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It's nice to live in a townhouse in NYC. It's also beautiful when it snows in NYC. But what's not nice and/or beautiful is the fact that living in a townhouse and not an apartment means that there's no super. AKA when it snows, you have to do the shoveling. That's right, on Saturday James and I took a trip to Home Depot, bought two shovels and prepared for the onslaught. This morning, Juli and I shoveled the stairs and the sidewalk in front of our place and I felt like I was back on Long Island again shoveling in front of my childhood home. P.S., not to sound like an old geezer, but that's when we really had snow. I'll never forget when I was a kid in 1978 and we had two major snowstorms within a month. First they closed school for the day and, for the second one, they closed school for an entire week! It was my favorite week…which is also the nickname I give to the first show I played on Broadway: My Favorite Year (we didn't last long).

Listen to Seth's Podcast: Ann Harada, Maury Yeston and Snow Business

Anyhoo, this week has been chock full of Broadway. On Monday night I saw Ann Harada (the original Christmas Eve in Avenue Q) do a sold-out show called Christmas Eve with "Christmas Eve". It was FANTASTIC! It was so well-written (by her), directed (by Alan Marouka) and performed. She played her character from Avenue Q. (the therapist with two masters degrees) and used her signature thick Japanese accent. We were told that her Christmas wish was to do a show with fabulous leading men from Broadway. When Chip Zien came out, she said, "We most famous therapist on Broadway," because he played Mendel in Falsettos. Then she looked "sympathetic" and said "My show run longer." Then she said, "But you most famous baker on Broadway" because he played the baker in Into the Woods. Then she added, "My show also run longer." She sang a duet with each one including a hilarious "Barcelona" with Raul Esparza as Bobby and her as April. The bridge culminated in:

	Ann Harada

RAUL: No, you're a very special girl….June!!!!
CHRISTMAS EVE: Aplir!!!
RAUL: (confused) Aplir??
CHRISTMAS EVE: Thank you…

On Tuesday at Sirius/XM, I interviewed Maury Yeston, the composer of Nine, and Ron Fair, the producer of the new soundtrack album, who is also the chairman of Geffen Records. Ron has discovered many amazing singers and I asked him about Christina Aguilera. He said that she had a demo tape that everyone kept rejecting because it wasn't great. Ron said it pretty much took detective work to figure out she was amazing because it wasn't until the third song that she really sassed it. And not only did you have to listen to the third song, it wasn't until the bridge! Well, thankfully he listened to it all and asked her to come in and sing for him. She was only 15 (!) but gave him a great and supremely confident performance. He loved her but downplayed it to try to get the best deal he could get. He was like "Hey, you're kinda good….I'm interested in doing some stuff with you…-ish…" (The "ish" was added by me for effect). Christina wound up getting the big song from "Mulan." The money she made on that paid for her first CD and the next thing I knew I was trying to imitate her riffs on "Lady Marmalade." I could not.

Maury remembered that when he was at the initial auditions for the Broadway production of Nine, many women tried out who were incredibly talented and had the essence of an actual European. Yet the men they got all looked like Mid-Western hoofers. Besides the leading role of Guido, there were many other male roles to cast and they didn't know what to do. Finally, Tommy Tune (the director) suggested they make the show all women except for Guido. It wound up not only solving the problem of finding men who could seem European, but it also made the character of Guido believable. Maury said that the audience had to believe Guido is an incredibly powerful, successful director and by having him be the only man onstage surrounded by women immediately showed him as the most powerful onstage. Ironically, whenever I get together with my mom and two sisters, I'm the weakest one in the room.

Maury loved the cast of the film and said that Rob Marshall called Sophia Loren and told her that if she didn't play Guido's mother, he wouldn't make the film! When she agreed to the role, Maury wrote her a new song because the one in the musical is for a soprano and Sophia is a fiery bass. I asked him how Sophia heard the song for the first time…did he play it for her in her villa or make a demo singing it himself (since they probably have the same range)? Turns out, he made a demo with a brilliant singer I know who lives in L.A. named Tami Tappan. If you don't know her UNBELIEVABLE voice, watch this deconstruction ASAP.

Maury also said that Kate Hudson came in and belted up a storm and everyone was in shock that she sang so well. I, of course, wasn't surprised because I remember the special her mom Goldie Hawn did with Liza Minnelli back in the '80s. Yes it's un-watchable taste-wise, but they both sound great. Because Kate was such a sasstress, they created a new role for her in the film and Maury wrote a song where she could belt and dance up a storm called "Cinema Italiano" which, P.S., was just nominated for a Golden Globe Award. Maury and Rob decided not to have the wife sing "Be On Your Own" because it would mean having three ballads in a row. Maury commented that on Broadway you can have a star stand in a center spotlight and sing a great song, but in a film that sometimes translates as b-o-r-i-n-g. So they came up with the idea of having his wife sing a new song while doing a striptease because they felt that would be the hardest thing for Guido to watch: his wife desiring and being fondled by other men. Maury had a great point about when people ask him how he can support changes in the script or the score. They'll say "Are you OK with what they've done to your musical?" and he says "They haven't done anything to my musical. The musical has stayed the same. This is the film." Excellent!  Continued...