Former Yonkers Public Schools teacher Marc Pekowsky and singer Nicole Pasternak have teamed up for a Valentine’s musical treat.
Pasternak, who lives in Colonial Heights, will be the featured singer with Pekowsky’s Private Stock Jazz Orchestra on Wednesday, Feb. 11 at St. Mark’s Episcopal Church in Mount Kisco where they’ll be playing a compendium of love songs to celebrate Valentine’s Day.
The historic parish hall at St. Mark’s has an expansive wooden dance floor as well as tables for those who just want to listen.
Pekowsky launched his 20-piece orchestra in October, fulfilling a lifelong dream to lead his own ensemble. Pasternak, who sang for many years with Pekowsky in the Sonny Carroll Orchestra, will make her debut with the band in February.
Pekowksy said he launched the band to provide performance opportunities for the plethora of talented musicians he has come to know and play with over his decades in the Hudson Valley music scene.
“There are so many great talented musicians in our area, and a dearth of opportunities with venues where we can stretch out and exercise our musical chops,” said Pekowsky, who retired from the Yonkers schools in 2023 after 27 years. “We’re hoping to create something for our audience’s listening and dancing pleasure.”
When Pasternak and Pekowsky performed with Sonny Carroll, Pekowsky played baritone saxophone while she crooned for rooms full of swing dancers. Pasternak has performed with the Virgil Scott Swing Band at the Grinton I. Will Library and at gigs with bands by the Yonkers Waterfront.
Pasternak said she enjoys singing for dancers, as they work together as couples to interpret the music while the band collaborates to set the mood and tempo.
“They are equal partners with the musicians,” she said. “The dancers are interpreting the music in their own way while we are interpreting the songs musically,” she said. “There’s a symbiosis going on there, a special kind of chemistry. The dancers are responding with their whole body instead of just using their ears.”
Pasternak’s Musical Journey
Pasternak started singing as a child, inspired by recordings of a young Shirley Temple singing jazz standards.
“That’s where I found my first love of singing,” she said. “It became all about pleasing people, touching their hearts and reaching out through lyrics and sound. My husband calls me the Shirley Temple of jazz.”
She studied classical violin in third grade, and played in school bands and garage bands in Ridgefield, Connecticut during her teens. In her early 20s, she took singing lessons with Charlotte Anthony, the grand-niece of suffragist Susan B. Anthony.
“She helped me find my voice,” said Pasternak. “I was good at emulating other singers on the radio – Judy Collins, Janis Joplin or Carole King, Sharon helped me tap into my inner voice, which made all the difference. I was no longer imitating others I found a way to create my own sound.”
Over her singing career, Pasternak sang in duos with a pianist or guitarist, as well as with jazz quartets, quintets, and big bands. She also performed with her husband, Ralph Lalama, a veteran jazz saxophonist, and mainstay at the Village Vanguard Jazz Orchestra for decades.
In 1986, she kicked off what would be a 6-year residency at Winslow’s, a Westport restaurant when Nicole & Friends would play every Friday night. The lyrics remain embedded deep within her.
“Those lyrics are so memorable,” she said. “They make so much sense – the words to ‘It Could Happen to You’ or ‘This Time’s the Dream’s on Me.’ How could you forget them? “
Pekowsky’s musical journey
Pekowsky began his musical journey studying classical piano at age 6. By the time he entered Woodlands Junior High in Greenburgh, he was fluent in the language of music. There, he ventured into the music room one day to meet the man who would become his musical mentor, Bill Ellington, a cousin of jazz legend Duke Ellington, and a recording artist in his own right with such greats as Eric Dolphy and Pharoah Sanders.
Bill Ellington introduced Pekowsky to the alto clarinet, which led to Pekowsky’s love of numerous woodwinds — the baritone and tenor saxophones and bass clarinet. The name of Pekowsky’s band, Private Stock, is an homage to Ellington, who called his young jazz students his “private stock.”
Pekowsky remained close to Bill Ellington until his death in 2000. He inherited a box full of his musical charts, which lay scattered on the floor of Pekowsky’s studio in the basement of his Mahopac home. The charts are piled near a photo of Pekowsky hosting trumpeter Wynton Marsalis at Woodlands High when he taught there.
Pekowsky took classes at the Eastman School of Music at the University of Rochester while pursuing a degree in English literature. He later performed in a 40-city national tour for the musical “Cabaret” in the late 1980s and played in the backup band for Pete Seeger’s group in the mid-1990s and early 2000s. In recent years, he has played with Westchester Symphonic Winds, Bob January Orchestra, and Bensen-Scott Big Band. He sat in the baritone sax chair in Angelo Testanero’s Sonny Carroll Orchestra, which had a decade-long gig for a swing dance at Sciortino’s Restaurant in Brewster in the early 2000s.
“Sonny was composing, arranging charts and leading a band until the day of his death at age 100,” said Pekowsky. “He’s such an inspiration.”
He was a stalwart in the Yonkers Public schools, teaching at Emerson, Yonkers and Martin Luther King middle schools, PEARLS Hawthorne, and Yonkers High. He conducted a range of performance groups – concert band, pep band, marching band, jazz ensemble, and a variety of chamber music groups.
He brought performing groups to City Hall to play for visiting dignitaries and once took a group to Albany to perform. In his last year at Yonkers High in 2023, brought a group north to Bard College in Dutchess County to record an album at the school’s high-tech studio.
Pekowsky recalls teaching Yonkers students that music was a team effort, not a competition, and that it was through collaboration that the notes come to life in a pleasing synchronicity. It’s the same attitude he’s bringing to Private Stock on Feb. 11.
“In music, is more about working together for a unified outcome,” said Pekowsky. “It’s one of the things I love most about being a musician. Performing with great players inspire me to be a better musician myself.”
The event on Feb. 11 begins with an introductory swing dance lesson at 7 p.m. The band starts at 7:30 p.m. Tickets at $30, with coffee and desserts. Make table reservations at 914-602-6194. The event is a collaboration with St. Mark’s and Westchester Ballroom.
David McKay Wilson, a veteran Westchester journalist, has danced swing from Manhattan to Poughkeepsie for 40 years. He heads up the St. Mark’s social dance program.
