Words to Live By

My dad and I have made a ritual out of watching the KFMB local news personalities from 5:00 to 6:00 PM every weekday.  Their voices have a pleasantly musical quality to them, even when delivering the most heartbreaking stories.

In the midst of all the unpleasantness, at 5:40, comes cool and casual Jeff Zevely, with his human interest stories focusing on everyday people doing extraordinary things, a segment he calls “The Zevely Zone”.  I love the name!  Recent stories have included a tribute to San Diego’s oldest high school, and two adult friends restarting their initial music-making aspirations.

My dad made a flier promoting my talents and services, which pretty much contains the info from this web site.  On a whim, he emailed Jeff, and attached the flier and this web site’s main address.  Within a few hours, I got a call from none other than Jeff Zevely, asking me when he could interview me.  Ultimately, I decided to be interviewed during the last class for the academic year for the Continuing Education Center at Rancho Bernardo, who have been holding their classes at Seacrest Village in Poway since September 2017.

All the interviewing took place during my “Hooray for Hollywood” program focusing on timeless songs and scores from the movies, the first half of which was filmed by the CBS 8 news crew.  The show contained music by Mancini, Williams, and others, with Kern being my favorite, and the lyrics of Dorothy Fields summarizing my personal keys to success.  My rendition of the Kern and Fields tune “Pick Yourself Up” (from the Fred Astaire/Ginger Rogers film “Swing Time”) is a tip of the hat to Mel Torme and George Shearing’s benchmark interpretation.  I performed the end of this number as one of the promos, which was the best choice to use leading up to the story.

Four days after the success of “Hooray for Hollywood”, at 5:40, this was the result, repeated at 10:40 on the CW San Diego.  Here’s the link – check it out!

http://www.cbs8.com/story/38188492/zevely-zone-despite-blindness-he-saw-his-future-in-music