Stars of the AVT #31: The Maestrosities

The Coolest Band Ever

This post is one of a series profiling the hundreds of performers I’ve presented through my American Vaudeville Theatre in celebration of its 15th anniversary. Don’t miss the American Vaudeville Theatre’s 15th Anniversary ExTRAVaganza in the New York International Fringe Festival this August!

I’ve raved about them at length in many places and here I go again! I booked them sight unseen on a friend’s recommendation for our showboat vaudeville show at the Waterfront Museum and Showboat Barge in 2007. My mood couldn’t have been fouler. Producing on top of hosting always gets me grumbling; the day was muggy on top of it (I hates muggy days), and therefore my scowl was prodigious. Then the Maestrosities showed up and did the impossible: rather effortlessly turned my mood around 180 degrees into total happiness. This is what clowns are theoretically supposed to do; more often than not, many of them do the opposite. Anyway, first impressions are lasting impressions. I always think of them in the pleasant light of that first encounter. The following year (2008), I booked them to do several performances at my vaudeville revue at Theater for the New City, and once again, they did not disappoint.

But wait a minute! Hold the phone. Just who and what are these Maestrosities? They are a sort of super-group of clown musicians. The individual members are (or were, as the case may be):

* David Gochfeld (the Maestro): in the group, he sings with what I consider to be a very pleasant crooning voice and plays the ukulele…and speaks with either a very funny foreign accent or speech impediment or a combination of the two. (Or maybe it’s just the beret that creates that illusion) He also acts outside the clown universe with many indie theatre companies, notably several productions with Stolen Chair. I got to act alongside him in Ian W. Hill’s Spacemen from Space, and he played mandolin in my recent performance of Jasper Jaxon. He’s also a terrific photographer, whose work has made it into just about every newspaper and magazine in New York (at least the ones that cover theatre; I don’t think he’s placed any pictures in Motor Trend).

* Jenny Lee Mitchell (Deirdre): a hilarious creation, a persnickety, bad-tempered unpleasable, proper English woman. She constantly seems to be in arguments with the Maestro. The real Jenny I consider to be something of a theatrical superwoman: she’s a terrific actress, trained clown, professional opera singer and plays the clarinet (the latter is her official job in the Maestrosities, along with a little of the rest). I think of her as being in the great tradition of the vaudeville singing comediennes, and have had the pleasure of presenting her once in that capacity (in last year’s “Last Chance Saloon” at Dixon Place), and am looking forward to presenting her again in the very near future. Unfortunately she has broken my heart by leaving the Maestrosities over creative differences. I won’t get myself in trouble by writing further on the subject. The other five clowns in the group are no slouches, and they will carry on. But I will say that her part in the group’s former chemistry is an element I will miss.

* Rod Kimball (Louis) is the Maestrosity I’ve known the longest. I presented him along with juggling QueenPin Viveca Gardiner in my show at the Bindlestiff Palace of Variety back in 2002. (The two of them wore matching plaid short-legged overalls – very Shields and Yarnell). Rod has the distinction of being the first non-original member of the Flying Karamazov Brothers. Though he is a world class juggler in his other life, in the Maestrosities he is a trumpet player, and a bumbling, bashful nerd.

* Glen Heroy (Cornelius) has recently attained lots of national exposure on the PBS reality series Circus, which followed him around as he performed with Big Apple Circus. Cornelius plays spoons with the Maestrosities, and judging by his décor and demeanor they seem to be spoons stolen from the commissary at Sing-Sing. Cornelius reminds me of Swedish wrestler and Ed Wood cast member Tor Johnson – simultaneously scary and lovable.

* Andy Sapora (Chauncey), the tuba player, reminds me something of Ringo, the mouth-breathing, one-beat-behind-the-rest-of-everyone-else member of the band. Like Kimball, he is now a member of the Flying Karamazov Bros; like Heroy, he is a clown with Big Apple Circus. He is also one of the masterminds behind the “Tiny Dangerous Fun” series out in deepest, darkest Brooklyn.

* Gina Samardge (Princess Penny), the accordionist, used to play with the Main Squeeze Orchestra, which is not a bit surprising. Her character has a sweet, wide-eyed innocence that no doubt helps her connect with her other major constituency when she is not playing with the Maestrosities, which is kids. (She is not only a teacher but a children’s entertainer. And, baby, both of those jobs take guts).

Truth to tell, the whole bunch of them have a quality I would call innocent. I am really burnt out on this old, worn-out idea that everything needs to be nasty and have an edge in order to appeal to a contemporary audience.  The Maestrosities are the proof (and they are brave in proving it) that that simply isn’t true at all.  What appeals to me about them is that that they convey an innocence that is also devoid of saccharine. It’s the very same quality that Laurel and Hardy have. They can squabble, even hit each other, but one never feels that they’re horrible for doing so – just human.

And now here’s a real cool clip of the coolest band ever on my pal Michael Cumella’s Antique Phonograph Music Program on WFMU:

To learn more about vaudeville past and present, consult No Applause, Just Throw Money: The Book That Made Vaudeville Famous, available at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and wherever nutty books are sold.