My Judy! Judy! Judy! June

Pardon me for not writing in over a year. At the same time that we bought a new house, moved, then sold our old house, I was having to finish up the biggest project of my life at least 6 months earlier than I’d even dreamed was possible. To quote one of Judy Garland’s early songs from Love Finds Andy Hardy, “It Never Rains, But What It Pours!”

But, as in all my favorite MGM movies, there were some silver linings. I absolutely love my “new” 1941 house and friendly neighborhood right out of an Andy Hardy movie. And the aforementioned project — restoring the orchestral arrangements for Judy’s 1961 Carnegie Hall concert — culminated in one of the high points of my my life thus far.

Life Imitates Art: A Funny Thing Happened on the Yellow Brick Road

I often wondered about people who did one-person shows — specifically, what kind of person would want to hold a 7500-word script in her head. Well, in the last year, I’ve become that person. And I’m still not much closer to understanding why someone would voluntarily do what amounts to a high-wire act without a net. Except that when it works it is really, really fun.

Restoring Judy Garland's Carnegie Hall Concert

It’s been a few months since I’ve written, but I just had to come up for air to share some exciting news with you: Michael Feinstein has invited me to join the Judy Garland Carnegie Hall Concert Restoration Project team as Editor, for The Judy Garland Heirs Trust. As part of this project to preserve Judy Garland’s musical legacy, our aim is to restore all of the original symphonic arrangements from the 1961 Carnegie Hall Concert and make them available for live performance once again. Since late last summer I have been restoring and performing a handful of Judy’s original arrangements that the Trust, of which Michael Feinstein is a trustee, very graciously shared with me. But to get the chance to work on a preservation project like this is so exciting that I still have to stop and pinch myself. (And then I look at the long road ahead and it sobers me up in a hurry, but I digress…)