Music Man

In Ardmore is a man who makes, repairs and deals in violins, violas and cellos. Paul Stevens, in business there seven years, fills in now and then as a cellist in community orchestras, but says he finds it "enjoyable being able to share music in other people's lives" through the instruments.

Do not, under any circumstances, dash from the Neil Simon Theatre during curtain calls for The Music Man, which opened Thursday in an irresistible revival directed and choreographed by Susan Stroman. Miss your train, delay your supper date, but stick around for the terrific cherry of a surprise that Stroman has plopped atop this yummy sundae of a musical. To say anything more would spoil the fun, so suffice it to report that this Music Man is in spirited, innocent fettle literally from first note to last.

Music teacher Brian Groder conducts orchestra rehearsals the way comedian Billy Crystal hosted last week's Academy Awards. Witty retorts. Scathing quips. Irreverent repartee. Groder can dish it out and take it with the best of his Jenkintown High School musicians. "I never even heard of My Left Foot," 18-year-old clarinetist Jason Holland said during a rehearsal break between measures of James Swearingen's "Aventura. " "That's because there's no sex, no violence and no car chase, so you didn't notice the commercials when they came on TV," Groder said, followed by chuckles from his audience.

STEPHEN LYNCH doesn't really care about jokes, which is ironic considering he's a comedian. While his goal onstage is to make people laugh, he's not the average stand-up either. Lynch, who plays the Tower Theater tomorrow, is a musical comedian, crafting acoustic guitar-driven songs with inspiration derived from decidedly strange places. A song called "Craig," for example, is told from the perspective of Jesus' hard-partying brother Craig Christ (sample lyric: "I don't turn water into wine/But into cold Coors Light")

The Music Man occurs in what is usually regarded as a more idyllic time and place - a small town in the Midwest early in the century. But the situation in River City, Iowa, that forms the basis for the story of the popular musical, which the Media Theatre for the Performing Arts is presenting, is hardly the stuff of idylls. River City is a town suspicious of outsiders, particularly when they arrive in the form of fast-talking traveling salesmen out to fleece the great American heartland.

One of the objections offered by the unions protesting the nonunion production of The Music Man at the Merriam Theater is that while the show is based on the recent Broadway production, it can't really be called a Broadway show because it doesn't use actors who have Broadway experience. That is a valid point. There is a polish and professionalism - something easier to sense than to explain - that Broadway-experienced actors lend to a show that this production of The Music Man does not have.

The Music Man, the Broadway hit musical by Meredith Willson, will be performed at Ridley Senior High School beginning tonight. Director Sandy Stefanowicz is leading a cast and crew of more than 50 students in the classic story of Professor Harold Hill's visit to River City, where he forms a children's band. The high school is on Morton Avenue in Folsom. Show times are 7:30 p.m. today through Saturday. Tickets are $5 for adults, $4 for students, and $3 for seniors. For information, call 610-534-1900.

Great day in the morning! River City, Iowa, circa 1912, has come back to life at the Valley Forge Music Fair like some cornfed Brigadoon. It's an occasion for cheers and fireworks. River City's lovely virginal librarian, Marian Paroo, is again resisting the blandishments of that dangerous smoothie, Harold Hill, and the town is once more atwit over Professor Hill's empty promise to give it a band worthy of its standing in the world. That old prune, Mayor Shinn, is back, threatening to upset the apple cart, and his imposing wife, Eulalie (Eulalie Mackecknie Shinn, as she still prefers to be formally known)

Although some 70-year-old men are well into retirement, Frank Salacandro, the "Music Man" of Medford, refuses to put down his baton. The conductor, teacher and musician who founded the New Jersey Piano and Organ Co., the New Jersey School of Music and the Burlington County Pops Orchestra, Salacandro has launched yet another musical venture. Through "Music Enterprises," Salacandro hopes to continue to tell people what he has been saying for 32 years: "Put some music in your life.

It was not a muse in filmy drapes who drew Frank Lewin into life as a composer. It was film itself. Now, 45 years after he first found that film and theater and his music were made for one another, Princeton will celebrate his life in music. The Voices ensemble and a group of Princeton musicians and singers will perform at 3 p.m. today some of Lewin's songs and sacred pieces at a 70th birthday concert for him at Richardson Auditorium. None of the music to be performed today will be taken directly from his huge catalog of film, television and theater music.

AS THE Quaker City String Band rehearsed the wooden soldier march of its latest routine on a chilly December evening, Jim Fox Jr. blended right into the horde of saxophonists playing through "Teddy Bears' Picnic" and "When Johnny Comes Marching Home. " But despite being one alto among many, Fox is responsible for an outsized portion of the cacophony being raised on the second floor of the venerable Mummers band's South Philly clubhouse. Probably half of the Quaker City saxophonists wouldn't be there on New Year's Day if it weren't for Fox. That's literally the case for two of them, Fox's college-age sons, who are carrying on the family tradition.

Scandalous sex tapes, adultery, and addiction ruled Celebdom in 2010. In other words, it was business as usual. But beyond the squalor, the muck and mire, there burns Love . Love of lust, love of art, love of self, love of money, love of porn, love of controlled substances. Here's a look at some of the more notable love stories of 2010. Weddings! Weddings! Weddings! For all the scandals, 2010 wrapped up all sugar: It was the year of a thousand engagements. Ah, but how many will actually marry?

STEPHEN LYNCH doesn't really care about jokes, which is ironic considering he's a comedian. While his goal onstage is to make people laugh, he's not the average stand-up either. Lynch, who plays the Tower Theater tomorrow, is a musical comedian, crafting acoustic guitar-driven songs with inspiration derived from decidedly strange places. A song called "Craig," for example, is told from the perspective of Jesus' hard-partying brother Craig Christ (sample lyric: "I don't turn water into wine/But into cold Coors Light")

The music man of Upper Darby Township used to be a Winthrop. Harry Dietzler, executive director of the Upper Darby Summer Stage community theater program, saw himself as the shy little boy in Meredith Willson's Broadway musical about a shifty salesman of band instruments. "My sisters would put on a show in the backyard, and my contribution was putting the needle on the record," said Dietzler, 55, of Upper Darby. Since then, he has overseen hundreds of shows at the Upper Darby Performing Arts Center and has changed from a bashful Winthrop to an upstanding version of The Music Man 's Professor Harold Hill, selling the virtues of musical theater to anyone who will listen.

Age: Over 35. Neighborhood: Newtown, Bucks County. Job: President of Langweiler Financial Group. Back in the day: Grew up in Wyncote. "Started as a stock broker in Bucks County in the early 1980s . . . started my own firm in the same community in 2003. " Music man: "I played the harmonica professionally with many big names. I realized early on that the harmonica was not going to be my career. So, it's now a healthy addiction while single. I am hoping to find someone to keep my lips occupied when I am not performing.

Nearly three months after Harry Kalas' death, the broadcaster's widow is selling their home, which sits in a cul-de-sac on 2.3 acres in Upper Providence Township, Delaware County. Eileen Kalas has retained Long & Foster's Christine Clark Real Estate Team to sell the four-bedroom, three-bath rancher off Providence Road. Asking price is $625,000. The couple had lived in the house since 1986. "Like Harry, it's not anything too pretentious," real estate agent Christine Clark told me. The house, which borders Ridley Creek State Park, has two full kitchens.

Brad S. Schoener, 46, of West Chester, a charismatic music teacher and performer, died Thursday at home of leiomyosarcoma, a rare, soft-tissue cancer. Since 1992, Mr. Schoener divided his time teaching instruments and directing bands at the Bywood, Highland Park, and Stonehurst Hills Elementary Schools in the Upper Darby School District. "He's known as the 'Music Man of Upper Darby,' " Susan Nitz, a parent who had five children study under Mr. Schoener, said in an Inquirer profile after he received the Mr. Holland's Opus Foundation National Teacher of the Year Award in 2007.

The New Candlelight Dinner Theatre has gone all out for its current production of The Music Man. With help from a cast of 33 and all the frills and pink prairie flounce costumers A.J. Garcia and Jody Anderson Miller could muster, Marian the Librarian and huckster Harold Hill guarantee a good old-timey time. In fact, The Music Man is all about having a good time, which may be why it beat West Side Story at the 1958 Tony Awards in just about every category. People loved a musical that took them back to a seemingly simpler time; if the songs and characters were memorable, so much the better.

If live, improvised music is happening in Philadelphia, there's a good chance Elliott Levin is involved. At 54, the West Philadelphia native has a long and accomplished record in the jazz avant-garde. He's been involved with pianist Cecil Taylor's large ensembles since the early 1970s. He's worked extensively with Marshall Allen, the late Tyrone Hill and other members of the Sun Ra Arkestra. You can hear his raw tenor sax and piquant flute pierce the dense aural fabric of Bobby Zankel's Warriors of the Wonderful Sound and the Odean Pope Saxophone Choir, two of Philly's best working jazz groups.

The high-glam projects are circling Michael Friedman like airliners in air-traffic-control gridlock. Having worked on two unlikely New York theater hits that opened within weeks of each other this summer, the 31-year-old Philadelphia-born composer is in the final stages of a musical about the evangelical movement titled This Beautiful City. He's also having discussions about a major project for the New York City Ballet, and has at least four more musicals in the works on subjects ranging from Andrew Jackson to Alice in Wonderland, spread over several American cities.