William Penn Life, 1989 (24. évfolyam, 1-12. szám)
1989-05-01 / 5. szám
May 1989, William Penh Life',. Page T Music Men Kara takes the time to play old melodies By Peter Genovese The Home News NEW BRUNSWICK, NJ — The area’s oldest disc jockey picked out another record from his carry case and put it on the turntable. And what was he playing for his loyal audience this time? The Keller Bella Waltzes, played by Victor Young and his Singing Strings. "This is the next number, Jack,” Peter Kara told Jack Shreve, operations manager at WCTC-AM. The record was Ivan Dezso’s version of "Magas Jegemyefam Sarg rigó” — "Robin’s Nest on a Tall Poplar Tree.” "We recorded it years ago, so you might have to put a little more juice on it than you usually do,” Kara told Shreve. No one has to put any juice on Peter Kara to make him sound better. His Sunday afternoon radio program, "Kara’s Hungarian Melody Time,” is 43 years old; it started several months after the station opened. Kara, a member of William Penn Branch 19 New Brunswick, is 86 years old, and while he may not get around as well as he once did (he underwent a cancer operation last year), he sounds at least 20 years younger, lugs his records in every Sunday and still plays with the orchestra he founded more than 60 years ago. Thank you and this is Peter Kara and more of your requests, evergreens and golden melodies on Kara’s Hungarian Melody Time and here is Martha Zaray with a popular tune, Savovet Halvány Őszi Rozsa. Kara’s family came to this country — and New Brunswick — when he was 2. They lived in Akron, Ohio, for several years before moving back to New Brunswick. It wasn’t long before Kara formed the Ifjúsági Hungarian Orchestra — the Junior Hungarian Orchestra. "Well, you know, I was in my 20s then,” he explained. The group then became the Kara Brothers Royal Hussars; Kara’s brother, Julius, was a member. The musicians wore Hussar uniforms and played on the East Coast in the 30s and 40s. "We traveled from New Haven to Cleveland, that area,” said Kara, who played the cimbalon, a Hungarian dulcimer. "Those were the hard days, the Depression. If we came home (from a weekend engagement) with ten dollars apiece, that was a lot.” When Tony, John and Louis Nemeth joined the group, it became the Kara- Nemeth Radio Orchestra. The group played Saturday afternoon live broadcasts, first on WOR, then on WNEW. "One thing I can say about him is that he never played in a gin mill,” said Kara’s wife, Anna, who also is a member of William Penn Branch 19. "People say I am his wife (the two have been married 60 years), but his real wife is over there.” She pointed to the cimbalon in the dining room and laughed. "This is scarce,” Kara said of the 144- string instrument, made in Budapest. "There are only four or five in the country.” Happy Anniversary going out for Helen and Al Dorko of East Brunswick. The Dorkos are celebrating their 33rd anniversary April 14. Love and best wishes from your family, Alexander and Dawn, David and Patty. Grandchildren Sean, Lindsay, Baby Alexander and David and, of course, Mother Helen, and here is Mikisits to sing the Anniversary Waltz. Kara spent 31 years with the New Brunswick Fire Department, retiring as deputy chief in 1967. But he didn’t retire from the microphone. When he went into the hospital last year, his grandson, George, and his daughter, Lillian Thomas, took over the 12:15-1:30 p.m. show. Lillian’s the one you hear Sundays reading the announcements and commercials in English; Kara reads them in Hungarian. Where does Mr. Melody Time get all his records? From his personal collection. "She’s the top rock artist (in Hungary),” said Kara, pulling out a r :cord by Koncz Zsuzsa. "In Hungary, evf ything in the last ten years is rock. My audience told me, 'If you play that, we won’t listen to you anymore.’” Last year, Kara was diagnosed with stomach cancer, which had killed his father, George, and his brother, Julius. Kara didn’t want to go through with the operation, but his former piano player convinced Kara it was for the best. His former piano player happened to be Dr. G. Robert Hardy at St. Peter’s Medical Center, who played 11 years with the Kara-Nemeth Radio Orchestra. "If you can operate as well as you can play piano,” Kara told him, "go ahead.” But of the two sets of brothers who made up the radio orchestra, Kara is the only one still alive. The group is now called the Chubak-Kara Radio Orchestra (after first violinist Steve Chubak), and Kara plays only occasionally. But the cimbalon stands ready in the dining room, and the records in the basement promise many more hours of listening pleasure to Kara’s fans. "I thought I was going to fade out last year,” he said. "But I can’t quit; I love it. As long as I live, I’m still going to bring it on Sundays.” Member enjoys role as 'Renaissance man’ of theater By Kenneth Herman The Los Angeles Times SAN DIEGO — Local theatergoers may be tempted to believe that Mark Danisovszky is at least twins. Over the past year, the versatile 29-year-old musician has performed in no fewer than six stage productions, each time in a different musical guise. In the San Diego Repertory Theater’s "The Cradle Will Rock,” he impersonated the musical’s politically conscious composer, Marc Blitzstein — not only acting but accompanying the rest of the cast on the set-dominating upright piano. In the three-man pit orchestra of William Finn’s "In Trousers” at the Bowery, he played synthesizer, having arranged his own part from the full instrumental score. And, for this season’s version of the Rep’s "A Christmas Carol,” Danisovszky learned three new instruments — the accordion, the bandoneon and the harmonium — to perform in the quartet of on stage musicians. As someone who nearly completed his doctoral in biochemistry at Northwestern University before returning to his classical piano studies, Danisovszky is inured to adjusting to radical changes with equanimity. "I was a teaching fellow at Northwestern and had a promising career in chemistry,” he said. "When I went back to my undergraduate school in Ohio to major in music, I hid out from the chemistry teachers.” Although Danisovszky acknowledged that he left the chemistry labs because of music’s siren call ("While I was working on my Ph.D., I suddenly found myself spending five hours a day practicing in the music building”), he has his philosophical reasons for leaving science. "Our society is over-technologied. Look what we’ve done to the ozone layer, and now we’re paying for it. The arts refine what material culture, which includes science, creates. That’s why I had to become a musician.” His role in the overtly political, prolabor theater piece "The Cradle Will Rock” embodied this conviction. "I could play the Liszt B Minor Sonata until I was blue in the face and never be able to communicate how I felt through my art about those issues. Doing 'Cradle’ was perfect — it was my life story. My father was a steelworker, and I had been involved in union activities organizing people.” Danisovszky grew up in Toledo, Ohio, where his father worked in the mills. A member of William Penn Branch 27 Toledo, Danisovszky described that industrial city as a literal counterpart to the mythical Steel Town, U.S.A., in which Blitzstein placed his "Cradle.” "In our neighborhood, there would be explosions,” Danisovszky recalled, "and I would make it to the steel mill before the firemen did, only to see friends of my father blown up. That was still going on in the 1960s and ’70s. I suppose 'Cradle’ would have gone over a million times stronger in Chicago or Detroit or Pittsburgh than it did here in San Diego.. It didn’t seem relevant in San Diego. Danisovszky did not become involved in local theater because of his political convictions, however. He was drafted at the last minute when the pianist for the Rep’s 1987 production of "A Christmas Carol” came down with a severe case of tendinitis. "I got the music on Friday and was asked to play for the Tuesday performance. I didn’t breathe for four days because of the pressure that was on me to learn composer Polly Pen’s score. I guess I believe that jobs come to you when you’re ready, although you may have to stay up a week preparing to do it. While it’s a little intimidating to be a beginner, your apprenticeship is much shorter when you’ve agreed to do something professionally.” Although his collegiate music training kept him focused on the classical giants, there has been little call for his wellpracticed sonata repertory in the theater. Rather than resent the more mundane and pragmatic needs that the theater places on musicians, Danisovszky sees the virtue of reaching a wider audience. "When I was struggling as a classical pianist to adapt to making music in the theater, it was my friends the street musicians and folk musicians who helped me make the transition,” he said. Learning to improvise in vernacular styles and to play traditional instruments such as the accordion proved liberating to a pianist chained to making music exclusively from the printed score. Danisovszky’s upcoming projects include designing a musical score to Peter Scott Beame’s play "The Boy Who Rode Clouds,” and playing accordion and acting as technical coordinator on a recording by a pop klezmer group called the Electro-Carpathians. At the end of last year, he performed as pianist in the San Diego Rep’s New Year’s Eve gala. "I told them I wanted to sing, too,” Danisovszky said. But as versatile a musician as he may be, he has not yet received the go-ahead for his vocal debut.
