So music is a bit of a Thing for both Ivy and me.  Ivy studied voice and sang in a band a lifetime ago.  I studied piano at Juilliard Pre-College a lifetime ago.  So we're both lapsed musicians.  But we still like getting together to make some noise from time to time, and we both love the Great American Songbook.

Ivy first heard "Lost in the Stars"  on the radio a year or so ago and managed to hunt down some sheet music for us.  It was composed by Kurt Weill in 1949, the year before Weill's death, for a Broadway production of the same name.  The musical was based on Alan Paton's Cry, the Beloved Country.

Despite its major key and casual pacing, "Lost in the Stars" represents, just beneath the surface, a crisis of faith experienced by a father in danger of losing his son. As in so many Weill songs, what passes at first for an easy, blues-tinged melody camouflages a pain so deep it can only be expressed with a smile.