Patti LuPone resigned from union, says ‘she won’t be on stage for a very long time’
On her first day on stage since being diagnosed with throat cancer on Thursday, Patti LuPone told a news conference it was her last day on the job because she had to stop playing music.
She said if she played at the New York Pops concert this weekend, it would be her final performance in that capacity.
“I will go out on my terms — but not the way I would go out any other time,” she said.
“Now, I’ve got cancer, which is hard for me, but I’m going to keep performing as best I can. And if I do have to go to New York and do shows, all I can promise you is, I’ll be as good as I can be. And I’ve got a lot of friends, and we’ll have a good time. And I’m going to do everything I can to be with my family.
“But this is my last time, and this is a new phase of my illness.”
She has just one more treatment on Friday, after which she will be released from the hospital to resume her regular schedule.
LuPone won the Grammy Award in 2010 for her original song “If We Were Vampires” from Blood, the new film about a group of women who work as blood-sucking vampires.
She was born in Brooklyn in 1957 and began playing the piano at age six. Her musical education began at the New School for Social Research in Harlem.
She left school at 17 and was the first woman to win the prestigious Grammy for best song writing or arranging for the original song “I’d Rather Be High” from the film Blood.
She also won the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences award for best song, as well as winning a Grammy for the “I’d Rather Be High” song.
She also made a name for herself in the 1980s. In an interview with The New York Times in 1983, she recalled being rejected from a try-out of the Broadway musical A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum because she didn’t possess an “unblemished” life.
LuPone also starred in the hit television series ‘The Sopranos,’ as well as the HBO series Sex & the