Sparks from the Fire

This is Part 3.  If you haven’t yet read Part 1 & 2, I highly suggest you do so first.

For a little more than five years when I was in my late 20s and early 30s I was composer-in-residence at the NY Shakespeare Festival (The Public Theater) working with producer Joseph Papp in what was, at the time, the most creative theatrical hot spot in the country.  Joe Papp and his plays and musicals had an amazing run of success during the 70s that we haven’t seen the likes of from a theatrical producer since.

It was at The Public where I learned my craft having the opportunity to work on some 40 shows in those 5+ years working as composer for Joe.  Besides many other theaters in The Public complex, the NYSF also produced two Shakespeare plays per summer at the outdoor Delacorte Theater in Central Park.  I created incidental music for a number of these productions and I remember one particular production of Shakespeare’s Comedy Of Errors where I was backstage standing in the wings one night.

An older actor was on stage in a scene with one other actor one night when the older actor simply stopped in the middle of one line and kind of slumped over, still standing, into a frozen position.  The long pause brought us all to quick alert.  His fellow actor fed him his cue again to no response.  The stage manager in the wings downstage of me also fed him his lines in a stage whisper several times to no avail.  The audience began to buzz and we all quickly realized that there was something very wrong with the older actor.

Truth is, he had had a small stroke.

The stage manager, taking charge, simply walked out on stage calmly, and taking the arm of the older actor, led him slowly off stage.  Then the stage manager went back on stage and announced to the audience that we would take a short intermission and resume the play after 15 minutes.  The audience, still abuzz, did as they were told to do peacefully.

Backstage it was anything but peaceful.  Rather, it was a pretty wild scene as the older actor was addressed and cared for, an ambulance was called and his understudy was frantically preparing to go on in the older actor’s place.

The costume mistresses scurried about preparing the understudy’s costume changes, I got in his face discussing his musical cues and the stage manager ran through a litany of reminders for the young, inexperienced understudy. (more…)

This is Part 2.  If you haven’t yet read Part 1, I highly suggest you do so first.

Zero Mostel was a large man – not particularly tall, but large.  He had a voluptuous appetite for both food and all the rest of life as well.  Many people don’t know this, but besides being a huge Broadway star culminating in his unforgettable performance originating the role of Tevye in Fiddler On The Roof, he was also a wondrous painter.  He once invited me over to his studio which covered an entire floor of a rebuilt factory and was filled with the paintings of a lifetime.

Zero -- Self Portrait

I had the chance to get to know him and work with him in the Broadway production of James Joyce’s Ulysses In Nighttown directed by Burgess Meredith for which I wrote songs and underscore.  Zero was probably well into his 70s by then and at about 5’ 10” and 280 lbs, carried a lot of girth.  Because of this largess, he sometimes had trouble walking and even standing for long periods of time.  When he would go to get up out of a chair everyone would want to rush over and help him up and, of course, he would have none of it. (more…)

I’ve had the great pleasure of working with some pretty amazing performers in my life – both stage and concert hall.  My chosen spot has always been to watch (or work) from the back of the house – usually just about as far from the stage as one can get.  After a short, but most successful career as an actor, the lead in Hair on Broadway, the lead in my own Salvation Off-Broadway and a leading role in TV’s soap, As The World Turns, I decided that acting was not my thing and retired to the more comfortable confines of director/composer.

There, I had the opportunity to watch both my own work and the work of some pretty fabulous performers over the years.  There, from the back of the house.  The greatest of stars figuratively pull those in the back of the house on to the stage – their magnetism or charisma is so great that you feel that you’ve got the best seat in the house no matter where you stand.

But occasionally, when someone gave a performance that was so electrifying as to just bowl me over, I have snuck around backstage, where as a composer or director I was always permitted, and watched, up close and personal, from the wings.

Very early in my career, just out of college, I spent two summers working as a chorus boy of the St. Louis Municipal Opera, probably the largest summer stock theater in the country.  For one one-week run they brought in Nureyev and Fontaine, at the time, the two most popular ballet dancers in the world.  I, with two years of ballet under my belt and at least knowing first position from second position, was asked to be an extra in their famous productions of Swan Lake and Romeo and Juliet.

One of my claims to fame was that I was actually pinched on the butt by none other than Rudolph Nureyev on stage.  Seems I got too wrapped up in my role as dice player far up-stage and did not see Mr. Nureyev behind me trying to make an entrance.  Rather than push me out of the way, he simply reached down and gave the surprised young extra a sweet pinch.

But already I stray from my point…

At the end of each performance I would rush around after the company bows and stand enchanted in an isolated spot in the wings and watch Nureyev and Fontaine take their bows.  It was there that I learned the purpose of bows and got a terrific lesson from the masters on just how to perform ‘the bow’. (more…)

Dmitri Shostakovich

I spent last evening with the Missus in what has now become my favorite place to be on the planet – Carnegie Hall.  Inspirational music rose to another high point with a visit from the Philadelphia Orchestra to our fair city.  The Missus and I were given gift tickets (better n’ Christmas) and though we sat up in the nose-bleed section, 4^th Tier and no place for vertigo sufferers, I was amazed once again by the acoustics of this wondrous concert hall.

When I first came to NYC back in my early twenties to study acting at the Neighborhood Playhouse School of the Theater, I got a job at night selling orange drink in the tiers of Carnegie Hall and then eventually bar tending in its intermission café.  Though I made decent money in pay and tips, the real payment for me was the fact that for two years I got to see every concert presented in the main hall during that time.

I could fill a book with the stories and memories of those evenings and matinees.  It was certainly a huge and unexpected part of my education as an artist.  I had a place where I would stand in the back of the main floor and knew all the ushers who dubbed that spot, “Pete’s Place”.  In those two years I saw and heard a lifetime of great performances.

Since then I have had the great fortune to visit this hallowed hall many times and often had great seats.  Last night was, in fact, the first time I’ve ever watched a performance from the 4^th Tier.  But I must say I loved it.  There you sit above the orchestra looking down on the body of players and instruments and can watch the bowings of the strings and the bassoonists prepping their reeds and the timpanist tuning his kettle drums and the bass bassoonist endlessly counting bars of rests waiting for her big moment. (more…)

This morning as I sit and drink my hot chocolate, I watch the sun come up pink on the buildings of a new day – and a city that never sleeps.  What a time for Inspirational music!  If the Missus weren’t still sleeping, I’d go into my studio, throw open the windows and crank up the volume.

Perhaps a song called Faith, perhaps Who Will Heal The World, perhaps Julia’s Upon The Mountain.  I’d play my ‘hood, Hell’s Kitchen, awake and stand on my terrace overlooking Lower Manhattan, the Village, Wall Street and the Statue Of Liberty and holler, “Wake up, New York!  We’re alive!

Last night I looked out on a new building springing up down where the Twin Towers once stood.  It was lit majestically in red, white and blue.  It stands where once, not so long ago, there was nothing but a hole in the ground.  Hope re-kindled.

This morning the sun rises on the tenth anniversary of 9/11.

I wasn’t in NYC ten years ago this morning.  At first I counted it a blessing.  I was in my other home in Colorado sleeping with the Missus when the telephone rang to tell us of the unbelievable news.  We spent the rest of the day, just like the rest of you, glued to our TV and watching the images over and over in disbelief as they burned into our brains for all time. (more…)

Hurricane Irene has come and gone.  Gratefully, she didn’t turn out to be the lady from hell as reported.  In no way am I trying to minimize the damage and trouble that she did cause some people.  I mourn for the people that died, the homes that were ruined, the floods that probably cost us millions as a nation.

I’m only going to address one distressing aspect of it all in this post.  That is the most disappointing trend in of dishonesty in the reporting of the news.

Saturday night, the evening before Irene was to arrive here in NYC, I battened down the hatches of my apartment, protected the windows, filled the bathtubs, stocked in the correct food and water for the long haul and plastic-wrapped much of my equipment in my studio just in case.  The Missus was away in Boston.

I went to bed feeling prayerful and secure about 2:00 in the morning and went immediately asleep in what was now a strong rainstorm.  I awoke about 5:00 AM, the time we were told that Irene was to begin arriving and curiosity got the better of me.  Hearing no gale force winds, in fact hearing no winds at all, I got up and pealed back one of my windows and looked out into the dawning day.

It was raining.  That was about it.  I immediately figured that Irene got hung up in Philadelphia and was not as prompt as was foretold.  I started to go back to bed.  Then I decided to double-check the news on the tube. (more…)

Barry Danielian - Trumpeter

Yesterday I had a blast.  Inspirational music took on new meaning as I recorded virtuoso trumpeter, Barry Danielian, here in NYC at Link Recording Studios.  I needed a 16 bar trumpet solo for the song, In That Great Gittin’ Up Mornin’ which is the climax song on my forthcoming CD, Goin’ Home – A Gospel Cantata – On Heaven and Beyond.

I had lost my precious musician phone book last year with all its numbers and so I called my friend, guitarist, Chieli Minucci and asked him for a recommendation of a great trumpet player who could play like the angel, Gabriel.  Chieli recommended Barry Danielian.  When Chieli speaks; I listen.  I hired Barry for the gig.

I wrote the first 4 bars of the trumpet solo for Barry to get him started and then gave him the direction to improvise the rest, to keep it Gospel, make it hot, iconic, hotter, joyful, timeless and apocalyptic.  Think, in the climax of the solo, Gabriel on acid trying to blow the roof off the moon.  I sent him home to listen to the track for a couple of days and he showed up yesterday afternoon ready to go at it, trumpet in hand.

We did 6 takes – each one discussed relating to shape, development and mood.  Barry was the perfect partner in crime.  He listened, but also brought his great ideas and mastery of his horn to the moment. (more…)

Every once in a while I just have to stop and be grateful for and appreciate the incredible tools I get to work with creating Inspirational music here in the 21^st century.  I’ve been working with a software system for about 15 years now that was first developed by a German company named Emagic in the early 1990s called Logic.  In 2002, Apple, seeing that Emagic’s Logic had probably the most powerful engine of the various DAW (Digital Audio Workstation) systems, bought Logic from Emagic and has produced this industry leading tool ever since.

Coupled with a hot Mac computer and a few other relatively inexpensive pieces of hardware, this software system has taken the place of the entire recording studio of yore amazingly for the price of $499.

For 25 years I owned a major recording studio here in NYC and operated 3 rooms for various recording spending, over time, a couple of million dollars on equipment to keep up with the times and keep the shop running.

Today all that has changed dramatically.  Today I record symphony orchestras in my son’s converted bedroom in my apartment.  Of course I’ve put some serious money into the acoustics of the room including an isolation booth that fits five, but essentially, I’ve got everything I ever had before and more, for infinitely less. (more…)