Central Park Zoo

OK…we finally figured it out. We found “OUR SPOT”—the one where we sounded great, felt great, added to the overall ambience and had lots of audience members. The Central Park Zoo! We placed ourselves right near the clock tower with the animals on it, inside a very small tunnel, where the acoustic ROCKS! It was so fun. My husband Carmen recorded some great takes that we will post here soon.

This week we were joined by Peter Buchi, tenore fabuloso, arrived fresh from “the continent” where he was singing concerts in Milan and Rome. His energy was a great addition to the group and we had a really good time.

We all agreed that the best part of this day was watching many little children walk up to our picnic basket and place a dollar in it. OK…this was cool not ONLY because they were giving us dough, but also because of the way in which they did it. For the most part, they were mesmerized, trance-like, guided by some mysterious invisible force moving them inexorably toward the basket, dollar-bill in hand. I’m sure that for some of them, it was the first time they had heard live classical singers and you could tell they were digging it. Well, I guess a few of them were kind of freaked out. But most of them were digging it. I told Jane Buchi that during her lovely Gilbert and Sullivan solo from “Ruddigore” there was one little girl (about 7 years old), who had this look on her face like, “That’s it! That’s what I’m going to do when I grow up! I don’t know what it is, or where it came from, but that’s DEFinitely IT!” That was cool.

This Saturday, we will be in the same spot—the tunnel near the clock tower in the zoo— starting at 11:00 a.m. We hope you’ll join us. We’re going to the zoo, zoo, zoo, how ‘bout you, you, you?