专辑简介

This album is comprised of selections from a forty year collaboration with Shakespeare that began in an undergraduate course at San Francisco State University lead by Edward “Van” Van Aelstyn, who believed that the best way to experience Shakespeare was by acting out the plays with book in hand. We continued this work outside of class in a social setting, where we explored the Shakespeare canon, fueled by food and drink and good cheer. From this group emerged Birnam Wood Shakespeare Company. We were, in fact, a Shakespeare commune. We all lived together, whether at the main house (where we developed and rehearsed our productions) or at various satellite households. We were a rag tag gypsy theater troupe that used musical settings in place of physical sets. Birnam Wood may have disbanded in the late seventies, but by then I was hooked when it came to setting Shakespeare’s verse to music and I continued on my own to compose many of the songs that are on this album. As the years progressed, through loves and loses, Shakespeare’s poetry took on deeper and more personal meaning to me, especially in the wake of the AIDS epidemic. Beginning in the nineties, I was able to see my work realized on stage through my association with French-American International School. More recently, I have participated with Berkeley’s Subterranean Shakespeaere in a series of concerts that eventually became their electic album, Shakespeare’s Greatest Hits. As my 60th birthday approached, I felt it was time to put together an album of my greatest hits and here it is.