All Quiet Except for the Singing
by Nancy Keates (Wall Street Journal)
Jessica Molaskey, a Broadway actress and singer, and her husband, singer and guitarist John Pizzarelli, own a tiny, 1,100-square-foot cabin perched at the top of two grassy acres that slope down to a beach and a wood dock.
It's the kind of place where neighbors sing and play guitar together. Parties start at one house, migrate to the next and the whole group ends up in the lake swimming together late at night. "It still has a certain innocence to it," said Mr. Pizzarelli, 52-year-old son of well-known jazz guitarist Bucky Pizzarelli.
Getting to the front door of the couple's house, which was originally built as a fishing cabin, means climbing a steep flight of wood steps. That opens into a narrow screened-in porch with pine floors, antique wicker sofas and chairs and an 8-foot-long handmade wood table. Windows along one side overlook Barrett Pond. The ambience is rustic and homespun, with colorful quilts, braided rugs and pillows. In the living room is a stone fireplace with antique hand-painted photos, bark cloth curtains from the 1930s and a collection of green and white bowls and plates.
The narrow galley kitchen, with an old electric stove and red-painted cabinets, is squeezed between the master bedroom—wood walls, low ceilings, barely enough space to walk around the bed—and a small dining area. Upstairs is a loft where their 14-year-old daughter, Maddie, plays board games. Acoustic guitars and banjos lean against walls.
The dock is where Mr. Pizzarelli likes to practice his songs. The lake is vacuumed annually, and boats from other lakes are not allowed, to prevent the introduction of foreign materials. No motor boats are allowed, either. Because of community rules, few homes are visible to each other.
Mr. Pizzarelli and Ms. Molaskey, also 52, first met on Broadway, working on an ill-fated show called "Dream." Now they perform together in an annual show at Café Carlyle, singing hybrids of songs by artists as diverse as Neil Young, Billy Joel, the Beatles and Wes Montgomery. Mr. Pizzarelli, whose latest album, "Double Exposure," was released earlier this year, also plays with his brother, Martin, on bass, and with his father. In 2008 his "With a Song in My Heart" was nominated for a Grammy Award, and he performed with Paul McCartney at this year's Grammys.
The couple bought the cabin in 2004 for $400,000 as a place that felt safe after the events of Sept. 11, 2001. They wanted to find a place where they knew they could be back in the city in an hour—and that they could get to by bicycle in case of an extreme emergency. "When you're in theater, when you have to be on Broadway for a performance, you can't be stuck in traffic," said Ms. Molaskey. They put in new windows, redid the electrical systems and replaced the wood chips in front of the house with grass.
Their cabin is part of a community that dates to 1927 called the Sedgewood Club, a private club with 80 homes, a nine-hole golf course, a practice green, two tennis courts, a pro shop, and a lake club set on 250 acres with two private lakes. A four-bedroom, two-bathroom, 2,048-square-foot home on 3 acres is for sale for $829,000.
Their time at the cabin contrasts dramatically with their life in Manhattan, where they rent two floors of a brownstone on the Upper West Side. "In the city I am forced to go outside and deal with the world. This is nothing like what I am used to," said their daughter, Maddie; she likes to sit in her tiny room and hear her dad playing the guitar on the dock and her mother singing in the yard outside. "Nothing happens up here. There's nowhere to go and nothing to do," said Mr. Pizzarelli. The phone never rings: If their neighbors want to talk, they come over.
The quiet allows them to do much of their musical work from the cabin. The process starts on the drive up, when they have "musical conversations. She'll sing one thing and I'll sing another," said Mr. Pizzarelli. Once there, they might procrastinate for a few days. But soon he is sitting at the long wood table, staring at the lake and creating the music for his records. "I come up with great ideas here. There's so little noise you can hear the wind," he said. They often co-host the syndicated radio show "Radio Deluxe With John Pizzarelli," from the cabin.
Even when they are working, they wear bathing suits all day in the summer. They make a daily trip to the store for dinner ingredients. Mr. Pizzarelli cooks almost every night and invites the neighbors over for tastings. Sometimes Mr. Pizzarelli's parents and brother come out for osso buco and a night on the back patio of loud music and gin, leading Ms. Molaskey to dub them the "Von Trapps on martinis."
This past Fourth of July involved a neighborhood party that moved from house to house, ending with everyone watching the town's fireworks while swimming in the lake. "It isn't structured. We don't plan until the last minute. Then we just put it together and have a great time," says Kevin Ryan, who runs a landscape-design company and owns a vacation house next door to Mr. Pizzarelli and Ms. Molaskey. "You can't be spontaneous like that in New York."
Mr. Ryan and his partner, Rob Ashford, the Tony Award-winning director and choreographer of productions like "Thoroughly Modern Millie" and "How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying," are part of the crowd. Others include Kevin McCollum (a producer of "Rent") and Devin Keudell (a Broadway general manager).
In the winter, a former Olympic skater with a house in the neighborhood clears the lake for skating. When it snows, they all sled with their children. Last weekend was a swim party they called a "sacrificial baptism": the last swim of the summer.
