiscent in appearance of a Smothers Brother, I, not knowing the performer did not know what to expect. Warming up on chords he set the audience at ease in what seems to be the new style of concerteers today – building and working rapport with the audience – raconteuring and treating the theatre as if it was their living room – like the Playboy Mansion party.
The 400 patrons of the arts in the seats knew him. Mr. Taylor proceeded to win me, a brutal critic of folksingers, over with a combination of humor, virtuoso six-string guitar playing, and conversational quips and facial quirks and his sensitive songs – a little bit ballad, a little bit pop, a little bit satire – that connected with the well-heeled upper middle class base that the Katzs know how to please.
Mr. Taylor, a songwriter and musician on guitar and piano, brother of James Taylor, performed selections from his newest CD, There You Are Again, the title song of which he performed in the second half of the two hour show seemed to fly by. There You Are Again is quintessential Livingston Taylor, a song deeply personal we can all identify with, speaking truth to our soul, when we least expect it when we’re down the memory of an old flame “on the wind” puts us back on course.
Taylor tapped deep into the roots of folk music accompanying himself on piano and on guitar on two civil war songs that spoke to the cost of war in a truly personal way – the thoughts of a Confederate soldier of his family as he lay dying which Mr. Taylor dedicated to his older brother Alex – and later on a new Taylor song, Carolina he sung of the thoughts of a soldier in the field as he spared the life of another soldier whose gun had jammed. Yes, they were war songs, but they spoke to the humanness inside of us all that in the callousness of today still is there. Taylor songs come together with the intricacies of lyric that rival Cole Porter in their inventiveness.
Taylor got into some old-time gospel music playing a mean black bottom piano where he sang two jubilant gospel songs he has written. The second, Step-by-Step chronicled the departure from faith that many experience in life in a most unique way – mentioning those modern scourges: drugs and alcohol – and how Jesus can bring you back. This brought out “Oh yeahs” from the gospel aficionados in the audience. Taylor just makes those ivories sing behind his voice while when he plays guitar his fingered picks make one guitar sound like three. His playing “guitar sound beds” on his guitar while talking over his guitar playing and joking with the audience I liken to a Victor Borge playing the guitar.
This was particularly evident in Taylor’s tour de force, I Can Fly, a tribute to the pioneers of flight, Wilbur and Orville Wright in which he rhymed and worked in no nonsense words: hubris, heavier, Lilienthal, Langley, Chanute, pitch, drag, and thrust, warping and rudder into a song that like the Wright Brothers plane – flies!
(Taylor is artist in residence at Harvard University and a professor at the Berklee College of Music in Boston. He is an avid pilot with over 4,000 hours of flight time, hence his admiration of the Wright Brothers. He even flew his Cessna to Westchester County Airport for the concert.)
But I’ll say this, Mr. Taylor is the man who flies – rarely have I been at a concert particularly of the folk variety where some songs haven’t made me yawn with their simplicity of cliché and saccharine appeal to liberal bleeding hearts.
There are no simple Livingston Taylor songs. No Taylor songs that do not involve your heart, mind, feelings and mess with your head as all the great songs do. From I’m in My Pajamas to one of his spoofs of folk music “Railroad Bill” in which the songwriter and the main character argue in the song about what the main character will do in the song, every Taylor song makes you listen to each word to delve you deeper into the story of the music.
A song that connected with us old married couples was “Best Friends” that brought home the intangibles of marriage for some who perhaps had forgotten them. That’s why Taylor has been performing successfully for years on the concert circle, he sings about the truths of life.
Taylor even dueted on request of a young member of the audience on a request, “I wish I were a cowboy” that the young lady wanted to sing for her mother in the audience. Taylor made the most of this moment, getting maximum laughs without making fun of the young lady even sitting in the audience while she stood on stage with his guitar – and he got her to sing – dueted with her. Well, he was so much at ease it was all one big party Saturday night. Taylor had so much fun he sat on the stage signing autographs for 45 minutes after the show. At one point in the show Taylor said how much he was enjoying this (putting on the concert), it showed.
The previous evening on Friday night, the Westco Wizards drew another enthusiastic and attentive audience to see internationally acclaimed Russian artists, headlined by violinist Mela Tenenbaum in a chamber concert celebrating Mozart’s 250th birthday. Photo, Courtesy Westco Productions
An all-star phalanx of some of the world’s top symphony orchestras drew an entirely different and attentive audience. In addition to Mela Tenenbaum,, the resident solist with the Kiev Chamber Orchestra from 1979 to 1989, concertmaster of the Philharmonica Virtuosi from 1993. Before leaving the Soviet Union, she premiered numerous works written for her by Russian and Ukranian composers. She has soloed with the Seattle Chamber Music Festival, Arcady Music Festival and the Indian River Festival in Canada and Friday night she was brought to Irvington Town Hall Theatre by Westco.
Ms. Tenenbaum, shown here, was joined by her husband in the all-star ensemble, Alexandr Tenenbaum, who has toured the world and held down principal violin with the Kiev Chamber Orchestra and State Symphony Orchestra and Russia’s Perpetuum Mobile. Photo, Courtesy Westco Productions
Another star in the Westco “company” is the Irvington Town Hall Theatre. The acoustics were praised by Judy Collins who appeared last month brought in by Westco in Ms. Collins first Westchester appearance in years. She has even agreed to come back to do another concert for Westco in the spring. The Irvington ambience was praised again by Mr. Taylor Saturday night.
The Tenenbaums had the best praise, being especially pleased with the aliveness of the sound. Considering their experience it was high praise indeed. The Irvington Town Hall Theatre is theatre nostalgia. Its balconies overlook the proscenium, much like Old Ford’s Theatre. Its unobstructed sweep of first level seats and graceful balcony rake and lacquered floors and comfortable antique seats make an theatre goer feel like they are in a theatre, and a performer feel an initimate connection with the audience and the performers past.
The secret to the Katz’s success: noting successful acts across the country, knowing the tastes of their audiences, pricing it right, and an easy-going intelligent negotiating technique. They command a high degree of respect among artists, agents, stage organizations for the way in which they treat artists, performers, managers, technicians and theatrical suppliers before, during, and after the show.
Westco and its Super Producers are a non-profit theatre operation that is totally professional.
