Here’s one of David’s numbers from the Sondheim birthday concert last March. Rip-roaring!

Here’s a little preview of the Sondheim birthday concert hosted by David. It’s airing this Wednesday apparently. Looks fun, and quite emotional.

David Hyde Pierce as master of ceremonies (as well as co-writer of the show with Lonny Price) keeps things moving briskly while adding a deadpan wit to the evening’s musical proceedings. One running joke is Pierce’s suggestion that since the partially-Spanish-language revival of West Side Story has been so successful, the evening should feature Sondheim’s lyrics translated into other languages including “a Polish Pacific Overture” and “Sweeney Todd the Demon Barber of Switzerland”. Pierce finally gets his wish by mixing several languages into his rendition of “Beautiful Girls” from Follies. Humorously, the orchestra repeatedly begins playing music from Sweeney Todd only to be directed to switch to something else (one time admonished by Pierce that “This is a birthday party. We’re going to eat cake, not people.”).

Intrigued? Remember you can order the DVD and Blu-Ray of the concert from our store!

David’s friend and collaborator, Michael Feinstein, has a new TV series about American popular music airing this month. Michael Feinstein’s American Songbook will air on PBS on October 6, 13 and 20, and according to this Seattle Times article, will feature some snippets of David’s Holiday Show performances with Michael.

Many songs are heard in their entirety, performed either by their originators or by Feinstein and his guest artists: Cheyenne Jackson, David Hyde Pierce and Marvin Hamlisch.

Sounds like a great series!

Star of stage and television, David Hyde Pierce was born in Saratoga Springs with at least two generations of acting talent contributing to his genes. The Tony Award-winning actor (Curtains, Spamalot) who played the neurotic and loveable Dr Niles Crane in the hit television sitcom Frasier, will lend his support to Home Made Theater as its special guest at the 25th anniversary Spring Benefit on Saturday, March 27.

The fundraiser begins at 7pm with hors d’oeuvres, cocktails and a silent auction at Spa Little Theater in the Spa State Park. Tickets are $65. To view the invitation, go to www.homemadetheater.org.

Calling from NYC where he was hosting New York Philharmonic’s star-studded Sondheim: The Birthday Concert early last week, Pierce said he hadn’t previously been aware of Home Made Theater, but that he decided to make this benefit appearance in honor of his late father, George Pierce, who “had a true passion for acting.”

The talented David Hyde Pierce himself has never done community theater, skipping directly from college to professional productions.

“My connection is my dad, who did a lot of community theater in the 1930s through the early ’50s. He wanted an acting career, but it was the Depression, and my grandfather, Arthur Pierce, who had also been an actor, convinced him instead to join his insurance business,” Pierce said.

“My father was in Holiday at Skidmore, and the second professional play I did was Holiday, and that’s when I started to find out all he had done. He was also a magician; he used to perform at fundraisers for the church (Bethesda Episcopal in Saratoga Springs). And my parents were great ballroom dancers.”

Pierce also has a review mentioning his older brother, reporting that “Little Tommy Pierce appeared on stage with his father.”

David grew up with a passion for music, studying piano and playing organ at church, but discovered drama in high school. He studied classical piano at Yale University, but found that he wasn’t dedicated enough to practice the required amount of hours to become a successful concert pianist.

Instead, he returned to his love of drama and graduated in 1981 with a double major in English and theater arts. He then moved to New York where he worked several menial jobs (including selling ties at Bloomingdales and working as a securi ty guard) while acting in the theater during the late ’80s and early ’90s.

Pierce’s life and career changed forever in 1993 when he landed the role of Dr Niles Crane in the long-running audience favorite, Frasier.

“A friend of the family came to see me in Curtains, and said, ‘Oh, my gosh! You’re your father! It must be in the blood!’” Pierce said.

He’ll leave for London in a month, where he’ll rehearse and perform the comedy La Bete through the summer, before coming back to Broadway with the play in September.

In the meantime, March has been filled with benefits and several hosting obligations.

“I try to do the benefits that have a particular meaning for me,” he said, noting that he has recently been in Washington DC, for the Alzheimer’s Association, the disease from which his father died.

Pierce and his siblings — Tom, Nancy and Barbara — donated the funds last year to rebuild a 1920 Skinner organ located in the loft at Bethesda Episcopal Church on Washington Street in Saratoga Springs and to connect it electronically to the larger 1967 Casavant instrument in the church’s chancel, beside the altar.

The rebuilt instrument was named in honor of the Pierces’ parents, the George and Laura Pierce Gallery Organ. The Casavant organ was purchased in 1967, when George served on Bethesda’s governing board.

David performed impressively on the new instrument ina public recital and organ dedication in October at the church. He said he began playing the Casavant organ at the front of the church at age 16.

“I’d come here after I finished my homework, and some nights I’d stay and practice until midnight,” he recalled.

On this next visit to his birthplace, at HMT’s 25th birthday celebration, Pierce plans to sing and talk, and remember his dad.

“I’d better decide soon just what songs,” he said, not sounding the least bit worried.

From Broadway’s prodigious boy wonder to its beloved aging monarch: for Stephen Sondheim, whose forthcoming 80th birthday on March 22 was celebrated in a thrilling concert at Avery Fisher Hall on Monday evening, it must have seemed like a hop, skip and a jump from one to the other. Inside the hall, where the mood was more exhilarated than elegiac, an unspoken question hung in the air: where did all that time go?

In recent years the tributes to Mr Sondheim have come so thick and fast that they have begun to blur. While such celebrations tend to be messy affairs, Sondheim: The Birthday Concert (directed by Lonny Price) was a model of organization, with a suave host (David Hyde Pierce) and witty leitmotifs woven into its structure. Performances by an all-star guest list that included Patti LuPone, Audra McDonald, Mandy Patinkin, Bernadette Peters, Elaine Stritch and Nathan Gunn proceeded at a brisk pace; there was no speechifying.

In one running joke, the orchestra was continually striking up a theme from Sweeney Todd, only to be told to change songs. Mr Pierce, comically determined to prove Mr Sondheim’s global reach, sang parts of ‘Beautiful Girls’ (from Follies) in German and Italian.

Recent revivals of Sondheim shows using chamber orchestrations have shown how sturdy his music is, even in drastically reduced arrangements. But Monday’s concert demonstrated that there is still no substitute for a force as mighty as the New York Philharmonic (conducted by Paul Gemignani) playing songs conceived and orchestrated (most often by Jonathan Tunick) for a symphonic palette. The major songs from Follies and A Little Night Music in particular, are far-reaching ballads with melodic lines that sweep to the horizon.

The program began with a special birthday overture and continued with three 1960s collaborations, including an amusing obscurity, ‘Don’t Laugh’ (written with Mary Rodgers and Martin Charnin, and sung by Victoria Clark), from the 1963 show Hot Spot. Then the concert dug into the ’70s and ’80s with many of the great ballads from Follies, Sweeney Todd and Sunday in the Park With George. (Perhaps because A Little Night Music is now on Broadway, there was only one selection, and it was not ‘Send In the Clowns.’) The evening’s single most beautiful performance — Ms McDonald and Mr Gunn’s ‘Too Many Mornings’ (from Follies) could have been a master class in the deployment of operatic voices with natural diction.

There were clever theatrical jokes. One Sweeney Todd (Michael Cerveris from the recent revival) got to slit the throat of another (George Hearn, who took over the role in the original Broadway production, this time playing the villainous Judge Turpin) during ‘Pretty Women.’ The Sweeneys, standing on either side of Ms LuPone (also from the revival), swapped the lyrics to ‘A Little Priest,’ while she imparted a wickedly lewd attitude to the number. Ms Peters and Mr Patinkin (both in excellent voice) reunited to sing ‘Move On’ from Sunday in the Park With George, and John McMartin, from the original cast of Follies, offered a searching version of ‘The Road You Didn’t Take.’

Shortly after intermission, six divas — Ms LuPone, Ms McDonald, Marin Mazzie, Donna Murphy, Ms Peters and Ms Stritch, clad in shades of red — sashayed to the stage for solo turns from a variety of shows as Mr Pierce sang ‘Beautiful Girls.’ In a conceptual coup, Ms LuPone directed ‘The Ladies Who Lunch’ to Ms Stritch, its original interpreter, who wore a cap as if to answer the song’s question, “Does anyone still wear a hat?” Ms Mazzie delivered an increasingly angry ‘Losing My Mind,’ Ms Murphy a furious ‘Could I Leave You?’, Ms McDonald a luscious ‘Glamorous Life’ and Ms Peters a plaintive ‘Not a Day Goes By.’

It remained for Ms Stritch to deliver the evening’s showstopper, ‘I’m Still Here.’ This great trouper, now 85, used her increasing physical fragility to maximum dramatic effect, building the anthem of show business survival from a dismissive casualness to a peak that was not the usual triumphal assertion of ego. Instead, it became a struggle for the character to break through her own fatigue in little bursts. The final phrases of this daring interpretation ended on a note of ambivalence, as if to say, “I may still be here, but at this point, what does it really matter?” The performance received a standing ovation.

As the concert drew to a close, the aisles filled up with a chorus of young, black-clad Broadway performers joining to sing ‘Sunday,’ the climactic anthem from Sunday in the Park With George. As Mr Sondheim, with tears in his eyes, acknowledged the thunderous applause, he remarked, “Alice Longworth Roosevelt said, ‘First you’re young, then you’re middle-aged, then you’re wonderful.’ This was wonderful — thank you all.”

The collective gratitude in the house was accompanied by a silent prayer to the powers on high: please, may it never end.