SPEAKER: DWIGHT GARNER | ENTERTAINERS: MARK WATSON

Forty-five dollar admission includes a three-course lunch payable at the door by cash or check only

FEB 20, 2024

SPEAKER: DWIGHT GARNER | ENTERTAINERS: MARK WATSON

TAG LINE: Dwight Garner, current New York Times book critic and the author of Garner’s Quotations, serves up the intertwined pleasures of books and food.

SPEAKER: DWIGHT GARNER

Dwight Garner, current New York Times book critic and the author of Garner’s Quotations, serves up the intertwined pleasures of books and food. The product of a lifetime of obsessively reading, eating, and every combination therein, The Upstairs Delicatessen: On Eating, Reading, Reading About Eating, and Eating While Reading is a charming, emotional memoir, one that only Garner could write. In it, he records the voices of great writers and the stories from his life that fill his mind as he moves through the sections of the day and of this book: breakfast, lunch, shopping, the occasional nap, drinking, and dinner. Through his lifelong infatuation with these twin joys, we meet the man behind the pages and the plates, and a portrait of Garner, eager and insatiable, emerges.

Garner was previously the senior editor of The New York Times Book Review. His essays and criticism have also appeared in The New Republic, Harper’s Magazine, Slate, and other publications.

ENTERTAINER: MARK WATSON

Trained on full scholarship at the Juilliard School of Music and winner of several International Vocal competitions, Mark Watson has sung concerts, operas and oratorios in Israel, Italy and Belgium and on national television in Japan. In New York City he has appeared in Alice Tully Hall, Avery Fisher Hall and Carnegie Hall. He has performed in the Annenberg Center in Philadelphia, the Fisher Orchestra Hall in Detroit and the Meadow Brook Festival. Mark sang the American premier of Karl Jenkin’s cantata, The Healers in his 4th solo appearance at Carnegie Hall, and was presented as Artist of the Year at the Max Fisher Music Center (Orchestra Hall) where he premiered David DiChiera’s "A Letter to Sarah", a concert aria for voice, trumpet and piano.

He sang the premier of Michael Close’s Songs About Cheese, an Entertainment for voice, piano, violin, cello and bass clarinet with Chamber Music of the Scarab Club. Roquefort, Cheddar, String Cheese, Camembert, Limburger and Swiss were the featured cheeses. 

Other recent performances include Samuel Barber’s Dover Beach, the Mozart Requiem, Cesare Franck Mass, and songs by Kurt Weill arranged for string quartet. Also in New York, in private clubs he has performed at the Knickerbocker Club, the National Arts Club, the Metropolitan Club, the Scarab Club, the Everglades Club in Palm Beach, as well as many exclusive clubs in Connecticut. He has sung in The Bahamas at the Governor’s mansion for the Nassau Music Society, and in Pescara, Italy for the Fondazione Pescara Abruzzo. He has even sung full concerts in prisons (as a guest artist, not an inmate. 😊)

He is a Patsy Rodenburg Associate (PRA) – a certified voice and speech coach for business executives, teachers and professional speakers - and he works as a licensed real estate salesperson for Sotheby’s International Realty.