Sparks from the Fire

Many of my favorite humans have been teachers.  When I look back on my life, pre-Watchfire Music, the people pinnacles were often the teachers, on one level or another, who came through my life and left some precious knowledge or life-lessons behind.

They weren’t always the easiest experiences in life, but were certainly the most rewarding.  Some of these include the obvious and some are a bit surprising now that I think on it.

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In days long before Watchfire Music was ever even a dream, I was a composer for the Broadway Theater.  While in my early 30s I had had some success as the guy people turned to when they wanted to add a score to their play, much like one might for a movie.

I had already been nominated for the Tony Award for my work in Joseph Papp’s production of Much Ado About Nothing and also had done the similar style scoring for productions like Lincoln Center’s Trelawney Of The Wells and James Lipton’s production of The Mighty Gents with Morgan Freeman on Broadway.

American Playwright Neil Simon

I was offered the opportunity to work with the legendary Neil Simon on his play about Anton Chekov called The Good Doctor. As a young man, I was very excited to work on this wonderful show with the cream of the crop on Broadway.

I also had the opportunity to collaborate with Mr. Simon who wrote his first lyrics for 4 or 5 songs that I composed for the show as well as over an hour’s worth of underscoring and a pre-show “band concert”.

The cast was led by five seasoned Broadway stars – René Auberjonois, Barnard Hughes, Marsha Mason, Frances Sternhagen, who won the Tony Award for her work in the play, and Christopher Plummer who played Anton Chekov.

Tony Walton,  set designer, and Tharon Musser, lighting designer, were two of Broadway’s legendary stars of the theater as creative artists.  Both were people who I was simply in awe of, both consummate professionals.  Neil Simon, Broadway’s most successful playwright, would work with the best.

I loved this show and the entire experience, but like any other show, it had its difficult moments.  When I think back on the experience, one night and a great life lesson jumps out at me.

We were out of town in New Haven at the Shubert Theater.  We were in rehearsal, and working on the set in the theater between previews.  We were having trouble with one of the songs that Neil and I had written for Christopher Plummer.

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Yesterday was an amazing day.  The Siyahamba Project that I’ve been working on for the past 4 months and that has recently been performed at the Annual Meeting of the Christian Science Church in Boston was posted on YouTube.  I sat at my computer amazed at the outpouring of gratitude and affection coming from hundreds of people as their letters poured in from across the world for both my wife, Julia Wade, and myself.

Norm

Many people worked together to make this project become the success that it is, but one man was its leader – and very few know about his work because he took no credit.  He is the Producer of the Annual Meeting for the Church and the Executive Producer and visionary of the Siyahamba Project.

I have known Norm Bleichman for over 4 decades now and am blessed to call him my good friend.  We were roommates in college and shared many of the same interests in music, sports and show biz in general.  We also had a popular college campus radio show back then called The Blinkman Show where Norm and I with a cast of total morons would perform send-ups of Superman and Batman comics complete with musical underscoring.

We laughed a lot.  We discovered the Beatles together.  We MC’d many of the campus shows as a stand-up comedy act – he the funny guy, me the straight man.  I say with complete sincerity that Norm Bleichman is the funniest guy I’ve ever known.  He has kept me laughing throughout a lifetime and that’s a lot to say for a friend.

After college he went off to fight for our country in the Viet Nam war while I became a draft dodger.  After the war, he came home to work at his dad’s plastic factory while I came to NYC and started a successful show biz career.  I’ve always said that one of the best things I’ve ever done was to help convince Norm that he could be funny on a national scale and get him to finally quit plastics and go to work as a successful comedy writer in Hollywood.  Doing this, he kept millions of people laughing for many years.

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