Friday night was a first—my first time in a theatre in at least 14 months to watch a performance because of the pandemic. Now that I am fully vaccinated, I felt safe to be at Diamond Head Theatre to take in the Honolulu production of “Forever Plaid,” an off-Broadway musical revue. The theatre was as full as socially distancing would allow, and I marveled at the brilliant seating arrangement which allowed two seats between patrons in the same row, and alternated groups of patrons in adjacent rows. It meant that no one’s head was in the way of a clear view to the stage!

The main reason, of course, that I came to “Forever Plaid,” was to support Scott Fikse in his role as “Smudge.” The play is a musical revue with the story of four young men who have aspirations to become as famous as the “Four Freshman.” Unfortunately, their car is hit by a bus carrying American school girls on their way to see the Beatles in the Ed Sullivan Show, and their dreams of singing in a concert are gone. However, it is now 2021 and they have been resurrected in the afterlife to present the show of their dreams.

“Bravo! Wow, wow, wow!” is what I wrote to Scott after the play. “I was so impressed with last night’s production!” All the songs were in what I would categorize as a cappella “barbershop” style. In my mind he was definitely the star of the show, not only memorizing the bass part of 24 different songs in close harmony, but also all the dance moves. Scott even played the piano for one number and percussion in others. And the biggest surprise was hearing him sing a low C and then going all the way to a full voice, high G! I had a little trouble recognizing him at first, because he had a 1950s hairdo and was wearing black framed glasses. It was definitely a fun evening!

And guess who I saw after the show!

As you may remember, we first met Jennifer and Jim in 2000 when we performed the St. Matthew Passion, and Jennifer came from Stanford University to sing the blockbuster alto arias. She now teaches at the University of North Texas in Denton. Since then, she has visited Hawaii every year with her husband, Jim, who is a composer. Jim was telling me about a book he was very engaged in, about four conservatories in Naples being the center of musical composition in the Age of Enlightenment. We made plans to get together for dinner and discuss the book.

Well, last night, we went to Rangoon, one of my favorite restaurants which is located only a block from my condo, which features Burmese cuisine (which is extremely tasty!) And I about fell over when Jim showed me the book he was reading:

Do you see the author of the book? I told Jennifer and Jim it was my former organ student, Robert “Bob” Gjerdingen, who studied ethomusicology at the University of Hawaii, some forty years ago! We reconnected in 2017 when I happened to see a CBS “60 minutes” segment on the musical prodigy, Alma Deutscher, and Scott Pelley interviewed Bob as Alma’s “mentor.” Go back and read my posts, “How can music be so beautiful” and “Organ connections,” where you can learn that Bob is on the music faculty of Northwestern University.

He wrote: “Dear Katherine, Yes, that was indeed your old student talking about Alma Deutscher on CBS 60 Minutes. Best wishes and many, many thanks for teaching me. Bob Gjerdingen.”

Here’s the 60 minutes segment about Alma Deutscher and Bob Gjerdingen:

I told Jennifer and Jim that I remember Bob as the only organ student of mine who had such wide feet that when he tried to play the pedals, each foot was wide enough to play three pedals at once! He had to cut the sides off an old pair of shoes in order to play properly.

What a coincidence! Small world, indeed!