Featured Profile

He’s a song lover, a song searcher, and a songwriter admirer, and has many favorites. When singer-pianist Eric Comstock got a gig for Sunday and Monday nights throughout February, the question was which of his favorites on his wish list to pick as a theme. He didn’t take the easy way out. He decided to do a completely different show each week. "I’m really excited about this!" he enthused, happy to talk to Edge about his plans. "The theme for the month is ’Manhattan Masters’ and that’s important to me. It’s a fun way to salute the great contributors who spent so much of their time in New York. So many of these songs couldn’t have been written in any other place." This is especially true of the first tributed songwriter, Charles Strouse, whose shows Annie, Applause, A Broadway Musical, Rags, Bye Bye Birdie and Golden Boy all have New York as their setting. Eric is especially fond of Golden Boy and that score will be well represented. Doing a Charles Strouse night "has been on my mind for years," says Eric who calls the composer "a great musical dramatist" who "transcends catchy show tunes. He wrote deeper." Eric admires the fact that "he appreciates jazz, and I have always believed he contributed to the jazz repertory," noting that Strouse has liked jazz artists interpreting his music. "And he keeps in there swingin’" adds the singer, but by "swingin’" Comstock (who swings songs very well indeed when he chooses to) was referring not to jazz to the fact that Strouse is still actively writing new shows in the increasingly difficult climate for new musicals to get produced. "He’s got fifteen shows in his mind," he says of the composer (and sometime lyricist) who has all kinds of projects on front and back burners, including the stage adaptation of the film Marty.