RECORDED WORKS

I Remember You

I was fascinated by Marcia’s process of creating her cello interludes for this CD. She would listen to a story, sit quietly for a time, pick up her cello, and improvise a response. Sometimes she would play for several minutes and I’d wish we were recording because I find her improvisations intoxicating. Other times she would stop and start, trying out various musical phrases, seeking expressions that resonated with the feelings the stories conveyed to her. She repeated this listening and responding process several times, and when she felt her themes had coalesced sufficiently, we went to the recording studio. She improvised several takes of each theme in Peter Temple’s commodious studio, we brought these takes home, listened to them in the context of the stories, I told her what I especially liked, and Marcia then refined her notions of how she wanted to play the themes as they are now recorded.

“Cyrano de Nerderac” was first published in a teen magazine (either Young Miss or Seventeen, I can’t recall which) in the early 1980’s. I was thereafter approached by television producers wanting to turn the story into a teen movie, but nothing ever came of that. Reading the story today, I realize that for all the technological advances of the last forty years, nothing on the human emotional front has changed at all.

“Poetry” (shortened from the original title “I Was Not Much Interested In Poetry”) works in performance very much like a standup routine, with the sudden serious ending never failing to leave audiences both pleasantly stunned and wondering deeply about love, passion, fidelity, and, we hope, poetry.

“The News” is one of my favorite stories. The photographer James Woodsen took a couple dozen black and white photographs illustrating the story. On a number of occasions, I performed “The News” with these gorgeous semi-abstract images appearing and dissolving behind me on a large screen. Always a huge crowd pleaser. Thank you, James. The story is now a centerpiece chapter in my novel of stories Under the Table Books. “I Remember You” is, in a way, another teen story, but it is told by a man in middle-age speaking to a woman he hasn't seen since high school. Thus, the energy of the story is a mixture of youth and age, but is less nostalgia and more a record of his path to revelation and change. “Retreat” is a very short story, one of forty-two in my book Buddha In A Teacup. Many people of all genders and ages have responded to this story by saying, “That’s me.”

Sample Clips

1. Cyrano's Blues
   Cyrano de Nerderac
2. Waltz for Irene
   Poetry
3. Rondo 'n Out
   The News
4. In the News
   I Remember You
5. I Remember You
   Retreat
6. Cyrano's Blues

You can also listen to Todd reading “The News” in its entirety.

I Remember You is available at iTunes, Spotify, and Amazon.