I knew there was something I forgot to tell you... on Saturday evening I had a delightful hour in the company of David McAlmont in the Clore Ballroom bit of the Festival Hall foyer.

The Festival Hall is currently the home of the stage production of THE WIZARD OF OZ and a series of events will run concurrently during it's run. Early evenings on Friday and Saturday will see a singer in an hour-long set of standards and the first was David M with excellent accompaniment from Natasha Panas on piano.

The cherry on the top was David was singing standards from the over-stuffed songbook of the great composer Harold Arlen who wrote the OZ score. So many classic songs to choose from but David M gave us ACCENTUATE THE POSITIVE, LET'S FALL IN LOVE, THAT OLD BLACK MAGIC, THE MAN THAT GOT AWAY, BLUES IN THE NIGHT (a stupendous version using all of David's amazing range), GET HAPPY, STORMY WEATHER, ONE FOR MY BABY, WHEN THE SUN COMES OUT, PAPER MOON, THIS TIME THE DREAMS ON ME... like wow! He acknowledged OZ with an affecting version of OVER THE RAINBOW (of course) and riled it up by singing DING DONG THE WITCH IS DEAD saying that it was always by his cd player for when he hears about the death of the Blue Witch of Grantham. He even sneaked in a lovely version of AT LAST as it was from the same era.

I had sent him a message the week before on MySpaz so plucked up the courage to go over and shake his hand as he was chatting by the stage and he recognized me from the message - yay! I told him how much I loved the show and told him to check out Arlen's magnificent I NEVER HAS SEEN SNOW from the musical he wrote with Truman Capote "House of Flowers". I would love to hear him sing this yearning song of someone in love for the first time. It was great to meet him after all these years of admiring him - he even said goodbye again as he left!