Our CD project (plus iTunes availability) is well underway, in that we had a professional sound man (with 8 very expensive microphones) come and record one of our New Year's Eve live performances at 6th Street Playhouse, complete with raucous crowd response. We need to pay him, the mix-down feller, the graphic designer and the people who make all the lovely packaging and the hundreds of copies. We have heard the project already, and it sounds GREAT! Special thanks to producer, Diego Garcia.

And thanks to many people in our lives, Paul Gilger (director), and the board and administration of the 6th Street Playhouse in Santa Rosa, our dreams have been coming true of having our husband-and-wife original musical show be a prominent and successful. Richard writes the tune-smithy, jazzy music, Sandy writes the snarky lyrics. We have taken it to NYC (see incredible review below!), Baltimore, Chapel Hill, and two Burlesque clubs in Seattle where Sandy picked up a few pointers for the act. We'll be doing the show 3 nights in Rohnert Park at Spreckles May 4, 5, and 6 if you need to see it before you commit!

Here is the NYC review:

Sandy and Richard Riccardi

An Evening with Sandy and Richard Riccardi

The Metropolitan Room    November 10, 2011

 

You could almost call it a musical version of Saturday Night Live.  Sandy and Richard Riccardi’s Metropolitan Room show was a fun-filled hour of lampoons, jabs and jibes on a host of topical subjects.  With mostly their own original songs, but with an occasional borrowed tune to which the pair wrote parodies ranging from puckish to cynical to contemptuous, they took sharp aim at, among other items, politicians, TV evangelists, Broadway musical wannabees, sexual orientation, and the Twitter explosion.  

 

The music and material gave Sandy Riccardi plenty of opportunity to establish her proficiency as a versatile singer and actress.  If anything, she so immersed herself in the procession of characters she assumed that the audience might not have had time to appreciate the quality of her near-operatic voice.  But sharp-witted content was more the show’s objective than was a musical recital.

 

The numbers included a spoof on some of the current crop of Republicans jockeying for the Presidential candidacy, a song revealing why some guys feel they need to drive a truck, the source of “The Southern Girl’s Mating Call,” and a rollicking ode to a woman’s “change of life.”

 

And, while I won’t give it away, one of the show’s highlights was Sandy’s response to Sarah Palin’s remark of a few years back that she was “speaking for all the hockey moms.” 

 

Richard Riccardi, Sandy’s husband, may have been sequestered behind the piano, but as her spouse, partner, musical director and accompanist he was a willing, and eminently salutary accomplice to the musical goings-on, much of which he composed and/or co-authored. Together, Sandy and Richard Riccardi made one hell of a rib-tickling and satisfying cabaret night out.