Word: lions
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Willie the Lion Smith, 69, has been creating something for himself for more than half a century - and talking about it as fast as he could play it. With Fats Waller and James P. Johnson dead, he is the last of the great "stride style" pi anists who flourished in Harlem in the '20s and '30s. The style - so named be cause the left hand shuttles between low notes and midrange chords in an oompah pattern - draws its riches from ragtime, and it requires a "two-fisted tickler" to make it roll...
Creativity & Brandy. The Lion still qualifies. Last week, during a duo-piano date with Jack Teagarden Alumnus Don Ewell at Manhattan's Village Gate, he rippled off rocking arpeggios and lacy melodies in such original com positions as Echoes of Spring and Passionette; then, in up-tempo drivers like I Found a New Baby and Sweet Georgia Brown, he unleashed his juggernaut left hand to stride and stomp around the lower half of the keyboard while his right hand danced up high in finger-blurring filigrees or punched out syncopated chords. A resplendent showman in his red vest, derby...
Born in Goshen, N.Y., to a Jewish father and a Negro-Indian mother, the Lion soaked up the blues songs of Negro work gangs, the gospel shouts of Baptist church services, and later, the honky-tonk music of the Newark, N.J., dives where he danced for pennies as a boy. At eight, he took to the piano and started "beautifying" the hymns he learned from his mother. He went professional at 14, working his way up in a rough saloon world of pimps, pickpockets, conmen and gamblers...
...present production does not keep us in doubt for long. Before the performance even begins we see a huge golden lion-rampant hanging in front of a blue cyclorama -- the lion being a traditional symbol of gold, and gold having long been termed "the lion of metals." Underneath we note part of two arched Venetian foot-bridges, both of gold. A short masque takes place on stage, but we are put somewhat ill-at-ease by the dissonant musical score provided by Richard Peaslee (a far cry from the pleasant harmonies Virgil Thomson composed for the Festival's Merchant...
...will recall that Bottom and his five fellow artisans are preparing to act out the tale of Pyramus and Thisby as part of the entertainment at the wedding of Duke Theseus and Hippolyta. Bottom is assigned the role of Pyramus. Uncontent, he pleads, "Let me play the lion too." He is restricted to Pyramus, but the idea is planted...