I started out as a pianist and singer in gay and piano bars - they were the only places I could get a job singing show tunes.
For me, there is no point in doing a duet unless it is organic or there is an emotional thru line.
When Sondheim was visiting the Library of Congress, where the manuscript of 'Porgy and Bess' is housed, he was so overcome with emotion while holding the score in his hands that he shed a tear. He shed several tears, but one of the tears actually fell onto the original manuscript. And he was horrified.
I will not programme generic orchestrations but try to find original ones - when I play Richard Rodgers songs, for example, I have Peggy Lee's original orchestrations that I got from her granddaughter for them.
I've had a couple of times where things were so extraordinary wonderful that it changed my world. One of them was when I met Ira Gershwin and started working with him. That was a game-changer for me. It changed the entire course and direction of my life.
He's a world-famous name to people who care about his music, but there are many people who have never heard of George Gershwin and those numbers increase.
