The Year of Tony Bennett

An Appreciation of the Art and Music of Tony Bennett

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And Then We Were Four

Four months, that is. The Year of Tony Bennett is four months old today. That’s 185 posts, 120 Quotes of the Day and 90 Songs of the Day. (There is a playlist of all of the songs of the day on Spotify that you can subscribe to or listen to, anytime you wish.)

But, most importantly, it’s our many new and wonderful friends: some of you we’ve met, others we only know online. All of you are wonderful.

We raise a virtual toast to all of our readers who come to visit us.

And let us all raise a toast to Anthony Dominick Benedetto. Thank you for everything.

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Notes from the Blog

Thanks to Google Analytics, I’m able to see information about how readers find The Year of Tony Bennett. I want to share some of my favorite search terms that readers have used to reach us:

  1. i just want to hear tony bennett not others right now
  2. how to play like ralph sharon
  3. vicente fernandez bing crosby duet
  4. tony bennett’s dog

As for #1, well, I can certainly appreciate that. #2: that’s a pretty hard act to follow.  #3: might have been interesting. #4: we are big fans of Happy.

We also get questions like this:

  1. who plays for tony bennett
  2. marshall wood bass
  3. gray sargent guitar
  4. harold jones drums
  5. lee musiker

We do have a nice article up about the Quartet.  Lots and lots of interest about these musicians. In fact, “lee musiker” is the single most used unique search term used to reach the site.

In the past month, we’ve had visitors from  every continent on the planet, except Antarctica.  Just in the last few days, we’ve had visitors from Moscow; Lagos, Nigeria; Tanzania; and Tehran, Iran. And, for those fans of the British version of The Office, we had a visitor from Slough today as well.

We are enormously grateful to all of our readers and are happy that we are able to provide information about Tony Bennett to interested people who are, literally, all over the world.

Many Thanks,

Suzanne

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About Suzanne Chiles

Suzanne Chiles is the creator of and primary author for The Year of Tony Bennett.

Suzanne was born in Birmingham, Alabama in 1950. She studied piano and clarinet and played clarinet in her high school band and was first chair clarinet for the Birmingham Youth Symphony. She had the great pleasure of playing in pit orchestras for musicals while in high school and college.

Suzanne earned a Bachelor of Arts in Theater in 1972 from Birmingham-Southern College in Birmingham, Alabama. She then earned a Master of Fine Arts in Theater in 1976 from Trinity University at the Dallas Theater Center in Dallas, Texas. She worked as a professional lighting designer, stage manager and technical director for regional professional theaters. After a career in theater, she became a technical writer and works today as a software technical writer for a Fortune 500 company. She also founded Fresh Ink Foundry, a company that specializes in preparing books for publication for all book readers, including the Kindle, Nook, and iPad devices for the Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and Apple bookstores.

Suzanne lives in the Portland, Oregon area with her cat, Ani. Her hobbies, in addition to blogging about Tony Bennett, include reading, writing, and attending plays and concerts. She regularly attends the Monterey Jazz Festival.

She has been a fan of the Great American Songbook for as long as she can remember.

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Thanks to our Readers!

Dear Readers of The Year of Tony Bennett,

The blog just made its first contribution to Exploring the Arts, the foundation created by Tony Bennett and Susan Benedetto.  The blog will contribute to ETA each quarter in the name of The Year of Tony Bennett and its followers.

By reading and subscribing to the blog, you are helping support arts education. As school systems all over the United States are being forced to cut their budgets, arts programs are often the first programs to go. If you can, consider supporting the arts in your community.  I know that I benefited greatly from music programs when I attended public schools. I chose the clarinet and would not trade my years of playing in school bands for anything.

Thank you readers!

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The Year of Tony Bennett is Back Home

Our trip to the Monterey Jazz Festival and San Diego was so memorable and we had a wonderful time.

We heard some amazingly great music. In addition to the two Tony Bennett concerts, we also heard Bill Frisell, Jack DeJohnette playing with Pat Metheny, Trombone Shorty (we LOVED Trombone Shorty), and many other wonderful artists.

We also met many Tony Bennett fans and handed a lot cards about this site. To our new readers from Monterey and San Diego, welcome to The Year of Tony Bennett.  We sincerely hope that you’ll continue to follow us.

I’ll be posting reviews soon. Right now, I’m unpacking and doing laundry and return to my day job tomorrow.

It was an amazing musical experience that we will always remember.  People who love the music of Tony Bennett are the greatest people in the world and meeting so many of them was a joy and a privilege.