Travels with Sam

Metroland Retrospective Dept.: Where did I dine two decades ago? At Sam Zoleo’s newest restaurant. He ran Sam’s Place in Saratoga before opening 95 Ferry in Troy, but took that name with him when he returned to Saratoga. He would go back to Troy with a couple of different ventures before leaving the business, as far as I can tell, in 2008, although I see he recently has offered cooking classes at the Troy Arts Center.

                                                                                              

SAM IS A PLEASANT MAN who gets very serious when the subject is food. “I use what’s fresh,” he says. “That’s why menu is written the way it is. There’s no swordfish on it, no tuna. How can you put things like that on a menu without having to bring them in frozen?”

Nothing to do with Sam's, but it's pretty

Fish, in fact, is a special obsession. Having worked for several years in New York’s Fulton Fish Market, Sam knows fish. “I get in a box of fish from someone I never bought fish from before, first thing I do is turn is upside-down. Open it from the bottom. Then I see what kind of fish they’re really putting in there.”

So the talapia I sampled the other night was fresh. In fact, I got the last order for the night. It’s a sturdy but slightly sweet salt-water fish, reminiscent of scrod. And everything assembled around it was fresh – the onions, the parsley, the basil. The black olives came out of a jar, but they need a little curing.

Sam used to run 95 Ferry Street in Troy, and Sam’s Diner on Route 9 just south of Saratoga before that. Now he’s back in Saratoga, but downtown, in a building that also houses a steakhouse and a sushi bar.

A Taste of Immigration

Our twenty-fifth Thanksgiving dinner at Jollity Farm. While we can't help but salute the melting pot that is the greater culinary world each time we lift a skillet, we thought it fitting to pay extra attention to some of those making the news of late.

The Sloth

A preview of my Jan. 24 show at Saratoga's Caffe Lena. Somehow it ties in with Thanksgiving.

Smitten on the Keys

MASTERY OF PROKOFIEV’S PIANO MUSIC requires complete mastery of the piano: the composer wrote for (and possessed) a blistering, ambitious technique, and the required skill usually is demonstrated with later works such as the Sixth and Seventh Sonatas. But pianist Yefim Bronfman reminded us that the same challenges await among the lower numbers by performing Prokofiev’s first four sonatas at Union College in Schenectady last Wednesday. And, in a wonderful programming choice, he slipped a bit of Schumann in there as well.

Yefim Bronfman

This allowed us to hear Prokofiev’s progress. The journey from his first sonata, from 1909 when he was 18, to the second, published three years later, is a trip whereon he discovers the voice that remained recognizably his. And the Schumann pieces reinforced Prokofiev’s essentially romantic nature.

No nonsense when Bronfman begins! He strides to the piano, takes a cursory bow, and is playing the opening work almost before he’s seated, it seems. Prokofiev’s First Sonata is a one-movement work, cut down by the composer from its original three, written while he was a student at the St. Petersburg Conservatory. It immediately asserts the romantic sensibility that never would leave the composer’s voice, but it’s free of the crunch and angularity that very soon would appear. Still, I’m not sure I’d want to meet this piece in a dark alley without warning.

Towards a More Perfect Union

From the Metroland Vault Dept.: Meeting larger-than-life actor George DiCenzo in 1987 meant dining with him as well, and we ended up sharing a typically excellent meal at Schenectady’s Appian Way restaurant, livened by DiCenzo’s animated storytelling. He went on to appear in the films 18 Again!, Sing and The Exorcist III, as well as such TV shows as Murder, She Wrote, NYPD Blue, Equal Justice, and Joe's Life. He appeared on Broadway in a revival of On Borrowed Time, directed by his friend George C. Scott. DiCenzo died in 2010.

                                                                                             

GEORGE DICENZO WOULD LIKE TO SEE A NEW THEATRE at Union College. But that’s not the reason he sepnt a week there shooting a promotional video for the college.

George DiCenzo in Dynasty.

“I love this place,” he says. “I’m just happy to do it.” DiCenzo graduated from Union in 1962 with the intent to practice law. But he had done enough acting with the college Mountebanks to suggest that he try that somewhat less reliable career – which he has pursued with enough success that he now can choose his own movie roles.

Recent appearances in Back to the Future and About Last Night have made him a recognizable fellow, so when Union alumni watch this new video, they’ll see his burly, bearded figure strolling the grounds of the campus, visiting classrooms, suggesting that the old alma mater is a desirable place to check in with now and then.

Greek to Me

From the Metroland Vault Dept.: Saluting my too-many years as Metroland’s restaurant reviewer, here’s another from the early days. In fact, it’s the last one I wrote before taking a hiatus for two years, returning in 1990 after a succession of other writers discovered that it wasn’t as simple a task as it seemed. The Chariot is long gone, its space currently occupied by an Indian eatery.

                                                                                            

EVER HAVE ONE OF THOSE DAYS when you can't think of anything good to eat? When there's nothing in the house, you don't want to send out for another pizza, you've been to the local Chinese place a dozen times in the last month, you don't want to see another piece of steak and you know if you don't think of something soon you're going to end up in the frozen food aisle of Price Chopper choosing yet another crappy microwave pseudo-gourmet dinner?

The Chariot's building, as pictured during
one of its on-the-market moments.

Al “To Hell with Hallowe’en” Quaglieri and I were supposed to get together for dinner and couldn’t think of a damn thing we wanted to tuck into. Until someone suggested a Greek restaurant down in the west end of Guilderland. An idea so refreshing that we were joined by significant others in a meal that was as delightful as it was different.

The Chariot was erected in a time when dining rooms were big places, happy hotel-like spreads unrelieved by varying levels and dividers of plants. It’s attractive in that context, with a warm bar off to one side of the room and a small selection of salads promising that no guest will stay hungry for long.

Bucket Listing

Remembering Metroland Dept.: While I don’t think the body has stopped breathing, while Metroland remains in its coda, I’m exhuming some of my vintage pieces for the redoubtable alt-weekly. Here’s a preview-review combo from 1987, when I covered dance. Garth Fagan is still holding strong at 75, and his company will perform at Proctors in Schenectady on Jan. 29, 2016.

                                                                                                   

GARTH FAGAN HAD A STRAIGHTFORWARD AMBITION: Invent a new kind of dance. It meant ignoring the conservative critics; it meant developing a company free of the preconceptions of the worlds of modern and ballet. So he went to the bottom of the bucket, as he whimsically put it, created a company out of dancers her trained himself – and now, after almost 20 years at it, he’s seeing that goal get nearer.

Garth Fagan

As Anne Marie Welsh, writing in the San Diego Union after Fagan’s Bucket Dance Theater’s very recent appearance there, put it, “The genealogy of modern dance now includes Garth Fagan, the newest choreographer to add a new branch to the modern tree.”

“I like that,” says Fagan. His Jamaican heritage is very much in his voice, a voice that has the fat sound of a chalumeau clarinet. “The company is in such wonderful condition after five weeks in California that we’re ready to burn in Albany.”

They’ll be appearing at the Egg Sunday afternoon at 2 in a program that comprises “Prelude,” “Oatka Trail,” “Touring Jubilee 1924 (Professional),” “Never Top 40 (Juke Box)” and “Mask Mix Masque.”

Prokofiev, with a Fist

From the Vault Dept.: Pianist Yuja Wang has out a new album sporting Ravel’s two concertos and the Ballade by Fauré, and its cover photo inspired a snotty lede from David Hurwitz in his ClassicsToday review. To remorsefully self-aggrandize for a moment, one of my own earliest concert reviews included a similarly snotty crack about a performer’s outfit; my comment about his dressing up earned me a deserved dressing down, and I’ve since tried to focus on the performance itself, as in the review below.

                                                                                                 

DURING A FRENZIED MOMENT in the opening of Prokofiev’s Piano Sonata No. 6, the manuscript is marked, over a dense chord, “col pugno.” When she reached it, pianist Yuja Wang curled her fingers into a fist and skillfully smacked the keys, the percussive surprise of the moment executed with an inspiring combination of precision and charm

Yuja Wang

We’re so accustomed to the proficiency level of the top-flight pianists who live in or pass through this area that when an exceptional talent like this one appears, it takes a moment to register that something even more extraordinary than usual is happening on stage.

Yuja Wang is a 24-year-old enjoying a phenomenal career, having already appeared with many major orchestras, in many cases as a last-minute replacement. She made a splash three years ago in concerts at the Saratoga Performing Arts Center. Saturday’s solo recital at Albany’s Massry Center should only add to her legend.

The big piece was Liszt’s Sonata in B Minor, a four-movement but nonstop work that opens with some ominous octaves that, in Wang’s hands, suggested the sweep with which Horowitz took on the piece. But what most energizes her approach is a control over the dynamics that shades the textures with a more colorful palette than I’m used to hearing.

Travelin’ Man

FOUR IDENTICALLY DRESSED MEN, their drab suits and bowler hats suggesting the English civil service, line the stage. From them the presence of Henry Pulling emerges. He’s at the crematorium where his mother’s remains are about to be cooked. He is retired, but finds it “difficult to occupy my time. I had never married. I had always lived quietly and, apart from my interest in dahlias, I had no hobby. For those reasons I found myself agreeably excited to be at my mother’s funeral.” He meets his septuagenarian Aunt Augusta, unseen by him for decades. She uses the occasion to inform Henry that her sister – his mother – wasn’t actually the woman who bore him. As we enter the topsy-turvy world of Graham Greene’s “Travels with My Aunt,” this will prove to be Henry’s re-birth as he is yanked out of his dull complacency to discover that there’s no life without passion – and nobody more passionate than his aunt.

Dan Jenkins, Thomas Jay Ryan, and Jay Russell

Greene’s “Travels with My Aunt” was published in 1969, a picaresque in an uncharacteristically light-hearted vein. The novelist described it as “the only book I have written for the fun of it. Although the subject is old age and death – a suitable subject to tackle at the age of sixty-five – and though an excellent Swedish critic described the novel justly as ‘laughter in the shadows of the gallows,’ I experienced more of the laughter and little of the shadow in writing it.” 

It was followed in 1972 by an unexpectedly bland film, a rare misfire for George Cukor, especially considering the cinematic qualities of the fast-moving, trans-continental tale. In adapting it for the stage, Giles Havergal opted to present its shifting landscape through mere suggestion, a springboard on which to let the characters of Henry and Augusta to grow.

Mostly Martha

From the Back Pages Dept.: Martha Argerich’s recordings for DG and Philips have been released in a 48-CD box set, which I’ll be writing about shortly. Meanwhile, here’s a look back at my reviews of some of her live performances, back when the pianist was a regular visitor at the Saratoga Performing Arts Center. These concerts took place in 2008.

                                                                                         

YOU CAN EASILY FILL Saratoga’s Spa Little Theater with the area’s Martha Argerich cult followers, which happened last Monday. They cheered the performance of a less-than-minor Beethoven piece with the ardency of a stadium of Springsteen fans.

Martha Argerich

Put the same Argerich-ites in the SPAC amphitheater, and they barely make a dent. Which happened last Friday, when a less-than-half-filled hall cheered a major minor-Beethoven piece.

The program featured the Philadelphia Orchestra conducted by Charles Dutoit, with violinist Renaud Capuçon and cellist Gautier Capuçon joining frequent collaborator Argerich in Beethoven’s Triple Concerto, and first-chair violist Choon-Jin Chang as soloist in Berlioz’s “Harold in Italy.” Had it been booked in Carnegie Hall, or any hall in a major international market, it would have been a sellout.

But the Capital Region remains culturally timid, hamstrung by a “that’s good enough for Albany” mentality that settles for the second-rate, the also-ran. Pursuing seats at a classical music concert might make you seem as if you’re putting on airs.

Alone Again, Gastronomically

“You can put me at the table in the corner in the back unless you’ve got one in the telephone booth;
I’m here and I’m alone again, it’s sad but it’s the truth.
No, I’m not expecting anyone, is that beyond belief?
Give me the menu, take away the candle, never mind the aperitif.”

– Loudon Wainwright III, “I Eat Out.”

IT CAN SEEM TO BE THE ODDEST PLACE to enter alone. And it’s not just any eatery. Nobody minds grabbing a solo seat at a diner or fast-food joint. But when there’s a hint of the upscale about the place, you must be a social misfit if there’s nobody with you. Even a relative or casual friend will do.

A hilariously moronic entry on the website WikiHow offers advice on “How to Eat Alone in a Restaurant,” broken down into nine easy-to-follow steps. "One: Choose a lively dining spot with food you like that has quick service." Yes, you must be a misfit, so make sure there’s noise to cover your lonely mastication, and make sure you’re out of there fast.

This topic has won some recent attention thanks to a study in the August Journal of Consumer Research by Rebecca Ratner and Rebecca Hamilton, which asked people what they preferred to do in groups and what alone. The study “suggests that I,” (Jesse Singal, writing in New York magazine, “and all the other solo-outing-phobic folks out there, might be wrong. If we’d just actually fight through our fears and go to that movie or restaurant alone, we’d have a good time. We’re missing out on a potentially fun experience because of ill-grounded fears.”

Pola Express

From the Vault Dept.: Although I haven’t seen her in concert recently, here’s another review (here’s the first) of pianist Pola Baytelman, who settled into Saratoga Springs a few years ago as a Distinguished Artist-in-Residence at Skidmore College.

                                                                                                    

PIANIST POLA BAYTELMAN HAS THE KIND OF TALENT that stamps a personality upon any concert she plays. That's a special mark of accomplishment placing her in the front line of soloists.

Pola Baytelman

She set herself a program for a recital at the Siena College Chapel Monday evening that was a terrific blend of the familiar and momumental, the modern and nationalistic. And she looked hardly the worse for wear when it was finished.

Despite the rush to period instruments for performances of antique music, Baytelman remains in the ranks of those who play Bach on the piano. She gave herself the cruel challenge of his Chromatic Fantasy and Fugue in D Minor to open the program, beginning with a daunting sweep of killer runs that got the bugs out in a hurry.

Characteristic of her style, obviously inspired by the early-20th-century masters, is a commanding, Romantic approach to the music. So that Bach, whose music works well in an austere, rhythmically-acute setting, was given more lushness than the Pinnock-Bilson school suggests.

Which only works in the abovementioned context of an artist's personality. The Fantasy and Fugue then becomes a big, Cesar Franck-like work that succeeds nicely as a concert opener.

Murder, They Wrote

AS A DIZZYING SET OF INTRIGUES continues to build through act two, we’re taken to the apartment of Monty Navarro (Kevin Massey), who’s been briskly murdering his way to a dukedom. He is amorously closeted with the beautiful, flighty Sibella (Kristen Beth Williams) when he is unexpectedly visited by a more recent acquaintance, Phoebe (Adrienne Eller), who is there to say, “I’ve Decided to Marry You.”

To sing, that is, in what becomes a dazzling trip as Monty tries to keep Sibella hidden and ignorant of what’s happening, even as he assents to Phoebe’s decision. The staging literally revolves around a pair of doors with lightning-crisp choreography (thanks, Peggy Hickey!) and music that has charm and wit that’s been scarce on Broadway these days.

Kevin Massey and Mary VanArsdel
in Gentleman's Guide

A Gentleman’s Guide to Love and Murder opened there in 2013, and its first national tour was just launched at Proctors with the necessary technical rehearsals and a week of performances.

The delightfully dark story began life as a 1907 novel, Israel Rank: The Autobiography of a Criminal by actor-writer Roy Horniman, and became the 1949 film classic Kind Hearts and Coronets. The novel’s half-Jewish protagonist was turned half-Italian for the movie, which was a shrewd choice: A brutal war was a recent memory, and the novel has mistakenly been charged with anti-Semitism over the decades.

Its message of discrimination is rooted in class distinction, which is why its Edwardian-era English setting is too apposite to change. The screenplay preserved other character elements and some choice funny lines, but otherwise turned it into an Oscar Wilde-like comedy of manners, lightening the murders with caricature and brilliantly casting a young Alec Guinness as all eight victims.

Gentleman’s Guide preserves this structure, allowing the versatile John Rapson not only to inhabit nine members of the D’Ysquith family but also to sing and dance while doing so. He makes each of his characters charming enough to enjoy during what we know will be a truncated meeting and obnoxious enough to help us enjoy that truncation.

Low and Slow

From the Dutch Oven Dept.: With the onslaught of colder weather, we should be preparing those slow-cooked meals of second cuts of meat, which warm the house (or at least the kitchen) en route to warming your viscera. Here’s a piece I wrote on that topic five years ago.

                                                                                       

THROW A COUPLE OF STEAKS on the fire and you satisfy a primal gustatory urge. In the snobby suburbs where I grew up, those steaks was a sirloin or, better still, its augmented sibling, the porterhouse. And ordering filet mignon in a restaurant was the height of refinement.

Photo by B. A. Nilsson

My parents had fled their working-class families, where costly steaks were a rarely tasted luxury. Conspicuous consumption is a mark of the middle-class arriviste, and there’s no better forum for showing off than the backyard grill. Which kept my childhood diet relatively pot roast-free.

But the brisket and flank and chuck are significantly less expensive than the shell and tenderloin cuts, and the longer cooking time and creative techniques required give those cuts more fascinating flavors. While saving money is one of the imperatives of the new economy, enjoying even tastier meals is the luxurious byproduct. And that’s where braising comes in.

It seems to have become one of the least-used cooking techniques. Its premise is simple:  cook a tough cut of meat with a small amount of aromatic liquid in a sealed container until the tough collagen gelatinizes, rendering the meat tender.

Surviving Twin

Sing It Loud Dept.: Loudon Wainwright III returns to the Egg in Albany tonight (Friday) with a program that explores his father's life and work and issues of family in general. He's been here before, and you can check out my reviews of his performances in 2007 and 2013. Below is a short piece I wrote in anticipation of tonight's show.

                                                                                             

“THE STRANGEST STORY EVER TOLD/Was how I got to be this old.” That’s the opening couplet from the opening song on Loudon Wainwright III’s 2012 CD release Older Than My Old Man Now. The 69-year-old singer-songwriter-actor began his musical career at the beginning of the 1970s with a pair of acoustic albums on the Atlantic label, and turned up (with his guitar) on a few episodes of the TV series MASH.

Loudon Wainwright III

As his starkly confessional songs attest, he grew up in posh Westchester County, the son of the same-named Life magazine columnist. “I think it’s natural for people to escape or even surpass their parents,” Wainwright says, speaking by phone from his home in California. “It’s a normal stage of development.” But it was a struggle for him as each of his parents died.

His album History, from 1992, documented his own challenges as a dad, with songs like “Hitting You” and “A Father and a Son,” and, in “A Handful of Dust,” set lyrics by his own father. The song “Surviving Twin,” which first appeared on the 2001 album Last Man on Earth, is a kind of reconciliation with his dad.

Red Sauce at Night, Diner’s Delight

From the Cookbook Shelves Dept.: I made the lasagna recipe from the book Laurina’s Kitchen, and it’s amazing. Fluffy and flavorful, a perfect ratio of meat to cheese to pasta. Sorry, but there will be no leftovers by the time you get here. The book was launched three years ago, when I wrote the piece below.

                                                                                               

IT WAS A SCENE YOU’D SEE near the end of an adventure epic, when the explorers finally break through to the treasure chamber and survey its long-neglected majesty. In this case, it was the kitchen of the former Ecobelli’s Tam O’Shanter Inn on Route 50 in Ballston Spa. The place has been closed for many years, but the kitchen remains intact, and as the party guests wandered in, they shared stories of the years they’d spent working here.

“I remember filling that sink with fish before I cleaned them.” “I remember when they put that stove in.” “You must have worked here after I left, but I remember your father.”

On Aug. 4, the building was opened to host a party for the launch of Laurina’s Kitchen, a cookbook put together by the sibling grandchildren of the restaurant’s indelible chef, and as Lora Lee and Tom Ecobelli busily signed copy after copy, they were deluged with fond reminiscences.

“We asked for people to send us stories as we were putting the book together,” says Tom, who is an actor and writer living in Los Angeles, “and discovering what the restaurant meant to people really blew us away.”

Lora Lee lives in Saugerties and also works as an actor and writer. “We’re still getting stories,” she says. “Someone called me just the other night and remembered that back in the ’60s, before the restaurant had anything like take-out containers, people would line up by the pizza ovens carrying their own pots. My grandmother would ask how many were in the family, and top off the pots accordingly.”

What’s the Buzz?

YOU’RE SURROUNDED BY BEES. They move with a purpose, settling on a hive’s landing board abulge with yellow pollen, or clustered on a hive frame to build hexagonal-celled honeycomb, or challenging your wish to be there by dive-bombing your face.

But this is the payoff moment. The time and money—and patience—you’ve invested in your apiary is about to yield honey. Fresh, raw honey that will reveal a familiar flavor on top of the sweetness: the flavor of your yard. Even if you don’t go munching on the wildflowers out there, you’ll recognize it.

Photo by B. A. Nilsson

My bees have been raising brood and storing honey in large Langstroth hiveboxes, on top of the strongest of which I placed a shallower box, or supers. That’s where the excess honey is stored, an amount (it’s hoped) that exceeds what they’ll need for winter.

At this point, my kitchen serves as honey house. The process begins with schlepping the shallow super to the back door. I brush them free of bees, but a few of them hang on and travel with me. I dip a long knife in boiling water to heat it enough to slice through the waxen honeycomb and, as my wife holds a frame over a food-grade bucket, I cut the cappings and let the wax and some of the honey fall within.

Both sides uncapped, the frame goes into the basket of a hand-cranked centrifuge. It has room enough to whirl three frames, and a brief, energetic spin flings most of the golden liquid against the centrifuge’s stainless-steel walls. I flip the frames to empty the other sides, then return them to the super and work on the next three.

Gotta Dance!

Get Your Tickets Now Dept.: Interviewing Patricia Kelly was like talking to an old friend. It didn’t hurt that I discovered the magic of Gene Kelly’s movie while I still was in my teens, leading me to seek out even the more rarely screened ones like “The Pirate” and “Invitation to the Dance.” But I also share her appreciation of the art of the dance on film, as discussed below. We can only hope that it will return to the movies some day.

                                                                                           

GENE KELLY WAS AS INNOVATIVE behind the scenes as he was in front of the camera, as his widow, Patricia, is quick to point out. “The biggest challenge in a musical is moving from a scene to a song,” she explains, “so Gene would work with the arrangers to create a way for the dance to pick up the story. There’s no opening vamp in the original music of ‘Singin’ in the Rain,’ so Roger Edens gave Gene the famous lead-in. It’s what takes him from kissing her to where he can begin to sing. Nobody questions that. If you’re in love and you’re full of joy, you dance and splash in puddles, but he gets into it over those opening bars that Roger gave him.”

Gene Kelly

 Patricia Kelly will share many more insights and tidbits – and film clips – when she presents “Gene Kelly: The Legacy” at 7:30 PM Saturday (Sept. 19) at The Egg in Albany. It’s a program she put together three years ago for an Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences tribute and has since been taking around the country, built from the stories he told her during the last years of his life.

“I just was with several of the dancers from the ABT last night,” she says, speaking from her home in California, “who were performing Jerome Robbins’s ‘Fancy Free’ at the Hollywood Bowl, and I asked them if they’d seen any Gene Kelly movies – and one after another they said yes. One woman said, ‘He’s the reason I’m a dancer,’ and the next man said, ‘He’s everything to us.’ And these are young people, the cream of the crop, and he’s still the go-to guy for them.”

Not Just to Hear

From the Vault Dept.: Jin Kim took the baton of the Empire State Youth Orchestra in 2000, an ensemble I’d been trying to pay attention to for several years, especially as a string of notable music directors passed through. Kim was succeeded in 2002 by Helen Cha-Pyo, who continues to lead the orchestra, while he is now music director of the Atlantic Symphony Orchestra (formerly the Hingham (Mass.) Symphony), with which he’s been associated for many years.

                                                                                                   

IT’S DIFFICULT FOR AN ORCHESTRA to maintain a standard of excellence. It’s more difficult still when a large number of players have to be replaced each year. But that’s standard for the Empire State Youth Orchestra, whose alumni have gone on to some prestigious gigs.

Jin Kim

That includes its conductors. Among recent baton wielders, Eiji Oue and Paavo Jarvi have earned international careers and reputations, so it makes sense to keep an eye on the current maestro.

Jin Kim makes his public debut as the ensemble’s new music director with a concert at 8 PM Saturday (Nov. 4) at the Troy Music Hall. Not one to start off cautiously, he has selected a challenging program that includes Tchaikovsky’s “Little Russian” Symphony and the Valses nobles et sentimentales by Ravel.

He’s obviously pleased to be here, and lavishes praise on the orchestra. “It’s energizing to work with so many talented musicians,” he says. “Multi-talented, in fact, because most of them are also involved in sports and other extra-curricular activities.”

Baïlèro

Shepherd across the river,
You are not afraid;
Sing baïlèro lèrô
I am not afraid, and you, too, can sing Baïlèro lèrô.

Shepherd, the field is in flower,
Graze your flock on this side,
Sing baïlèro lèrô
The grass is finer in the field over here,
Baïlèro lèrô

Shepherd, the stream is between us,
And I can’t cross it,
Sing baïlèro lèrô
Then I’ll come downstream and find you,
Baïlèro lèrô