Kurt earned his Masters Degree in Music at Ithaca College, M.M. Ed.
Voice/Piano in 1982. Since then, he has sung on stage well over a
thousand times, with his former rock band The
Corvettes, and through his school music programs. And now... he's
back: singing concerts, singing in the streets, singing in Italian restaurants:
Aeillo's (Whitney Point NY), Joe's (Ithaca NY), Franco's (Ithaca NY),
Boca Bella (Newton MA), Jerlando's (Watkins Glen NY).
DEC 2017
Program MAY
2018 Program
Much gratitude to I.C. voice teachers '78-'82 : Leslie
Bennett , Roland Bentley , to 2017 vocal coach
Imogen Mills, I.C. Music Ed/Voice '18, - and the encouragment of vocal
magician Claude
Stein (Woodstock NY) to resume performing after a 30 year hiatus.
Many thanks to Neapolitan language tutor Martina Edda De Biase,
Sicilian language tutor Viviana La Gaipa, and Roberto Vazquez,
dialect translator for Kurt's well-received Rodney Dangerfied comedy
schticks in Mexican Spanish.
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MUSICAL BIO
The singer's musical journey began shortly after birth (Highland Park
NJ), hearing his father, a self-taught pianist, improvise for hours into
the night. The memory of his mother's repeated plaint are today as clear
as ever: "George, come to bed!" Dad was also fond of belting
snatches of vaguely learned opera arias and odd songs he had heard in
the army,while in southern Italy during WWII.
At age ten, the singer began playing guitar and singing pop tunes, mesmerized
by the then current hits of Elvis Presley, Dion, and so on. He studied
classical guitar for four years. In high school, he was a member of a
performing folk ensemble, and later, in college, several short-lived rock
bands.
Thrilled to the soul by the music of the Sage Chapel Choir, (choirmaster
Donald R. M. Patterson ), Kurt founded the choral program
at the Community School of Music & Art in 1978. He directed
the a cappella Whiton Chorale for four joyous years, arranging,
composing and preparing many hand-copied choral scores of all eras.
He attended Ithaca College for a Masters Degree in Music Education
Voice/Piano 1979-82,. To the unending consternation of his beloved voice
teachers (Leslie Bennett , Roland Bentley ),
Kurt would regularly come in with dubious repertoire choices: dramatic
tenor arias (Corelli, Wunderlich...) for which he had hand-transposed
the piano accompaniment way, way down for baritone. Older and slightly
smarter, he has been studying the styles of many, many singers in Spanish,
German, and Italian, finding/transposing songs suitable to his artistic
temperment and vocal means, as his skill and artistry develop.
After Ithaca College, Kurt developed a successful public school music/english
program, composing/performing over a thousand works in many styles, using
students' lyrics. The New York State Board Of Education invited
him to give presentations in Albany on several occasions. During these
years, he also led the retro-rock and country band "The
Corvettes" for ten swashbuckling years, playing 2-3 night
per week, 50 weeks a year..
Today, Kurt is known regionally as an avid social dancer and dance instructor,
teaching ballroom, swing and salsa dance with his wonderful dance partners
at Ithaca Dance. In 2018, at age 70, he retired from twelve years
of college teaching dance at Cornell University and Ithaca College.
With a string of unrelated hobbies (elaborate electronic
inventions, Sanskrit and Tibetan calligraphy,
dance photography, and ??), he continues to compose, produce music videos,
explore the unknown, and rejoice.
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