Category Archives: Beginnings

Entries related to my biography and development as an artist.

NfaC Repost: The Sound of Music: Embracing the “Sugarcoated Lie”

Posted on January 22, 2016 by dannyashkenasi

This article was one of the first ever published on “Notes from a Composer” and quickly became one of the more popular during the first months of the blog’s existence.  I thought I would repost it so newcomers to the … Continue reading →

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MY 1978 SANTA BARBARA EARTHQUAKE

Posted on January 4, 2016 by dannyashkenasi

I was standing near my croquet ball holding my mallet waiting my turn when we heard the rumbling. First thing I saw was the house shaking.  A one story ranch style house made with vertical wooden slats, which were now … Continue reading →

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HOPE for a New Year

Posted on December 31, 2015 by dannyashkenasi

I believe in the good of mankind I believe in the end truth prevails It resides in our hearts and our minds Should we seek it we’d find love unveiled HOPE Happy New Year.  Let’s hope for a 2016 that … Continue reading →

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HAPPY HOLIDAYS – How this Carol Curmudgeon Ended Up Unwittingly Writing Three Seasonably Suited Carols Himself

Posted on December 21, 2015 by dannyashkenasi

I plead guilty to being a bit of a Christmas Carol Grinch.  OK, I used to be a BIG Christmas Carol Grinch, really loathing most carols and sometimes resorting to lip syncing rather than singing out loud when drawn into … Continue reading →

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TROUBLE BUBBLES – The Songs from Childhood that Loom Large All One’s Life

Posted on November 11, 2015 by dannyashkenasi

I was three years old when Simon and Garfunkel’s “Bridge Over Troubled Water” was released and became the one of the most popular songs of its time.   One of my earliest memories is of me, small boy hardly taller than … Continue reading →

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Catching HALLOWEEN around HALLOWEEN 1978 in a seedy New York theater

Posted on October 30, 2015 by dannyashkenasi

My father insists that the movie theater or rather many of the patrons in the theater were scarier than anything that was happening on the screen.  Possibly.  I was eleven and not world-weary enough to be wary of the pot-smoking … Continue reading →

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A Halloween Treat: THE TELL-TALE HEART – A MUSICABRE and the roommate from hell who planted its seed

Posted on October 28, 2015 by dannyashkenasi

Just in time for Halloween the Tell-Tale Heart page goes live today, showcasing the audio of a live performance of my musical adaptation of Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Tell-Tale Heart”. The Tell-Tale Heart is the ultimate bad roommate story, as … Continue reading →

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BERLIN WALL MEMORIES #2 – You Might as Well Have Told Me the Earth was Flat.

Posted on October 21, 2015 by dannyashkenasi

The night the Berlin Wall came down, Nov 9, 1989, I was living in New York.  I got a phone call around 6pm that night, less than an hour in real time after East German Border guards had received the … Continue reading →

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BERLIN WALL MEMORIES #1 – Growing up 5 miles from the BRIDGE OF SPIES

Posted on October 16, 2015 by dannyashkenasi

The moment I read the announcement that Steven Spielberg was preparing his next movie called “Bridge of Spies”, I knew, without having any additional morsel of information, that Die Glienicker Brücke – the Glienicke Bridge of Berlin, also known as … Continue reading →

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EVOCATION II – Double Stop Etude or Relationship Elegy?

Posted on October 2, 2015 by dannyashkenasi

There were about 200 wedding guests present when Ed and I got married (the first time) April 25, 1998.  It took at least an hour for the reception line to make its full way past us.  And with the expected … Continue reading →

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THE NEARLY INVISIBLE BISEXUAL MALE

Posted on September 17, 2015 by dannyashkenasi

The director of “Speakeasy”, Lissa Moira, and I were conducting another one of our weekly meetings pouring over the script and discussing staging and production issues, when I mused aloud that in many ways “Speakeasy” is an expression of my … Continue reading →

Posted in Beginnings, Cinema Scope, LGBTQ Alphabet Soup, Live! On Stage, The Speakeasy Chronicles | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 3 Comments

An ORPHAN MELODY is remembered in POMPEII

Posted on July 30, 2015 by dannyashkenasi

Mark Twain.  Pompeii.  An orphan melody.  What connects these three disparate things? Wait, what do I mean by an orphan melody? A week ago Ed plunked the latest Smithsonian magazine next to my breakfast dishes and pointed to its front … Continue reading →

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THE SUMMER OF FROG – How a grand musical for 35 performers became a better musical for 6.

Posted on July 27, 2015 by dannyashkenasi

The summer of ’84 I stayed home alone in Berlin while my parents left on vacation.  It was my choice to spend the six week break between my junior and senior high school year spending 8-14 hours every day working … Continue reading →

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EVOCATION I – Happy Birthday, Ed, Now Pull Out Your Viola!

Posted on July 12, 2015 by dannyashkenasi

Today is my husband Edward Elder’s birthday.  He is the mustachioed fellow in the picture above.  One of my birthday gifts for him is a new viola/piano duet.  He plays the viola, I play the piano.  It has become a … Continue reading →

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OUR DAY HAS COME – a personal marriage story with musical accompaniment

Posted on June 26, 2015 by dannyashkenasi

Ed and I got married in 1998.  And again in 2011.  Then our marriage got federally augmented in 2013.  And now finally in 2015 the state of our union will be fully recognized in every state of the Union.   It’s … Continue reading →

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GETTIN’ WITCHY WITH IT

Posted on June 25, 2015 by dannyashkenasi

Above is the first video I ever posted on YouTube, and easily the most visually fun of the ones I’ve posted so far: a demo recording of three songs from the musical “Witches” enhanced with 105 illustrations of witches past … Continue reading →

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