Fairfield/Westport’s Top Ten Musicians of the Last Hundred Years
Last week we launched the Fairfield Ten — an exhibit at the Fairfield Museum celebrating the great musicians and songwriters that have lived here the past hundred years.
I was on the committee to choose the list. It wasn’t easy because so many great artists have lived in this area. My work on the Fitzgerald film has provided a keen insight to the breadth and depth of talent here dating back to the early 20th century so I knew selecting ten musicians was not going to be easy.
Quite frankly, you could find ten interesting nominees every decade or at least in each category of music, from classical to rock, Broadway to jazz, punk, funk, even disco — our task was to choose the best of the best, while at the same time including various eras and genres.
First thing we did was invoke the 25-year rule — nominees had to have started their professional careers prior to 1989. Nominees also had to have a permanent residence here for more than a few years. That alleviated the pressure of addressing the abundant crop of current players worthy of consideration or those that were here for just a short visit. … Read the rest
Great American Fiction Contest Winner
I’m pleased to announce that I’m one of this year’s Saturday Evening Post Great American Fiction Contest winners for my short story, Twelve Miles — 48 Stops.
This is gratifying because F. Scott Fitzgerald was so closely associated with this publication. As many of you know, I’m working on a film about his time in my home town of Westport, CT. Getting published by the Saturday Evening Post as I’m knee deep in Fitzgerald footage feels karmic, as if there’s some sort of Mojo happening.
The title represents the distance traveled by a young African-American girl to work each day to the A&P where she works at a cash register. The idea came from shopping at my local Stop & Shop where most of the workers, black, come by bus from Bridgeport–most of the customers are white and live in Westport. It took years to find a way to write this story without it feeling preachy or contrived.
An early version bounced around for years, and then after seeing the documentary film Ten Feet From Stardom, I figured out what needed doing.
Davida, the young girl in the story, was inspired by a remarkable woman who I used to … Read the rest
