On Sunday evening, one of North County's most beloved music-makers quietly passed away.
Bill Brackman, the longtime assistant conductor for the Coastal Communities Concert Band, died at his Escondido home after a seven-month battle with brain cancer. He was 68. His beloved wife of 36 years, Joyce, was by his side.
I was proud to call Bill my friend. We met several years ago when he began doing publicity for the band (which he joined in 1997 as a trumpeter), and he and Joyce became like family. Every couple of months, they would stop by my office and we'd go out to lunch.
Bill loved good conversation, a well-made sandwich and a hearty slice of Snickers bar pie. He delighted in traveling the world with Joyce, he adored musical theater, he spoiled his 12-year-old Westie terrier, Mulligan, and he relished any opportunity to play with, conduct and promote the CCC Band. When he wasn't playing music, he was teaching it, volunteering with Jeff Beck's band program at Valley Center Middle School. Bill was kind, gracious, warm, selfless and he wore his heart on his sleeve. He was the kind of man who would thank you after he did you a favor.
Bill taught band and orchestra for 30 years in St. Louis before he moved to Escondido. It's a tribute to the impact he made on others that after his cancer diagnosis last summer, he and Joyce entertained a near-continual stream of former students, friends and colleagues who flew and drove out from Missouri to visit him in his final months.
The last time I saw Bill in late January, a young St. Louis band conductor whom he had mentored as a young man was visiting their home. Bill couldn't talk much and his memory was compromised, but whenever the subject of music or musical theater came up, a wide smile would cross his face and his eyes would sparkle with recognition. Bill was a class act, and I will dearly miss him.
The Coastal Communities Concert Band performs this Sunday in Carlsbad, and their concert is being dedicated, in part, in his honor. To read more about the concert, see Page 12.
The classic tap-dancing musical "42nd Street" will break in the new Moonlight Amphitheatre stage as the opening act of Moonlight Stage Productions' 29th summer season in Vista's Brengle Terrace Park.
The shortened, three-show season will be the first in the company's new stagehouse, which is being built this winter as the result of a taxpayer-approved sales tax increase. The new state-of-the-art theater will include a system to fly in scenery, orchestra pit, light and sound canopy, and backstage storage and dressing rooms.
To allow more time for construction, Moonlight's summer season will be shortened to three shows (from the usual four) and each show will run three weekends (compared with the usual two). The musical "42nd Street" opens July 15 and runs through Aug. 1. Also planned are Kopit and Yeston's "Phantom: The American Musical Sensation" ( which is not Andrew Lloyd Webber's "Phantom of the Opera"), running Aug. 12 to 29, and "Cats" (yes, the one by Andrew Lloyd Webber), running Sept. 9 through 26.
Season tickets will go on sale May 1 at VisTix at (760) 724-2110.
Another theater in Vista has also announced its 2009 season.
Premiere Productions launched its season last week with the revival of the musical "The Composers," which runs through March 22 in Premiere's Broadway Theater at 340B E. Broadway. Most performances are sold out, a happy problem for Premiere co-producers Randall Hickman and Douglas Davis. Subscription sales for the 49-seat theater are up despite the recession, Hickman said. Patrons have been telling him they're renewing because the company has kept ticket prices low and because they offer free refreshments at intermission.
Here's the rest of the company's 2009 season:
"In the Restroom at Rosenbloom's" -- April 2-May 3. Ludmilla Bollow's heartwarming comedy makes its San Diego premiere. It's the story of four elderly women friends who blockade themselves in a department store bathroom to protest efforts by one woman's family to put her in a nursing home.
"Moonlight and Magnolias" -- May 21-June 21. Loosely based on fact, Ron Hutchinson's comedy is the story of the marathon, five-day screenplay rewriting session by David O. Selznick and Victor Fleming to salvage "Gone With the Wind" in 1939.
"Back to Broadway" -- July 2-Aug. 1. Performers from the past five seasons join the cast for this song-and-dance revue of Broadway's biggest hits.
"Park Your Car in Harvard Yard" -- Aug. 13-Sept. 13. Israel Horovitz's two-person comedy about a cruel, dying high school teacher who hires a middle-aged woman (who secretly hates him) to serve as his care nurse and the unlikely friendship that blossoms between them. A San Diego premiere.
"Ruthless" -- Oct. 1-Nov. 1. Joal Paley and Marvin Laird's musical comedy spoof is the story of a teenage actress willing to do anything (even kill the leading lady) to star in her high school musical.
"It Had To Be You" -- Nov. 12-Dec. 20. This comedy by Renee Taylor and Joseph Bologna is the story of an out-of-work actress who kidnaps a producer on Christmas Eve with the goal of helping her finish a play she's been writing for five years.
Tickets are now on sale; call (760) 806-7905.
Stephen Kramer Glickman, an L.A. comedian/actor who grew up doing youth theater at Coast Kids Theatre in Encinitas and Oceanside, will return to San Diego next week to headline Lyme-Aid, a comedy benefit for his ailing sister.
Glickman's younger sister, singer/songwriter Natalie London, is recovering from Lyme disease and Glickman is trying to raise money to help pay her medical bills.
Glickman, 29, will perform a comedy show at 8 p.m. Tuesday at the Comedy Store in La Jolla. Joining him onstage will be former "Saturday Night Live" castmate Jeff Richards, Kyle Kinane (of "Last Call with Carson Daley"), "Cloverfield" film star T.J. Miller, Angelo Bowers (of "The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants") and Noder (a guest host on "The Howard Stern Show"). Tickets are a $20 suggested donation. Glickman will also join comedian Jeff Ross in a Los Angeles comedy show on March 22.
Glickman has spent much of the past two years working for DreamWorks, playing Shrek in the workshop productions of "Shrek the Musical." Glickman played the green-skinned ogre in the readings and workshop production for the show, but when Dreamworks cast the Broadway production, they went with established Broadway star Brian D'Arcy James. Glickman has also appeared on NBC's "Last Comic Standing," ABC's "Carpoolers" and Comedy Central with Ross and he's co-starring in a new series about a fledgling boy band, "One For All," that will air this fall on Nickelodeon.
London had a promising career ahead of her and was finishing her senior year at Columbia University in New York in 2006 when she was bitten by a tick and contracted Lyme disease. Since then, she moved back to California to live with her mother, where she is on an expensive regimen of antibiotics and hyperbaric treatments. Her goal over the past year has been to perform live on Ellen DeGeneres' "Ellen" show. She's made her plea in a seven-minute video uploaded on youtube.com. So far, no word from DeGeneres, but audiences can help London by attending Glickman's comedy show next week.
Visit www.thecomedystore.com/2000/lajolla.htm.
Pam Kragen is the arts editor of the North County Times.
