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.

As it was very early in the run, the understudies for each role had only had up to that point one two-hour rehearsal — far too little for a three and a half hour Shakespeare production, and we soon discovered that the understudy had not totally committed his lines to memory.

On top of that, the understudy was also one of the townspeople in the play so his role had to be covered by the swingman and that had to be organized as well – all in the announced 15 minutes.

It was quickly decided that the understudy should carry the book – that is, hold the script from the play while acting his part on stage.  This, of course, would kill the reality of the play, but there seemed no other choice and we hoped that the audience would simply understand the predicament and put up with the solution.

The understudy was a cute, funny little unknown fellow with the unlikely name of Danny Devito.  Yes, that Danny Devito – pre-stardom and yet undiscovered.

No one knew that frantic night backstage that a star was about to be born.

The announcement that we were about to resume brought the audience back to their seats and the announcement that the role once performed by the older gentleman would now be played by Danny Devito brought the dreaded groan of disappointment from the audience.

And then this tiny little man, script in hand, nervously walked out on stage and resumed the scene where we had left off.  I watched nervously from the wings.

The role was never a particularly funny one as played by the older actor.  Danny read his first line nervously and somehow caught the humor of it and the audience tittered at this little fellow.  That titter seemed to give Danny courage to go on and by the end of the scene he magically held the audience in the palm of his hand and had them roaring in the aisles.

It was an amazing transformation and afterwards, talking to several people who were in the audience that night, I discovered that they did not even remember that he held the book throughout.  They just remembered Danny and how funny and charming and adorable he was.

In the bows afterwards, Danny got the grandest of standing ovations from the audience and also the entire cast.  It was as sweet a memory as I have in life to see this little guy triumph over such adversity the way he had.

The next day the NY papers were full of the incident and Danny finished the production that summer doing the role.

The actor’s nightmare puts the actor on-stage in a role where he does not know his lines and often does not even know the name of the play he or she is in.  All actors have this nightmare from time to time.  One always wakes gratefully from it in a sweat.

The composer’s nightmare is similar.  For me, I stand in the wings watching my own musical, but the songs are not mine, don’t really fit the play and are not performed well.  I can’t figure out what has gone wrong and finally I too wake gratefully in a sweat.

The opposite experiences are the joys of my life.  To stand in the wings and watch the magic of my own hit show night after night, to hear the laughter, to feel the confident throb of the music and hear the audience cheer in response, to feel my songs touch the hearts of hundreds or even thousands is, of course, pure pleasure.  It is a gratification that runs deep and that I’ll probably never get enough of.

Two particular shows provided that gratification night after night for literally hundreds and hundreds of performances.  The first was another NY Shakespeare Festival production done at The Public Theater of a rock opera that I wrote back in the 70s.  The Wedding Of Iphigenia was an assignment given to me by Joe Papp to help me learn my theater craft and work with a master.  The master was Euripedes, one of the greatest of the Greek playwrights, and the two classic works of his that I drew my opera from were Iphigenia in Aulis and Iphigenia in Taurus.

We performed the show both at The Public Theater in NYC and The Old Vic (their experimental theater, The Young Vic) in London under the leadership of Sir Lawrence Olivier.  The opera simply worked form the beginning and melted the paint from the walls every time it was performed over the course of a couple of years.

When we first cast the show, I knew the show would have a Greek chorus of women to support the young maiden lead, Iphigenia.  In casting we had so many wondrous young women try out that we could not decide who should play Iphigenia so we hired them all with the stipulation that we would decide in the course of rehearsals and the others would be in the chorus.

At the end of each day, the director, producer Joe Papp, and I would discuss the choices.  Every day we changed our mind to a different girl.  Two weeks went by and they were all so good and so original that we were dumbfounded at our own inability to decide.  The girls were, of course, getting restless and impatient to have a decision and our inability to decide was beginning to create negative vibes in the company.

Finally Joe Papp had a most original and courageous idea.  They should all play Iphigenia.  At first we laughed at the idea, but then, as we discussed it thoroughly, we got first intrigued and then excited about the possibilities.

The idea worked like gangbusters.  It unified the women and brought an amazing style and power to the play and to the music.  It was so different from anything audiences had ever seen – the leading role of a Greek tragedy being played by 12 women at the same time — but we laid it out well and the music took you to powerful places of drama and passion.  It also helped that the music, rock music, was very new to the theater and so created an ambiance of “anything goes” in the theater.

I watched these ten women tear this opera up night after night as they ripped through every conceivable passion provided by Euripedes’ masterwork.  Trish Hawkins, Nell Carter, Margaret Dorn, Marta Heflin, Linda Lawley, Leata Galloway, Pamela Pentony, Marion Ramsey, Julianne Marshall, Andrea Marcovicci, Bonnie Guidry, Sharon Redd and even Patti LuPone all played this one little girl together and sang their way to standing ovations night after night.

I got to watch it from the wings.  It was a time I shall never forget.  A number would start and I knew each night that it would scrape the moon and each night it did.  It was a great feeling.

Years later I had a very similar experience with The Jenny Burton Experience.  Jenny, and a choir of nine of the top studio singers in NYC, played to sold-out audiences every Thursday night at a NY club called “Don’t Tell Mama”.  The act won, in that time, every conceivable music award given and drew thousands of people – many of which came back time after time.

Here again I got to watch from the wings great performers sing my music in magical ways.  The choir, led by vocal arranger, Margaret Dorn, was a superb blend of R&B and Gospel voices and could raise the roof at the drop of a hat, but it was Jenny herself who grabbed us all by the socks each night and carried us.  She was a radiant performer at the height of her art, able to both touch the center of your heart with a ballad and dazzle your mind with an up song and set your feet a’dancin’.

And she was, on top of it all, funny.  She developed into a tremendous ad libber and could run with an improvised moment away from the written show and then get back and keep the audience in stitches.  She was the consummate performer and the group backed her up beautifully.

She also had the so important ability to recreate the performance every night.  One night during a terrible snowstorm they performed the show for the 6 people who trudged through the blizzard and showed up and the show was as good as it had ever been.  I was one of those six.  I sat that night in the audience at a table just to make the room look fuller.  At the end of the show I was also one of the six who stood up and cheered.  There were more people on stage that night than in the audience.

Standing in the wings for the hundreds of performances throughout those seven years is also one of the most cherished times of my life.  The opportunity to be so close to such talent and to actually be a part of it, even though I hid behind the curtain, brought me the joyous satisfactions of a lifetime.

Stay tuned for Part 4 – the last if this series – yet to come.

Even More Inspiration

• Gabriel, Come Blow Your Horn
• WFM Listening Room — Series II Opener
• By The Numbers?
• Kickstarter.com Campaign – I
• My Body
• Light At The End Of The Tunnel

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.

Any yet he was one of those – one of those stories we so often hear about actors who have some infliction off-stage, yet seem to lose it on-stage when they become someone else.

From the first day of rehearsal, everyone in the company absolutely loved Zero.  You couldn’t help it.  Oh, he was loud and large in every way and full of himself, but he was an absolute star – totally magnetic, hilariously funny, lightening fast with a quip and probably the most loveable large teddy bear I’ve ever known.  By lunch after the first morning of the rehearsal, he knew everyone’s name by heart in a company of 45 actors.

That tells you a lot about how much he cared for his fellow actor.

Here was a man who drew me to my quiet spot in the wings night after night as I studied and marveled at just how the man did it – how he radiated life, how he found the energy for this huge, complex role of magnificent words and images and how he sustained this for eight grueling shows a week.  If there was ever a man who carried us all on his back, Zero was the man.

In one particularly memorable scene he had a dance.  I had scored the dance with an original Irish jig that I had written especially for Zero that he loved, complete with a hilarious elephant walk section which actually satirizes Zero himself.  I had even snuck in a short musical quote from Fiddler On The Roof referencing his iconic performance of If I Were A Rich Man, that nobody really recognized but Zero.  It was our secret and at the first musical rehearsal with the orchestra when he first heard it, he screamed “HAH” and wheeled on his heel and winked at me as he danced along.

He was, in this dance, unbelievably light on his feet and danced on his toes parodying the ballerina elephants in Disney’s Fantasia.  Oh how he loved to do this number!

One second show on a Saturday night well into the run you could see from the sweat flying off his body and his drenched costume that he was especially tired.  I had long ago placed a chair in an unused wing far downstage where I would often sit and watch him work.  On this particular night, and even some performances afterwards, he was just about a quarter of the way into this long celebrative dance which was, by now, on of our real showstoppers.

I could see that he was in some trouble out there.  He looked into the wing where I sat and in the middle of the dance mouthed the word, “Chair” to me.  I knew instantly exactly what he wanted and stood up and lifted the chair to my chest with the back away from me.  Zero did a quick re-choreographing of his steps which brought him over to me standing off-stage with the chair.  There, he grabbed the chair with a wink and, not missing a beat or a step, danced the chair to center stage, sat down and finished the entire number sitting.

The audience loved it.  It got the biggest applause yet and I swear that he did all of the choreography of the dance sitting, sweating, acting, panting, elephanting, and wowing his audience.

He was a star.  He let nothing get in the way of entertaining his audience.  If he couldn’t dance standing up, well then, he’d just do it sitting down.  And, by golly, he did.

Years later when I heard that Zero had passed on, I cried like a baby.  The world lost, not a man, but a huge force of nature that day and I got to watch him up close and personal.

Again, many years ago, I got a call one Saturday afternoon from a friend who said, “Hey Pete, I got two free tickets to see Elton John tonight at the Garden.  Wanna go?”

Does the sun shine?

I soon learned why the tickets were free.  They were the worst seats in the house.  The present Madison Square Garden is not square.  Rather it is round and actually rather oblong within.  The stage was placed at one end of the arena and the basketball court/hockey ring was filled with seats as well as 7/8ths of the rest of the house to fit the audience of 25,000 screamin’ rockin’ fans.

The only seats they didn’t sell was the section directly behind the stage at one end of the oblong.  Our seats were the last two seats before the roped off section, so we were effectually behind the stage and behind the band.  Had I bought the tickets, I would have been furious.  Before the concert, as we were ushered to our seats, my friend wanted to leave, but I somehow felt right at home once again having the opportunity to watch a star do his thing from the wings.

We faced the back of all the band members and if you’ve ever seen Elton, you know that he plays sitting, standing, jumping and dancing – and sings looking over his right shoulder into the mic so that he can turn his face to the audience.  We only occasionally saw his face in profile that night.  We were totally out of it.  We never saw the faces of the band our seats were so bad.  It was actually worse than standing in the wings.

So Elton put us on the piano.  Actually, Elton put everyone in the audience on the piano – all 25,000 people.  As a performer, he didn’t go out to us, he brought us to him.  That was his charisma.  We were all equal, no matter where our seats, we all had great seats – there on the piano.

I, of course, never moved from my chair, and yet I felt like he was singing and playing especially for me all night.  That’s what it means to be a star.  To me, that’s star quality.  I’ve had the occasion to witness it – we all have – and I really can’t tell you how he did it, but I know he did it.  I was there.

I think it is just one of those God-given gifts that some of the lucky ones get — a largess, or humanity, so powerful as to take over an arena of people and hold them transfixed for hours.  Call it talent; call it magnanimity, but I don’t think charisma like that can be taught.  It can be released by a great teacher if you have it to begin with, but, as a teacher, I’ve never really figured out how to teach it if ya’ don’t got it to begin with.

That’s really why I’ve been drawn to the wings all these years to study it and try to get an insight into where it comes from, how it’s done.

Stay tuned for more such explorations and sightings in my next couple of posts.

Even More Inspiration

• By The Numbers?
• Gabriel, Come Blow Your Horn
• Spiritual Scientist
• I Stood In The Wings… Part 3
• The Changing Scene
• The Logic of Logic II

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’.

First of all their grace was magnificent.  On top of that, their bows were choreographed – two great ballet dancers still dancing long after the performance was over.  But what I most remember was their love for the audience.  Not only did they absolutely adore the applause, but they let it lift them to new character.  They simply knew how to take the applause with humility and great appreciation and love.  And the more they loved the applause, the more the audience applauded.  And the more the audience applauded, the more Nureyev and Fontaine loved it and loved back.

They created a circle of love with the audience and nurtured it and let it grow and grow until all were exhausted and completely fulfilled.

They were the masters of the bows and I got to watch them sweat and preen and joy and love from about 10 feet away.  It was better than Swan Lake.

Early in my career as a composer on Broadway I scored and wrote songs for Richard Wesley’s play with music, The Mighty Gents.  In this production there was a young, unheard of actor playing the role of a totally down-and-out street junkie.  His name was Morgan Freeman and he was so riveting in this role, that in his big scene each night, I would rush from my place at the sound booth in the back of the house to another isolated wing off-stage and watch him do his ten-minute monologue.  I completely fell in love with this young actor then and have loved his work ever since.

In the performance he so climbed inside the character of this wasted man that each night I relived the power of his performance over and over.  I laughed, I cried, I stared in amazement as he went through just about every human emotion possible.  It was my first up-close experience with a great actor and I couldn’t get enough of it.

For this role, this young previously unheard of actor got his first national recognition as he was nominated for the Tony Award as Best Supporting Actor that year.

I also had the same type of experience this time with a whole company of actors who worked together as a great ensemble in Joseph Papp’s Trelawny of the ‘Wells’ at Lincoln Center with Meryl Streep, John Lithgow, Mandy Patinkin, Michael Tucker and Mary Beth Hurt and directed by A.J. Antoon.   I had the privilege of writing the music for this production and, once again, found myself, in certain scenes, standing in the wings, spellbound, as these young actors tore up the stage with their natural sense of comic timing and stage know-how.

I wrote a song for the production called Ever Of Thee I’m Fondly Dreaming which would be sung each night by all the above mentioned people (all extremely musical actors) as Meryl both sang and played the piano on stage.  I would stand in the wings and sing along adding my voice to the moment though not my stage presence.  It was always a sweet moment and often John Lithgow would give me a wink from the stage to the wings as the audience burst into applause at the end of the number.

These moments of learning the artistry of performance up close and personal shall always be indelibly printed in my memory.  They are the perks of my experience far beyond the money made or the awards given.  They are the reminders of why I keep trying – trying to get a grasp on greatness – trying to see deeply into the moments of perfection and understand better how they came to be.

If you’re enjoying these memories as much as I am, stick around for Part 2…  coming in my next post.

Even More Inspiration

• Gabriel, Come Blow Your Horn
• Chanting/Enchanting
• The Decline of Lyrical Craftsmanship – Part 1
• I Stood In The Wings… Part 3
• My Body
• Light At The End Of The Tunnel

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.

And the acoustics are simply magnificent.  No sound in the human hearing spectrum suffers from distance to the stage in either volume or clarity.  The high end of the 9’ Steinway Concert Grand sparkled and danced through my delighted eardrums during Lang Lang’s magical encore of Franz Liszt’s La Campanella.  The double basses and cello section both roared and warmed the walls and the piccolos cut through the distance like a knife.

Gabriel Faure

And the music!  Oh my goodness, the music.  I was not particularly familiar with Gabriel

Fauré’s Pavane in F-sharp Minor, Op. 50, but I am now.  It’s melody still soars through my brain and the way he harmonizes that melody in his orchestration was simply genius originality.

Lang Lang’s glorious performance of Ludwig Van Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 2 in B-flat Major, Op. 19 was like soft hands smoothing silk sheets.  This piano concerto, written when Beethoven was a teenager and in his early twenties is certainly portent for things to come from the master, but was not my particular cup of tea when it came to Beethoven.  It struck me as far too derivative and never really grabbed my ear and imagination except in the beginning of the second movement.  But who am I to complain about Ludwig – the man was a teeny-bopper when he wrote it.  Pretty amazing…

Ludwig Himself

It was the Dmitri Shostakovich Symphony No. 10 in E Minor, Op. 93 that I was really up for, however.  During it, I literally sat on the edge of my seat throughout in rapt amazement of the way he handled his orchestra.  I felt I was in a master class of orchestration as he spun out his themes evoking Russia at the time of Stalin’s death.  In the music was the war and the heartbreak and the devastation and the tonality of the Russian mind all captured in the double basses and cellos.  I would never need to travel back in time to experience that difficult period in history.  I was there last night in his music.

I was swept up by the beauty of his composition throughout the first half of the symphony and then, strangely enough, I found myself getting bored and asking, “Where are we going with all this?”  It seemed like themes would begin to be developed and then rejected as new ideas sprang forth.  I began to lose continuity and the end of the symphony seemed like a list of unrelated ideas tied together with only the sadness of a lost soul.  I was always swept up by the pure orchestration mastery of both the Philly and Dmitri’s sound, but I’ll have to admit that he lost me a bit compositionally.

I found myself thinking, “Well, he’s no Stravinsky” though he was a contemporary of Stravinsky’s.  If I sound critical, well perhaps I am a bit, but nit-picking the masters is legal, I suppose.  It’s a bit like booing the multi-million dollar baseball star at a ball game.

Then later I read the following in my program regarding Shostakovich’s work:

The personal meaning of the Allegretto is encoded in the music. This was one of several pieces from the latter part of Shostakovich’s career in which he spelled out his name musically. D[mitri] SCH[ostakowitsch], as it is spelled in German, corresponds to the pitches D, E-flat, C, and B-natural in German. (Other composers have done similar things since as far back as the Middle Ages, Bach most notably.) Shostakovich’s initials appear at first in the upper woodwinds near the start of the movement. The motto is later taken up by the cellos and basses, which leads to a forte solo horn theme that encrypts Nazirova’s (his girlfriend) name: The pitches are E-A-E-D-A (corresponding to E-L(a)-Mi-R(e)-A). The two motifs are combined at the end of the movement.

I guess I’m just not a fan of this kind of intellectual approach to musical composition.  I deeply believe in emotional story-telling, in the depth of the soul and height of the spirit and clarity of the beauty of the moment.  To write as a puzzle maker puzzles me and in the end, loses me.

I want to be moved, not intellectually challenged.  Who cares how his name is spelled and how that relates to music?  I don’t.

And looking back, that’s what lost me in the performance of his symphony.  I lost his connection to the Russian soul because he was off playing with word puzzles while Stalin was dying and the world was recovering from the most tragic war in its history.  Rather he had stuck to his brilliance and written about that instead of his name’s initials.

My rant for the day…

Did this ruin the evening for me?  Not at all.  I am blessed to live down the street from this magnificent music room.  I am blessed for the opportunity to hear and study this wondrous orchestra.  I am blessed to sit in the nose-bleed section and float off on the wings of the masters and their music.

I am blessed to work in the industry and play a part in the grand scheme of music.

Even More Inspiration

• I Stood In The Wings… Part 3
• I Stood In The Wings… Part 2
• The Changing Scene
• Gabriel, Come Blow Your Horn
• Even Now
• The Logic of Logic II

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.

We were safe, but somehow, that wasn’t enough.  We wanted to be here.  Our living room terrace and window opened up every day to us with those iconic, majestic towers.  They were part of our life.  And now they stood no longer.  Toppled by mad men Hell bent on destruction — horribly unsuccessful in their “success”.

We came back to NYC a month later to a hole in our life and a smell that still lingered – of burning metal and falling people.  The morning after we arrived, we walked down to the crash site still numb from the experience and became even more numb.

For the next ten years, as we looked out on these anniversaries, we would see only two giant shafts of light reaching into the heavens to remind us – as if we needed reminding.

This morning we seem to be threatened again.  I wake up to a day of remembrance, a day of hope, a day of new life, and yet, a day of warning.  I shall take my precautions, but I, like 8 million others of us will go on living in the face of terror because, as the song goes, “If you can make it here, you can make it anywhere”.  Whether that’s true or not, that captures the spirit of New York – the spirit of America.

Today I shall write and create music.  No matter where this day takes us, I shall do what I was put on this earth, in this fair city, to do.  Nothing will stop me from doing that.  No confused minds, destructive thought or sad misguided life motives can get in the way of that.  That is my protection from evil.  Simply to do good.

Goodness reigns over evil always and forever.  I will not let this thought go.  Even the people killed ten years ago this morning still live – in spirit, in their own spiritual reality, in our hearts and memory.  Evil, in its proudest moment stands as nothing but a distant memory this morning – shallow in its intent and failed in its purpose.

Its purpose was to weaken; it made us stronger.  Its purpose was to destroy; it made us create and build again.  Its purpose was to make us hate; this morning I feel nothing but love – love for the departed, love for the world.  Its purpose was to create fear; this morning I stand in my window and face the world knowing that God is the only control.  Goodness reigns.  Evil simply loses again and does only what it knows best to do – nothing.

Now the sun is up.  The city wakes.  Many head off to church.  Many take their own moments of inner peace with their God understandings and pause respectfully before heading out on their day.  A few don’t even know what today is.  They missed it in the rush of life.

I wouldn’t miss this for the world.  It’s a day of action, a day of living, a day of dominion over evil, a day of creativity and a day of remembrance.  Tomorrow we shall simply move into the second decade and go about our business.

I hold to the understanding that God is in control, evil is nothing and life is full, rich with blessings and eternal in its nature.  I am a being.

That’s ‘being’.  I am.  I live.  My life is.  The whole concept includes nothing but the idea of continuation – the continuation of goodness.

Have a great day!

Even More Inspiration

• Even Now
• WFM Listening Room Series II – 2
• Breaking The Logjam
• Spiritual Scientist
• Resisting Evil
• Hitting The Wall

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.

I surfed 5 different channels for the next hour fascinated by the difference between what was going on outside my window and what was going on there on my TV screen.  They couldn’t have been talking about my city, my streets, my world – but they were.

Trouble was they just weren’t telling the truth.  Instead I watched a handful of wet newscasters in raincoats standing out in the rain trying to trump up the drama of a storm that was little more than a rainstorm at that point.  I got the eerie feeling that most of these people were somehow trying desperately to be our heroes and clearly exaggerating the conditions to somehow hold our morbid attention, scare us into staying at home, and possibly even hold each of us to their own particular channel to better their ratings.

It’s true: trees fell, leaves fluttered in the breeze, streets were wet, waves were probably bigger than normal, but the videos just did not match the incendiary language and alarming energies of the various newscasters having their moment in the sun (or should I say, “…having their moment in the clouds.”)

The storm or hurricane or tropical storm (whatever it was) ceased to be the issue for me.  The real issue here was the reporting of the truth.  This constant trying to jack up the drama of what was clearly a hurricane lover’s disappointment became laughable to me as newscaster after newscaster across all 5 networks over-acted and misreported the realities of the moment.

One wet man actually said somewhat hysterically, “We’re seeing every wave here get bigger than the one before!  Soon they’ll be 20 feet!”  The waves behind him in the sea looked to me to be 3 footers at best.  One wet woman standing in the NY street perfectly still said, “I’m having trouble standing in this wind” while the leaves of a tree waved gently behind her and the rain fell straight around her – no sheets, no buckets.

I could go on and on.  As I said, I watched all this nonsense (a most appropriate word) for the next hour, got bored with the hyped up drama, checked out my window once more to make sure something hadn’t transpired while I wasn’t watching, (it was actually calmer now outside than before as the reporters were now dire in their warnings that Irene had, in fact, now officially arrived in our fair town) and, seeing little but a rainstorm outside, went back to bed.

I slept peacefully for the next six hours, never hearing a breeze outside my window, never once being jarred from my rest by some untoward happenstance.  I awoke to a partly sunny day and dry streets.  I cannot imagine the disappointment of our heroic newscasters as their moments in the sun turned out to be just that – moments in the sun.

Oh Walter Cronkite, where are you now that we need you?  Where is the simple truth of yesteryear?  I don’t want to watch Fox for the Republican viewpoint or twist on events and I don’t want to watch CNN for the Democratic slant.  I just want to watch some simple good old-fashioned truthful news reporting.  “Just the facts, Mam, just the facts” as Sergeant Friday used to say.  I’ve lost track of where to turn for the truth.  I don’t want a newscaster’s personal point of view on an issue.  I don’t care what they think.  Just tell me what happened.  They actually used to do this on television.  One actually had the feeling that the news was unbiased.

Today, I get the feeling that it’s really more about creating sensationalism for the ratings than telling the truth.  I’m not saying anything here that you all probably don’t already know.  We’ve all seen the change.  I’m here to tell you I don’t like it.  It’s simply dishonest.

What I witnessed during the events of Irene the other morning was a silly aggrandizement of self-importance perpetuating an atmosphere of panic at a time when people needed to be reassured that, if they simply stayed home and took care of business, they could go back to bed and get a good night’s sleep.

I did anyway because I’ve learned that the news is often no longer the truth.

It’s a sad state of affairs.

Even More Inspiration

• Remembering…
• WFM Listening Room Series II – 2
• Breaking The Logjam
• Spiritual Scientist
• I Stood In The Wings… Part 4
• Even Now

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.

As I mentioned, the first 4 bars were written, but I wanted the next 12 bars to be improvised with the last 2 bars of the 12 sliding back down into the vocals.  Since this was supposed to be Gabriel, the trumpeting angel of Biblical lore, he’d better be good.  Barry was great.  He fulfilled the promise, hopes and expectations beyond my dreams.

After he had gone, I took a couple of hours and studied the various takes and composited together the best of the 6 takes into a gorgeous and soaring angelic moment.  As I sat back and listened when finished, I found myself suddenly standing triumphantly and raising my arms above my head like Rocky on the Liberty steps.  It was a true moment of inspiration.

Barry (blue shirt) w/ Tower Of Power

We talk a lot about inspiration here at Watchfire Music.  It seems like we’re always trying to get there one way or another.  Well, yesterday we did it, and, best of all, when we got there, we had recorded it for all to experience.  That’s the great thing about music.  It can do its thing to you over and over.  It’s a wonder.

There’s nothing like working with a great musician.  It’s not just the way they play, or their mastery of their horn, or their chops that makes them great.  What always stands out to me is their ability to listen and to take direction.  You’d think that somebody with all that ability would not have to listen, but that’s often what separates the men from the boys – their ability and grace to drop their own ego and listen, to take input, and to collaborate.

Here’s a little more info on this modern Gabriel:

Trained from an early age in his first love, jazz, some of Barry’s most memorable performances have been with such greats as Dizzy Gillespie, Illinois Jacquet, Paquito DeRivera, and Branford Marsalis. Equally valuable in the evolution of his style were some of his first New York gigs, with Latin giants Eddie Palmieri and Tito Puente. Starting in 1984, he toured widely with these bands over a number of years and began an impressive series of Latin recordings with such artists as Marc Anthony and Ricky Martin.

Dizzy Gillespie & Barry Danielian

Barry’s mileage on the road increased in 1985 with the first of several tours with rock fusion giants Blood, Sweat and Tears, and subsequently with Paul Shaffer and the World’s Most Dangerous Band, Queen Latifah, and Jon Bon Jovi. The early 1990s saw Barry on world tours with Latin-pop star Emmanuel and funk legends Tower of Power.

During the mid-1990s, Barry began to realize the reputation he enjoys today as one of New York City’s most in-demand session players and arrangers, racking up more than 200 recordings with such pop notables as Celine Dion, Paul Simon, Billy Joel, Natalie Cole, and James Taylor, as well as with touring partners Queen Latifah and Tower of Power. His Jingle/TV and motion picture credits (for Touchstone, Columbia, and others) from this period are too numerous to mention.

I am deeply privileged in life to work with the best.  Yesterday was just another one of those great life experiences of music and creativity.

Even More Inspiration

• Light At The End Of The Tunnel
• Even Now
• WFM Listening Room – Series II – Event 4
• WFM Listening Room — Series II Opener
• WFM Learning Lab – Grand Opening!
• The Decline of Lyrical Craftsmanship – Part 1

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.

This is one of the few pluses in our rapidly changing music world.  Technology, especially digital technology, has made a tremendous impact on our lives in music.  And fortunately, I’ve had the wherewithal to keep up with the technology and take advantage of its wonders.

My studio, Link Recording Studios, which used to require 4 Mac computers to run it at full capacity, now runs on one dual quad 3.2 processor with 16 GB of ram running at 64 bit.  For those of you who are somewhat computer challenged, that’s not even the hottest new one on the market today, though it certainly is extremely powerful.

I teach Logic and yet I’m still learning it.  The learning curve is steep in that they give you ten different ways to achieve the same task, but after a while you figure our what your favorite two of those ten ways are and choose your methods accordingly.  Logic is logical.  If you’ve worked on other DAW systems you can swing over to Logic and know your way around it in a matter of hours enough to record.

I recently helped a young composer who was doing a movie score for a film house and had only first bought the program 2 months ago.  Though he still has a lot of holes in his knowledge and understanding of the program, he was making music, and good music using sampled and very realistic orchestra.

Every day when I walk into my studio and hit 5 switches to power things up, I breathe a sigh of gratitude for this wondrous time where I can sit by myself and make the music of my dreams in elegant, comfortable surroundings.  The systems of orchestration, mixing and especially editing are so far advanced from just 15 years ago in a tape machine world as to make those past days ancient and archaic.

I remember days of standing at a tape machine editing ¼” tape with pieces of tape taped to the wall, hanging around my shoulders and organized in little batches on my machine while I hand cut and rearranged with tape and editing block.  God help me if I sneezed.  It would take a week to put it all back together.

Today I take mouse in hand, highlight the section of music in the screen of my choosing and simply drag it where it belongs.  If I don’t like what I hear, I simply hit Re-do and try again.  It’s a better world.

In the old days, when it was time to mix a song we would book 24 hours in the studio to mix one song and then an extra 3-4 hours the next morning in addition.  A 24-hour mix is extremely rough on the ears.  By the end of day both producer and engineer are exhausted and brain dead and not at all trusting as to what they are hearing anymore, so the wiser ones would go home, get some sleep and then come back and finish with fresher ears the next morning.

Today, by the time I get to mix day, the song is already 90% mixed and remembered in my computer’s automation.  Every little move and nuance of what I want to hear is recorded and performed by my computer as set up by me previous to the final day.  The final day comes and I spend anywhere from 2-4 hours finishing up.  It’s a better world.

I could go on and on, but you get the idea.  Occasionally, there are technical breakdowns, and they are no fun, but actually running my own studio where I’m the only engineer means far less problems than ever before when several engineers worked the hardware equipment.  Then, I had a regular maintenance man come in every two weeks to fix that which was broken or in the process of breaking.  Today, I am that maintenance man and I’ve learned to only buy software from companies who have great customer service.  9 times out of 10 I’m able to fix problems with a half hour phone call.

It’s a better world.

With all my complaints about the condition of today’s music world, here’s one aspect that really works and is actually miraculous in its results and costs.

Technology has its upside and downside in today’s world.  I could certainly write another couple of posts on how technology has ruined songwriting and record-making today.  But that’s perhaps for another day.  Today, this morning as I look to a weekend of intensive work in my studio on a new CD project, I’m simply grateful for this wonderland of creation and imagination that supports my every musical thought.

I often wish I could take Johann Sebastian Bach on a 3-hour tour of my studio.  He was, in his day, a true technologist.  He would simply gasp in wonder at what was available to him at his fingertips.

And then he would sit down and get to work.

Even More Inspiration

• Gabriel, Come Blow Your Horn
• Even Now
• WFM Listening Room — Series II Opener
• Spiritual Scientist
• By The Numbers?
• Chanting/Enchanting