Word: fairbank
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Most of Janet Fairbank's recitals lose money, a fact which doesn't concern her greatly. ("I figure I like to sing and it's worth it to me.") Grandfather N. K. Fairbank made his fortune in Gold Dust washing powder, among other things, and helped found the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. Janet's mother is Novelist Janet Ayer (The Bright Land) Fairbank; her aunt is Pulitzer Prize Novelist Margaret Ayer (Years of Grace) Barnes. In a stone mansion on Chicago's State Street and on a gingerbready Victorian estate at Wisconsin's Lake Geneva...
...song recital was like a new Schiaparelli showing. The people who filled Manhattan's Carnegie Chamber Hall were largely buyers of music: singers, teachers and publishers. On stage, like a mannequin modeling a new plunging neckline, brown-haired, willowy Janet Fairbank paraded the latest creations in art songs. Tucked away in the corners of the auditorium were young composers, some of whose musical stitches and designs were being shown off for the first time in public...
Most singers consider the program foolhardy that has more than two songs by living composers-but not 44-year-old Janet Fairbank. In eight New York concerts she has given more than 100 songs by some two dozen composers their first performance. She gets pieces still in manuscript, spends all summer studying them with an accompanist. ("You have to practice them until it seems as easy as Schubert.") A year ago every song Janet Fairbank sang was purchased by publishers the morning after the recital. This year the publishers didn't wait. They bought almost her entire program before...
...This attitude," claimed Fairbank, "is most obvious in the case of militaryminded Americans who sincerely belive that we should support any regime aborad which will oppose Russia. We appear in China to be not only selfish and stupid, but dishonest as well...
This dishonestly, said Fairbank, "is manifested in out favoring the Kuomintang government over the Communists while we were supposed to be acting the part of an impartial mediator...