Broadway Baby!

Like most musicians I can wear many hats.  I'm a pianist, accompanist, oboist, conductor, music theater coach, and can even sing a church solo when called upon to do so.  My favorite hat, the one that fits the best and is a joy to wear, is composer.  I started making up my own little piano songs at age 6 and I've never stopped.  I was born to create.

"So, what are you working on now?" is the question all composers are asked on a regular basis.  I'm working on a musical.  Pudding Lane is the working title.  It's the street in London where the great fire started in 1666.  When I share plot details with other creative souls, they often comment, "Sounds a little like Sondheim!"

I was raised on a steady diet of Rogers and Hammerstein, Lerner and Lowe, Verdi and Puccini.  My father believed if someone wasn't wailing away at the top of their lungs, it wasn't worth listening to.  My parents had a turntable and a small but adequate collection of vinyl.  I listened to our well-worn original cast recording of "The Sound of Music" so many times that to this day I still sing it with all the skips, "Mi, myself, Fa- So, a needle pulling thread."  It was pure magic.  Soon I was auditioning for local shows, joining a children's theater company, and playing the piano for high school productions.

None of this prepared me for "the Demon Barber of Fleet Street."  When I was 17 I went to a local production of "Sweeney Todd."  I really thought I was quite the theater connoisseur, but I had not yet met the creative genius of Stephen Sondheim.  When I left the theater that evening, I didn't even have the vocabulary to discuss what I had just seen and heard.  What was "Sweeney?" Theater?  Opera?  A nightmare?  I found the piece disturbing.  I couldn't sleep.  I sat in my bed all night, feverish and discombobulated.  How could I plug "Sweeney" into my tidy, ordered universe?  Five years later, after years of music study, I was the third keyboard player for a "Sweeney" production staged in an abandoned factory, and I left that production able to tell the world that a masterpiece had been bestowed upon mankind.

Now as I tackle my own musical I ask myself daily "Is this as good as Sondheim?"  Unfortunately, the answer is always '"No," but it is a worthy measuring stick.  Stephen Sondheim doesn't cut corners or take the easy path.  He works hard to find just the right word, the right tone, the best music for a particular phrase.  How can I do any less?  When I'm confronted with a difficult artistic decision and am tempted to sell myself a little short, cut and paste a refrain or two, use a trite or hackneyed vocal line just because it's easy,  I remember Sweeney and his very sharp razor.

Three important rules I have learned from my forays into the theater;  Great art should be disturbing, don't eat the meat pies, and when in doubt, ask yourself, "What would Sondheim do?"