2022 Life Logs, Day 123: Some Enchanted Evening
Date: Tuesday, May 3, 2022
Weather: Partly Cloudy; High 56, Low 45 F
Location: At Home in the Cottage, East Falmouth, MA
“Some enchanted evening, you may see a stranger,
You may see a stranger across a crowded room,
And somehow you know, you know even then,
That somehow you’ll see here again and again.
. . . Once you have found her/him, never let he/him go,
Once you have found her/him, never let her/him go.”
I love that song and many others by Rogers and Hammerstein. Their music dominated the early lives of those of us now in our ‘twilight’ years. Lyrics from musicals like Oklahoma! (1943), South Pacific (1949), The King and I (1951), The Sound of Music (1959) . . . just to name a few.
Tonight, my good friend Jane Woodin invited me to attend an opening celebration at the Cotuit Center for the Arts. This celebration hosted an evening of conversation, music, and art with Oscar Andrew Hammerstein, the grandson of the beloved librettist and lyricist Oscar Hammerstein. This event was free, and it was wonderful.
There was food, live music, complimentary drinks, and an intimate conversation between the Executive Director of the Cotuit Center for the Arts, David Kuehn and Oscar Andrew Hammerstein (pronounced ‘stine’ not ‘steen’), painter, writer, lecturer, and family historian.
The conversation kept me at the edge of my seat.
The current Oscar Hammerstein described his grandfather as being ‘marinated’ in the theater as his father, his grandfather, and his uncles, all were in theater in various ways. When he went to Columbia in pre-law, he met and married, had a child, needed money, and reverted to the family ‘business’ of theater to make money. And he was good at it. As his grandson said tonight, “Theatre is a communicable disease.” He also shared a family belief about theatre: “When things are too emotional to say, you sing. When things are too emotional to sing, you dance.” He talked about how some of his grandfather’s music was specifically written to match the talent as in “South Pacific” with Mary Martin and Ezio Penza, while other scripts were rewritten to fit the talent, as in the case of Yul Brenner in “The King and I.”
The current Oscar Andrew Hammerstein, known as Andy, also talked about his life’s work as an artist. There were examples of his artwork in the background during the interview, and he pointed out how some of his work expresses space over time (circles),
while other works express time over space (rectangles).
It was an enchanted evening. Thank you, Cotuit Center for the Arts. And thank you, Jane.
