Tommy Valando

Another opening, another show. That is the way Tommy Valando, the 69-year-old owner of Fly So Free, sees today's Kentucky Derby. Valando comes by the show-biz analogy naturally, because most of his life he has been either on Tin Pan Alley, plugging songs and giving Frank Sinatra and Perry Como momentum in their careers; or on Broadway, where his hits include "A Little Night Music," "Zorba" and "Cabaret."

Another opening, another show. That is the way Tommy Valando, the 69-year-old owner of Fly So Free, sees today's Kentucky Derby. Valando comes by the show-biz analogy naturally, because most of his life he has been either on Tin Pan Alley, plugging songs and giving Frank Sinatra and Perry Como momentum in their careers; or on Broadway, where his hits include "A Little Night Music," "Zorba" and "Cabaret."

The Florida Derby on Saturday should be nothing more than another showcase for the incredible talents of Fly So Free, if you listen to his trainer, Scotty Schulhofer. "He's as good a horse as I've ever trained," Schulhofer said over the phone from Hallandale, Fla. Schulhofer has trained plenty of good horses, champions like Ta Wee, MacDiarmida and Smile as well as a total of 51 stakes winners, so he places Fly So Free in select company.

Fred Ebb, who wrote the lyrics for such hit Broadway musicals as "Chicago" and "Cabaret" as well as the big-city anthem "New York, New York," has died of a heart attack. Ebb died Saturday at his home, said David McKeown, an assistant to composer John Kander, Ebb's longtime collaborator. The lyricist was believed to be 76, although Ebb always was "sweetly vague" about his age, said director Scott Ellis, who worked with him on several shows.

The Wicked North, a $10,000 horse who made the most of his 17 races, earning $1.1 million and winning a divisional title, has been retired. Phil Hersh, who owns The Wicked North with his wife Sophie, said Thursday that the 6-year-old has a slight ligament tear in his lower left foreleg. "We would have had to lay him up for three or four months before we brought him back," Hersh, 76, said.

Composer John Kander and lyricist Fred Ebb still write as if Broadway were Broadway and not Wall Street. Years after their big hit shows ("Cabaret," "Zorba" and "Chicago," among others) they remain partners, recalling the tradition of Rodgers and Hammerstein, Rodgers and Hart, Lerner and Loewe. They keep stretching stage traditions.

Imagine being on the phone for four hours. Nonstop. Imagine Stephen Sondheim being on the other end. Imagine the conversation. "All about commas," confided Craig Zadan, the wizard kid movie producer ("Footloose") who's just published a revised, enlarged, updated version of "Sondheim & Co.," his 1973 volume on the shows and times of the composer-lyricist-legend. The book, with commas approved but otherwise without censorship from Sondheim, isn't merely a labor of love.

Lyricist Fred Ebb and composer John Kander were tossing around ideas for a musical to work on when Ebb suggested "Kiss of the Spider Woman." He'd seen Hector Babenco's 1985 film a few years earlier and thought it might have potential. Kander agreed immediately and so did their frequent collaborator, director Harold Prince. No matter that the film, like Manuel Puig's 1979 novel, was set in a Latin American prison and had some very unusual protagonists.