Lullaby of Broadway

So tonight I went to hear the dean interview Charles Strouse, a Broadway composer. He penned "Put on a Happy Face", the score to Annie, the score for Bye Bye Birdie, and others you may not know as well: Golden Boy, It's a Bird...It's a Plane...It's Superman!, Rags, several film scores, a few operas, and more.

Mr. Strouse turns out to be a wonderfully kind and humble man. He has written an autobiography titled Put on a Happy Face that colorfully relates stories about his life in Broadway and his compositional beginnings. Turns out he always wanted to write "serious music". When he was in conservatory, his works sounded like Hindemith and Bartok, by his own descriptions. He was fortunate enough to be mentored by and study with Aaron Copland and Nadia Boulanger (who studied with Gabriel Faure). But Boulanger and others discovered that he had a gift for "light music". So he found Broadway, and we are all blessed as a result.

What was really neat to me was his demeanor, a combination of total humility, pungent irreverance, and an overall "Really? Did this really happen to me?" sense of being lucky, almost as though he's standing to the side and watching someone else grown in renown. He very sincerely said, "I hesitate to say this because I don't want to sound, well, goody-goody, but I really didn't believe I was a success. I felt like a failure. My successes, I thought, were lucky, and I thought I had just fooled people. It wasn't until recently that I was able to recognize that I have been gifted."

Onstage were two cushy brown leather armchairs, each wrapped with a microphone on the kind of stand that club piano players use. A table with a pitcher of water and two glasses crouched between the chairs. Behind this lovely PBS-like setup was a grand piano with its own mic. And Mr. Strouse did not disappoint. At the dean's prompting, he walked to the piano and played several of his best known hits, interspersed with his wonderful commentary. "Put on a Happy Face" was first, but then he migrated to "Applause", a song Annie sings when dreaming about her parents, "The Sun Will Come Out Tomorrow" and several others. He has worked with the top names in the business: Alan Jay Lerner, Mel Brooks, Lauren Bacall, and others, but he speaks about them as though they're your next door neighbors down the street. There's not a smidge of pretense or self-importance. It was so incredibly lovely to see.

This character carried over into the post-talk reception where he signed copies of his book. When I arrived at the front of the line, he took the time to ask me whether I was a student here and what I studied.

"Are you interested just in opera?" he queried when he discovered I'm a singer.

"Oh no, I love both opera and musical theatre. I'm so sorry I missed your talk earlier this afternoon," I said. (Mr. Strouse had mentioned in the larger hall that he'd met with some voice students this afternoon to talk about how to transition from opera into musical theatre.)

"Well, I gave them my email address," he said, "and I'd be happy to help. You know, one of the hardest things for young singers is to find an agent. I don't know many, but I know a few, and I'd like to help if I can."

I thanked him since that is such a sweet gesture, to reach out to students like that.

"You have a lovely musical theatre..." and here he paused, gesturing around his face. "Look," he filled in. I think "look" means some combination of actual physical appearance plus expressions/presence. He's a man who has nothing to gain by saying something like that, so I am very flattered and grateful for a genuinely kind compliment. As he handed me my book, he closed by saying "I look forward to hearing you sing soon!"

I love how generous musicians are. There is such a spirit of camaraderie, a sense of wanting to help others. Sometimes we think of the cutthroat sides of this profession, the Tonya Harding equivalents. But the truth is that there is just as much, if not more, goodwill and warmth that people exude. I certainly find all of that good stuff in the community here, and I haven't seen the competitive side. Some of this compassion and goodness of heart I think is a natural quality among artists. To perform well, you have to want to share something of yourself with your audience. And you have to have an enlarged capacity to feel emotion, especially as a singer. When you are so attuned to emotion itself, I think you develop a greater capacity for empathy. Plus, theatre by its nature is a connective medium, among the artists and between artists and audience members. So neat.

Anyway, bottom line, it was a truly lovely and inspiring evening. Such a joy to hear a tremendously successful composer who also turns out to be a warm and wonderful personality.

I am SO lucky to be here!!

~Hope