Video preview {a few short clips: 1m51s}
https://youtu.be/bLMlAWBuXvU
The Complete Printed Program
www.ithacadance.com/recital/program.pdf

A fun hour, nineteen song mix of Italian (Neapolitan), German, Spanish, classical, pop, some opera, some folk, a lot of great music that you pretty much never hear in Ithaca, and certainly not by a bass-baritone! Some serious, some lighthearted, and some intense emotional meatgrinders! Fiesta of styles and tone colors! You will be entertained!

Kurt earned his Masters Degree in Music at Ithaca College, M.M. Ed. Voice/Piano, long, long ago in 1982. Since then, he has sung on stage well over a thousand times. And now... he's back, with great gratitude to his current fabulous vocal coach Imogen Mills, I.C. Music Ed/Voice Class of 2018, as well as his former I.C. voice teachers Leslie Bennett †, Roland Bentley †. Kurt is certainly older now than he was 35 years ago and perhaps slightly wiser (in some ways), and he is completely nailing those beloved songs abandoned as unreachable way back then! 69 is a good age!

MUSICAL BIO
The singer's musical journey began shortly after birth (Highland Park NJ), hearing his father, a self-taught pianist, improvise for hours on end 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, in the European theater of 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. The songs were rejected by his teachers, one by one, unheard: and now, many of these superb works are featured on this program!

Ten years prior, while an undergraduate at Cornell, he had the great fortune to attend the last class (J.S. Bach) ever taught by Dr. Donald Grout †, author of the staple "History of Western Music" textbook for Ithaca College. Dr. Grout's handwritten comments on Kurt's term paper are truly cherished: "A : One of the best papers I have ever received."

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.

Today, Kurt is known regionally as an avid social dancer and dance instructor. He has been teaching ballroom, swing and salsa dance at Ithaca College for seven years. With a string of unrelated hobbies (elaborate electronic inventions, Sanskrit and Tibetan calligraphy, dance photography, and ??), he continues to compose, produce music videos, and rejoice.