Fred Aiese reprises his show, Ballads, Blues, and a Boy from Brooklyn on Monday, July 15 at 7 PM at Don’t Tell Mama, with insight, humor, and musicality. The show offers a wide variety of songs ranging from standards, rhythm and blues, jazz and gritty, down home blues, from the repertoires of Nat King Cole to Stevie Wonder. Interspersed in these songs are stories of growing up Catholic, Italian-American and gay with a backdrop of Brooklyn, with Aiese sharing different parts of himself. Ballads, Blues, and a Boy from Brooklyn offers an inventive, skillful singer combined with alternately funny and touching stories. Direction is by Lina Koutrakos and musical director is Rick Jensen.
NiteLife Exchange (NLE) celebrates Fred Aiese (FA) with Six Questions:
NiteLife Exchange: When did you realize you had the gift of singing and what were your early influences?
Fred Aiese: I realized that I could sing when I was in elementary school. I went to parochial school in Brooklyn, and I remember singing pop tunes in the first grade. In my days as a school kid, the nuns would teach the kids pop songs that had a quasi religious/spiritual theme. Things like “I’d Like to Teach the World to Sing.” Insipid stuff like that. Though the nuns would never acknowledge that a kid had a good voice, I could tell that they liked my singing. I also come from a musical family. My older brother Mike is a bassist and has played in orchestras and jazz combos over the years. My older sister Mary had a singing group “Reparata and the Delrons” in the 1960s. There was always music in the house. I loved the Burt Bacharach/Dionne Warwick songs. My father also loved those tunes. Whenever we’d travel, he’d play those 8-tracks in the car. Nancy Wilson and Sarah Vaughan were also my father’s favorites.
My first influence was from my family. Mike introduced me to jazz—Bill Evans, Miles Davis, John Coltrane. My sister Mary introduced me to rhythm and blues groups and girl groups from the 1960s that rivaled her group. I would say that my family was my earliest influence. Later on, I discovered singer songwriters like Joni Mitchell, Carole King Laura Nyro, and James Taylor. I believe that some of James Taylor’s songs are as good as Frank Loesser or Rogers and Hart. I have a great fondness for Linda Ronstadt and Bonnie Raitt as well. It’s funny how music is a backdrop for people’s milestones and difficult times. I intensely disliked high school, and I got through by watching Gilda Radner on SNL and those great, mid 1970s Linda Ronstadt recordings. As an unidentified gay kid in the late 70s I took refuge in music.
NLE: How did your music career take off?
FA: In my 20s and 30s, I did a smattering of community theater, and once I became involved in professional training, I lost my mojo. While I was in psychoanalytic training, I auditioned for the New York Gay Men’s Chorus. I was delighted to get in, but I had to defer because rehearsals were the same time as my classes. I was crestfallen. For the longest time, I would go to their shows, yearning to be involved. I vowed to myself to audition again when I finished post-graduate training. I auditioned again, got in, and stayed for four seasons. It’s a wonderful learning experience to sing with a professional organization like that. I got a great sense of harmonies. Imagine the camaraderie of 250 + gay men, but I had a bug to sing solo. I was talking voice lessons with David Schaefer, and he encouraged me to put a show together. I canvassed other chorus members for performance coaches. I was happily introduced to Lina Koutrakos and Rick Jensen. I audited their workshop, and I was enthusiastic and excited at the level of work that was being done. It was a “where do I sign on” sort of moment. Rick and Lina taught me (and continue to teach me) about working with a lyric. I became more confident through their direction, and that brings us to now.
NLE: You’re a psychotherapist by profession, having attended Fordham University Graduate School of Social Service and owning a private practice for the last 15 years; how does therapy and music compare in similarity?
FA: That’s a very interesting question, which I have been asked before. Believe it or not, they’re far more alike than you would imagine. In clinical work, you start with where a patient is, what he or she is struggling with, and move from there. In music, particularly music with lyrics, you start with the narrative and words of the song. One really starts with circumstance. I think that a similar learning happens in psychotherapy and music. Both have a gradual learning. People frequently don’t realize that they’re getting better in therapy, and I mirror that to them. In music, you realize that from year to year you’ve become a better singer and progress sneaks up on you in much the same fashion as therapy. Both are about emotional communication, and I feel quite privileged to work in both arenas.
On the business side, you also have to be very proactive and creative to find projects in both areas of work. It’s also nice when there is a confluence of worlds. I’m singing for the 30th anniversary of the analytic institute at which I teach and supervise in November.
NLE: Prior to your Cabaret career, when you performed with the New York City Gay Men’s Chorus for four years, you had the opportunity to tour London and Dublin; what has that experience like?
FA: Singing with the chorus taught me an immeasurable amount. It was an amazing experience. First, it taught me that music can touch people in a way that words can’t. NYCGMC was founded in the interest of social activism. It was great to witness that music can move people to action. We see this in religious fellowships all the time. My lesson came from the chorus. It taught me a new level of patience around learning parts singing in varied languages. Touring in Dublin and London galvanized the truth that music is an incomparable way of bringing people together—sometimes people who would never had have the opportunity to make contact otherwise. Singing with them was a moving, frequently spiritual experience. That, in combination with being in a beautiful place, is an unbeatable. The chorus was in Dublin just as gay marriage was ratified in Ireland’s legislature. It was exciting to witness that moment in the country’s history. I think that most moving experience for me happened in Dublin. We were singing with a largely cis straight female chorus. They were delighted to be singing with us. During one of the rehearsals, they were singing an arrangement of the Alicia Keys’ tune “Empire State of Mind.” The arrangement was beautiful and a touching honor to the chorus. I have a lump in my throat thinking about it
NLE: How did you eventually get involved in Cabaret?
FA: I became involved in cabaret almost exclusively as a result of Lina’s workshop. It has also been a great learning in going to see fellow cabaret singers. I’ve learned that some are excellent singers and storytellers; others are better at singing than storytelling, and others yet are more fluid with a story than singing. It’s all good, and there’s room for everyone.
NLE: What are the ways you go about sourcing material for your projects/shows? Are you working on anything for the future?
FA: I have to be moved by a melody initially; then, I dig into lyrics. I think that good melodies reach me in ways that defy words. Good melodies are mysterious. One singer’s good melody is not another’s. I like to take songs that are frequently unknown and/or under-appreciated and sing them. The best example of this is “Mean Old Man” by James Taylor. I sing that in my show, and I think that it’s a terrific song, largely unknown by people, and lyrically, it is reminiscent of songs by Cole Porter or Frank Loesser. I’m privileged enough to sing songs that I really consider to be among my favorites. “You Taught My Heart to Sing” by McCoy Tyner and Sammy Cahn also comes to mind—a terrific song that is not widely known. I also like to sing music that is not typically “cabaret” music. I sing an old Isaac Hayes/David Porter song called “Your Good Thing is About to End,” a blues tune called “Slippin’ In” that Buddy Guy covered, and “Too Shy to Say,” a beautiful, lesser known Stevie Wonder ballad. And a couple of well know standards for good measure—”Teach Me Tonight” and “Some Other Time.”
I’ve just started to work on a new show. It’s in its infancy—a show that commemorates the songwriting teams that occupied the Brill Building in New York City, suxh as Goffin/King, Mort Shuman and Doc Pomus, Leiber and Stoller, Bacharach and David, Barry Mann and Cynthia Weill, among others. I’m in the process of learning some tunes and doing research on the songwriters.
NLE: What do you do in your spare time?
FA: I’ve been taking piano lessons for over eight years. For the moment, I’ll leave my accompaniment to Rick Jensen. I have to say that when you take lessons as, shall I say, a mature person, the progress is slow, glacially sometimes. I’m hung into a couple of different television shows. For a while it was “Mom.” Now, it’s “Better Things,” a great show and unlike any other I’ve seen. I love the movies and theater of all kinds. I recently saw “All My Sons, “ and I thought it was terrific. I like to read fiction quite a bit, and you can’t help but follow the news these days. It’s an obsession lately. If you’re not outraged, something is amiss.
The ancillary activities that come with a private practice keep me very occupied—a professional writing group and involvement with professional organizations, the analytic institute at which I trained, especially, and teaching.
For more information and tickets to Fred Aiese’s Ballads, Blues, and a Boy from Brooklyn at Don’t Tell Mama on Monday, July 15 at 7 pm, please click here
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