Revised: Classmates in Concert: 1:30 pm, June 1, Sprague Hall

Come to Sprague Hall just after lunch on Saturday to experience  a great concert put on by some of the professional musicians in our Class:

The Real Stormin’ Norman Zamcheck (ES), Rick Drost (BR), and host John O’Leary (SM), accompanied by Mat Kastner (SY).  Between them, they have played national venues such as NY’s The Bitter End and Carnegie Hall, LA’s Hollywood Bowl and Troubadour, and Cambridge’s Passim.  They will perform their own songs as well as several 60s classics, including the song YOU chose in our survey as your favorite song.

STORMIN’ NORMAN ZAMCHECK 

The Real Stormin’ Norman Zamcheck is a singer/songwriter/pianist/raconteur with musical roots in New Orleans blues and boogie-woogie. In the late 70s and 80s his band, Stormin’ Norman & Suzy, called the “hottest act in town” by the New York Times, recorded for Polydor Records, appeared on network television showcases, and played top NY venues, including Carnegie Hall twice. They also played with The Allman Brothers, Tom Waits, Taj Mahal, New Riders of the Purple Sage and Manhattan Transfer.  After taking time away to raise a family and become an inner city teacher and principal, Norman returned to music full-time in 2011. He’s recorded four solo CDs since then and has performed up and down the East & West Coast, playing with The Stormin’ Norman Band, classmate Mat Kastner, or occasionally Stormin’ Norman and Suzy.  To date, Norman has written over 500 musical compositions as well as scores for several movies and off-Broadway shows.  He counts Mose Alison, Randy Newman, and Tom Lehrer as his personal muses and Fats Waller, Thelonius Monk, and Dr. John as his pianistic influences.  zamcheck.net

RICK DROST

Rick sang in Glee Club, the Augmented Seven, and the Battell choir as an undergraduate, writing his first songs in senior year inspired by hearing Joni Mitchell at the Stone Balloon in New Haven.  He still performs some of those early songs, written from his room above the Branford-JE walkway.  During his career as a software engineer he sang in small choruses and a folk-rock group and toured with the Yale Alumni Chorus.  He evolved into a storytelling songwriter, with poetic, timeless lyrics, singing festivals and coffeehouses around the country.  Since retiring as an engineer, Rick has been able to pour his full energies into his music, releasing his first solo album, Turning the World.  Its title song has been hailed by popular American folksinger David Wilcox as no less than “the greatest song ever written!”  According to No Depression (the pre-eminent journal of roots music) Rick’s musical approach invites comparisons to Tom Rush, Tom Paxton, and John Sebastian. Since the release of Turning the World Rick has begun playing national venues such as Passim in Cambridge.  rickdrostsongs.com

JOHN O’LEARY

 John O’Leary, who began his music career at Yale as a drummer for The Lunatic Fringe and The Morning, has played in a dozen folk, rock, or boogie bands since then, fronting many of them as a singer/songwriter/pianist.  His bands have opened shows for over two dozen Rock & Roll Hall of Fame acts—including Eric Clapton, The Grateful Dead, Joni Mitchell, Sly and the Family Stone, Bo Diddley, and Muddy Waters—and appeared on NBCs Midnight Special with Wolfman Jack.  In the late 70s and 80s O’Leary’s unusual campaign for Governor of Connecticut and then for US President paved the way for a new breed of political candidate—one unencumbered by facts or knowledge—to aspire to higher office.  He reluctantly accepts full responsibility for the current state of national affairs. He presently maintains an award-winning blog, www.BusinessLessonsFromRock.com, which draws business lessons from the world of popular music.  On warm weekends he can occasionally be found in the Boston Public Garden playing bottle-neck slide guitar for music lovers of all ages and species.

MAT KASTNER

Mat KastnerMat Kastner is a musical accompanist extraordinaire—whose guitar talent is legendary.  In addition to acoustic & electric guitar, he plays dobro, mandolin, and piano and is fluent in genres as varied as rock, folk, blues, R&B, country, bluegrass, and Americana.  A resident of Newtown, CT, Mat has been playing music full-time since retirement as an electrical engineer. Over the course of his career Mat has performed with The Morning (which formed at Yale in 1967), Randy Burns and the Skydog Band, The Homesick John O’Leary Band, The Real Stormin’ Norman Zamcheck, and many other artists and bands.  He has recorded with music greats such as David Bromberg, David Gates (Bread), Barry Goldberg (Electric Flag), and Gerry Goffin (of the Goffin/Carole King songwriting team). A musician in constant demand, he currently plays in a half dozen musical groups.