From Cab Driver to Carnegie Hall

By David Singer

Dive into an Inspiring Journey from NYC Streets to the Grand Stages of the world: A Musician's Tale of Grit and Glory 

From Cab Driver to Carnegie Hall

• Language: English
• Publisher: Palmetto Publishing
• Release date: Jun 25, 2024
• ISBN: 9798822935235

David Singer

David Singer is an Emeritus Principal Clarinetist of the Grammy Award-winning Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, NYC and an Emeritus Professor of Music from Montclair State University, NJ. Naxos and American Classics released Singer's recording of the Aaron Copland Clarinet Concerto and from England, Gramophone Magazine wrote, "Singer's Copland performance is one of the finest accounts around. His playing is exceptional...sensitive and expressive...technically brilliant." Lawrence A. Johnson. Gramophone Magazine. October, 2010. David Singer performed with Yehudi Menuhin in Bela Bartok's Contrasts for violin, clarinet and piano in Carnegie Hall, Feb. 19, 1983, and was also a featured performer at the Marlboro Music Festival for six summers where he recorded a Max Reger Sonata with Rudolf Serkin, which was remastered and reissued internationally by Pristine Classical in 2021. From Cab Driver to Carnegie Hall marks David Singer's debut as an author encapsulating his life's journey on and off the revered stages of the world.

Book preview

Chapter One

Orange Groves, Fruit-Stained Shirts,

and under the Covers with

Vin Scully and the Dodgers

Late 1950s

I

n the shadow of the Santa Monica Mountains sat the little town on the outskirts of Los Angeles where I grew up. Canoga Park was known for midnight high school car races, Bob's Big Boy hamburgers, and not much else. Sometimes late at night, if the wind was blowing just right, I could hear a train in the distance. The rattling of the tracks and the whistle blowing were all the train offered us. No stopping in my town. I used to dream about being on that train. Where was it going? Would I ever go anywhere?

In the late 1950s, the northwest side of the San Fernando Valley was still dotted with fertile orchards surrounded by dry, flat, dusty plains. Enormous orange groves and full, lush pomegranate orchards had not yet been replaced by the suburban sprawl that now dominates the valley. The long walk to Sunny Brae Elementary School took me through a field of fruits and vegetables, lying exposed and ripening in the California sun. The temptation was too much for my friends and me to resist. Our detour through the fields always led to us throwing fruit at each other. One particularly fond memory I have is engaging in a one-on-one laughing and fruit-flinging fest with my friend Bruce Teague—normally a sweet, kind boy—who, it turns out, also loved letting loose, engaging in the hilarious and spirited contest to see who could make the other more drenched with the fruit splashing on our shirts. The playful fights would leave our clothes stained and our hands sticky throughout the school day. Later, my mother would shake her head patiently as I explained why my shirt was splotched with red and orange. More than once, she would remind me of how she had just washed my clothes that morning.

Like every other middle-class home in the valley, our yard had the same tall, sun-bleached wooden fence holding us in. Between the nearly identical houses were vast open spaces, wide fields of dirt marked by thick clouds of dust hanging in the air above. Early in the morning, as I walked to school, it was the fog that surrounded me. I used to have fun walking straight into the heart of one of those open fields, the fog so dense in the center that when I stopped and turned completely around, I could not see more than a few feet on any side of me, front or back. This must be how it felt to stand in a cloud.

My first love was a mutt of mysterious breeds whom we plucked from the pound when I was six years old. I loved her with all the love a little boy could muster. We called her DeeDee because that was the only thing my one-year-old sister, Deborah, could say at the time. At night, DeeDee stayed in our backyard in her doghouse, under the clothesline behind my swing set. I hated knowing she was out in the yard alone. Many nights, after my parents went to sleep, I would open my bedroom window and whisper into the dark, DeeDee…DeeDee… From the dark yard, the eager little dog would come running to my window, tongue out, and jump into my arms. Quietly, so no one would hear, I lifted her up into my room. In the morning, my parents were surprised to find I was not alone. DeeDee would come bounding out of my bedroom. We all had a good laugh, and I was thankful they never stopped me from doing this.

I was a twelve-year-old boy mostly interested in baseball and girls, though not necessarily in that order. The kids in the neighborhood played touch football in the middle of Wyandotte Street, where I lived. The rules of touch football dictated that we could only stop the opposing player with the football from advancing down the field by touching them below the belt. We boys took the touch part of the game very seriously, and not just because we were playing on pavement and didn’t want to lose skin. Julie, an older girl in our neighborhood, was a running back for the other team, and I was very thankful to be on the opposite side. It was my job, when she was running with the ball trying to score a touchdown, to touch her with both hands. With every tackle, I was very much aware of her shape, even at twelve years old. I wondered if others were thinking the same thing.

Summer nights were spent in bed under the covers listening to Vin Scully, the legendary Hall of Fame voice of the Dodgers, speaking to me through my transistor radio. The trick was keeping the radio as quiet as possible so my parents didn’t hear. Vin's descriptions of the ballpark were as interesting to me as his game calls. Which way were the flags streaming from the wind blowing that night at Dodger Stadium? Were they blowing in toward home plate or out toward those gorgeous mountains? Would the direction of the wind help the pitchers or the hitters? Was the outfield grass wet and slippery? Was our nemesis, Willie Mays, fidgeting on the bench, just waiting to hit and once again do damage to my beloved Dodgers? In Candlestick Park, San Francisco, the groundskeepers would make the infield almost muddy to prevent Maury Wills and the other speedy Dodgers from stealing bases. Since the Dodgers were a running team, Vinny would discuss the condition of the dirt each evening wherever the Dodgers were playing. In Dodger Stadium the dirt between the base paths was kept as dry as the desert so the fast runners would get great traction digging in their spikes just before another opportunity to propel themselves to the next base in their quest around the diamond to ultimately come home. Vinny's voice would rise in a crescendo at the same rate as the unseen ball rising into the sky above the outfield wall. Vin had a way of magically making the game appear in the darkness under my covers around me. He had been my buddy since 1958, when the Dodgers moved to Los Angeles from Brooklyn, breaking the hearts of many in New York. But I won the lottery as a nine-year-old boy growing up in LA.

Baseball was my obsession. I spent my days running, hitting, catching, pitching, and chasing the ball from morning to night. My love of the game was obvious to my family, and they encouraged me to play. My Uncle Norm could throw the ball so high that I would lose it in the sky.

My dad signed me up for Little League and was often the game announcer. During one of the games, I hit a home run. He was so excited that he forgot himself and yelled through the loudspeaker, That's my boy!

While in middle school, I played in the Senior League, becoming a local hotshot of sorts. I was a pitcher on the All-Star team and occasionally played the outfield. By the time I graduated, I had reached such a high level with the game that I was invited to a camp run by the Baltimore Orioles.

That season, though, it was becoming clear that my future as a ballplayer was on the line. Late in a game, I was up to bat. The bases were loaded with two outs in the final inning. We needed a run, yet I was full of dread. Later in the game, standing in the outfield, I prayed that the ball would not be hit to me. Confused and disheartened, I talked to my father about how I had been feeling.

It's clear this game is not for you, he said, recognizing immediately the flaw in my game.

Luckily, I had an offer to attend the Music Academy of the West in Santa Barbara on a full scholarship. What had at first seemed like a difficult choice—to choose between baseball and the clarinet—was now revealing itself to be obvious.

Like the beginning of any good story, I started playing the clarinet because of a girl. I was in the third grade and desperate to get Amarie to notice me. I decided the sure way to do that would be to audition for the talent show. She was trying out, too, and I figured this would be my chance to get close to her.

How are you going to play music if you don’t know how to play an instrument? my father pointed out when I told him of my plan to audition. He decided that he would help me. He was the band director of a local high school, so he brought home different instruments for me to try. The cello had a nice sound, but I had a very difficult time coordinating the bow and my finger to play on the same string. Buzzing my lips was also not something I was good at—I was just spitting through the trumpet. When I tried the clarinet, though, everything fell into place—hands in a very natural position in front of me while blowing into this tube of wood, and the feel of the reed vibrating against my lip. It just felt right.

My father taught me a song called Long, Long Ago, which I memorized immediately. Armed with the one-minute piece, I auditioned for the talent show and won. But, by winning, I beat Amarie. She finally noticed me, except now she wouldn’t even look at me.

My life as a very young boy was confusing, especially at home. While my parents were very attentive and nurturing, cheering for me at my Little League Baseball games and helping me with my first attempts with the clarinet, other things were happening at home that were difficult to talk about.

Chapter Two

Family Dynamics

1953–1963

"Y

ou better not go to sleep, the soft voice whispered to me in the middle of the night. I opened my eyes to see my mother standing over me. Afraid to move, I stared up at her. Or I will kill you," her finger pointing at me, her hands trembling, silently leaving my room. I tightened my arm around DeeDee, this moment becoming a memory I wish I could forget.

Other memories I have from the time when I was a little boy also involve my mother coming into my room when my father was away to play games with me, which I later learned were anything but appropriate. These games with my mother stopped being fun when she seemed to get excited, even frustrated, and her anger and rage toward me began to surface.

Ask anyone what they were afraid of as a young child, and you’ll be met with the expected answers: loud sounds, getting lost, losing one's cat. On Facebook people are randomly asked what they were afraid of as a young child. The first answer that sprang to mind was: my parents. Even after so many years, I find it difficult to honestly face what happened and understand that what I suffered was a form of child abuse.

Like a mistreated puppy who still comes to their master when called, tail wagging, I thought what was happening to me was normal. I didn’t know this wasn’t happening to the other boys and girls. Reporting their actions was unthinkable; thankfully I didn’t even know the option existed. If I had, I would have most likely been taken away to child protective services and become another not-so-good statistic in the foster care system.

The hysteria and out-of-control physical and mental abuse I experienced from both my father and mother are complicated at best and unforgivable at worst. Yet perhaps their behavior is somewhat better understood through their own traumatic stories as Jews born in Eastern Europe during the early 1920s. My parents had their own unique histories.

My grandparents, on both sides of my family, had an instinct to get out of the region in Eastern Europe in the early twentieth century to seek out better lives in the New World. What they could not have known at the time was how lucky they were to leave when they did.

My grandfather, Jacob, was in the Russian Army in 1917, stationed in Kyiv, Ukraine, during the Russian Revolution. Even before the revolution, men were conscripted into the army to serve for fifteen to twenty years. In 1917, they were handed down an even more severe commitment. When faced with what amounted to a prison sentence, my grandfather, who was an extremely intelligent, literate, and artistic young man, was desperate to find a possible way out. In 1918, he met the young woman, Ruth, who was to become my grandmother, and found his way out.

Life was getting worse in Kyiv, and many people were desperate to leave. Unemployment, starvation, panic, and complete chaos were everywhere. Early on in their new relationship, Ruth's father, my great-grandfather, offered him a good job as headmaster at his school if he married his daughter. Even though my grandfather was still officially in the Russian Army, he jumped at the chance to change his life for the better. My future grandparents got married, but my great-grandfather lost everything, including his school. My grandfather, like so many other young men at the time, deserted the Russian Army shortly after their marriage. With his new wife and their six-month-old daughter (my mother), they left Ukraine in early 1923 and headed for the New World, just one year before the US Congress passed a law to set immigration quotas by country and limit total immigration to about 164,000 per year.

Once in the United States, they settled in Cleveland, where my grandfather's two older brothers lived. He got a part-time job as a house painter. When asked by friends what his job was, he would say, Painter, with all the pride of being an artist.

After leaving Russia to survive the Russian Revolution, my grandparents arrived in the United States just a few years before the start of the Great Depression. They moved several times each year because, as my Uncle Morrie simply put it, It was easier than paying the rent. In the late 1920s, the extended family drove across the country to Southern California. My grandfather and his brothers bought a few acres outside of Los Angeles, which they tried to farm.

The Ku Klux Klan burned crosses on their lawn in what was not a veiled threat of the consequences of what would happen if they stayed. My family's brush with racism and their experience as farmers dramatically altered their lives, like so many other thousands of people in 1930.

For a brief time, my grandparents, my mother, and my grandfather's brothers went back to Cleveland. By now, my mother had two siblings, Morrie and Shirley. The family was growing, and the finances were shrinking. Completely out of work and having no way to make money, they decided to take their chances once again in Los Angeles, amid a tide of other Americans who were out of work and destitute. They were drawn to the West, chasing a dream to survive.

My grandmother was an emotional wreck. The constant upheaval caused by always trying to stay one step ahead of the landlords left her feeling as if she had no roots. To make her life even more unstable, her husband, my grandfather, seemed to have girlfriends everywhere they lived, which didn’t help her mental state. She was a constant hypochondriac, did not cook, and was unavailable emotionally for the rest of the family.

After struggling for many years and relocating several times between the heartland and the West Coast, my grandparents settled in Los Angeles, where my grandfather used his skills as a housepainter and got a job with the city of Los Angeles. He was also an amateur flutist. Many years later, when I was attending school in Philadelphia, I watched him perform on national television as part of the Senior Citizens Orchestra of Los Angeles on The Andy Williams Show.

My mother witnessed so much turmoil and probably violent behavior growing up in this emotionally traumatic environment. Having to move so often was already a difficult thing for a small child to cope with, but the additional stress of having to run from the Ku Klux Klan added an extra level of terror. The hysteria, desperation, dysfunction, and inappropriate behavior of her parents meant that my mother, the oldest child, had to watch over and protect her younger siblings. My aunt and uncle have always praised my mother for raising and protecting them both. Perhaps my mother was also abused by her parents, but she never said. My mother did the best she could to take care of my sister and me. I know she loved each of us. While capable of expressing love and affection, at other times she was the source of the hysteria and violence of which I, as the oldest child, bore the brunt.

My father was born in 1922, the son of Orthodox Jews. He grew up in Transylvania, the strip of land that alternately was Hungary and then Romania. His father, my paternal grandfather, Jonas, left for New York City one year after his birth, in 1923, to get a job and hopefully save enough money to buy an apartment for the family to live in. Many Jewish families from Eastern Europe immigrated to the United States in this way. Alone in Transylvania, my father, his older sister, and his mother lived in a small dwelling, sleeping in the same room that was heated only by a small oven. The emotional conditions were harsh as well, being raised as an Orthodox Jew by a very strict mother and controlling older sister.

Ten years after he set off for New York, my grandfather sent for his wife and young children to join him. It was 1933, the same year Hitler came to power in Germany. My father and the rest of his family got out just in time.

Upon arriving in New York City, my grandmother worked as a seamstress, fixing all kinds of tears, alterations, and buttons for many of her neighbors at the Amalgamated Dwellings at 504 Grand Street. These were among the earliest co-op village apartments, which were built to provide affordable housing for the working class going back to 1929.

As a boy, I was overwhelmed by my grandparents’ apartment building and its aromas of cabbage, boiled beef, chicken, and goulash. On special occasions my grandmother used to bake rugelach laced with chocolate, cinnamon, or preserves. I learned later that these particular apartment buildings on the Lower East Side of New York City were home, for the most part, to Eastern European Jews, many of whom had escaped the Nazis.

In the photo album of this book, I have a picture of my father, his mother, two sisters, and brother just weeks before coming to America to meet my grandfather. The rest of my father's extended family in the picture, who stayed behind in Transylvania, were not so fortunate. Based on the fact that they were not heard from again by anyone in the family, we believe they were exterminated by the Nazis.

***

My father served in the US Army for four years during World War II. He fought at the Battle of the Bulge and was awarded a Bronze Star for heroism. As a boy, I found a German officer's knife while looking through some old boxes. It was made from fine steel and had a swastika with Solingen engraved on it. Solingen, Germany, was and still is known as the City of Blades, famous for swords and knives. Curious, I asked my father how he had gotten the knife. He looked at me with cold, steely eyes and said, Where do you think I got it? He never talked about what happened to him in the war, except once he told me he lived in a foxhole and killed Nazis.

Returning home after the war, my father turned his back on Judaism and God. After seeing firsthand the horrors of war, including what the Nazis did to so many Jews, he said that he had trouble believing in God. My father moved to Greenwich Village and bought a leather jacket and a motorcycle. He had promised his father that if he had a son, he would raise me as an Orthodox Jew. But until then, he would do what he could to forget what he had seen.

My father moved to Los Angeles in 1947 and met my mother. They got married, had me in 1949, and later Deborah in 1954. We were raised in the most secular way imaginable. There was no Christmas tree or Hanukkah bush. We celebrated nothing except birthdays. We didn’t go to synagogue; we didn’t sing Jewish songs or have Shabbat. The occasional formal dinners sometimes happened to be religious occasions, but that might have been pure coincidence.

My father's family experienced some success. My grandmother was a seamstress where the family lived—in the Amalgamated Buildings in New York City—and her daughter, my Aunt Ilyana, had her own shop as a dress designer in Hollywood, making dresses for many prominent women, including Elizabeth Taylor. My father was a high school teacher and I became a full professor at Montclair State University in NJ. The American dream.

My father was devoted to convincing his own father that he was raising me as an Orthodox Jew in an attempt to hide the fact that we were doing nothing of the sort