APRIL 5, 1996 GAY PEOPle's ChroNICLE

COMMUNITY GROUPS

Friends of the other Dorothy premiere music of her poems

by Roger Durbin

Under the musical direction of Timothy Robson, the North Coast Men's Chorus will be presenting its spring concert, "That's Why I Love You: True Colors of Our Rainbow," next Saturday, April 13, at 8:00 p.m. The concert will be at Waetjen Auditorium in

Cleveland State University' Music and Communication Bldg., 2001 Euclid Ave.

Ferko's music has been performed across the United States and in western Europe. His music has been broadcast on National Public Radio as well as on WFMT in Chicago. The first two segments of his "Hildegard Trilogy" have been recorded for compact disc on the Arsis label. For the Men's Chorus,

NORTH COAST MEN'S CHORUS

CLEVELAND OHIO

Our concert will feature the world premiere of a new work written especially for the chorus by Chicago composer Frank Ferko, based on poems by writer and humorist Dorothy Parker.

Ferko is an Ohioan, born in the Akron suburb of Barberton.

His first two piano teachers were Grace Baughman, of Barberton, and Richard Shirey, a longstanding supporter of the North Coast Men's Chorus and professor of music at the University of Akron.

Ferko earned his doctorate in music composition from Northwestern University (1985) and has worked for many years as composer, organist and choral conductor. He has received numerous commissions from individual performers and from performing ensembles.

Dr. Ferko has been the recipient of several awards, to include the Padrone/ Kantscheidt Award from Northwestern, the AGO/Holtkamp Award from the American Guild of Organists, and most recently, an Artist Fellowship Award from the Illinois Arts Council.

Ferko set three poems by Dorothy Parker. All of you as old as I should remember who Dorothy Parker

was. We glibly say, "Oh yes, the charter female member of the Algonquin Round Table," which included many playwrights and authors and artists and such, like Marc Connelly, Robert Benchley, Robert Sherwood, and George S. Kaufman.

These writers met regularly for lunch at the Algonquin Hotel in New York in the late 1920s and 30s; they wrote some things as a group that made their way to Broadway; they combined literary forces and trashed whomever they wanted to; and, when the spirit moved them, they savaged each other's work.

Dorothy Parker has been described as "America's wittiest woman," as the mistress of the quip and the rapid rejoinder. She has also been described as “a catty, heartless bitch.” Probably she was all that and more.

"Mrs. Parker," as she was so often referred to, was a screenwriter as well. Among her credits are Nothing Sacred, which starred Carole Lombard; A Star is Born, the early one with Janet Gaynor, not the beloved Judy Garland; The Little Foxes

(talk about mean women) and Mr. Skeffington, both with the venerable Bette Davis; and a movie with a title that has to appeal, Queen for a Day.

But mostly Dottie, as her close associates called her, was funny, in what she wrote and in what she was purported to have said on any given occasion. Literary folks might like this one: She was quoted as saying, "Verlaine was always chasing Rimbauds." For acting buffs, she said that Katherine Hepburn, in one play, “ran the whole gamut of emotions, from A to B." Her life was a cumulation of attending the theater, cocktail parties, and speakeas-

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ies, and having numerous lovers and divorces, not to mention several bad suicide attempts.

But even in her daily life, Parker had a certain sense of humor that cannot be denied. The sign on the door of her office read MEN, they say. On being late submitting a manuscript to her, publisher, she said she was "too fucking busy and vice versa." Asked why she never had a home and lived in hotel rooms, she zoomed back that she only needed a place to lay her hat and a few friends.

All in all, one hell of a woman.

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The Concentration in Lesbian and Gay Studies, The Committee in Support of Gay, Lesbian and Bisexual People, and The

Lambda Foundation are Glad to Sponsor Presentations by:

Joan

Rec

Date:

April 2

Time: 8PM

Man

Place: Ford Chapel Allegheny

College Meadville, PA

Filmmakers Manuela Soares and Sara Yager

PRESENTATION

hters

Dateif

Tim

Place

Mille, PA

Campus alegheny College

OPN

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