Sondheim at Herbst Theater

This past Sunday was a date I’d been anticipating for months. As part of the City Arts and Lectures series here in San Francisco, Stephen Sondheim sat down with Frank Rich for a thoroughly spontaneous and entertaining hour-and-a-half discussion. Now, I’ve read and heard so many interviews and similar Sondheim talks over the years, so [...]

Sondheim’s Favorite: “Someone in a Tree”

It is well known among Sondheim kooks such as myself that Stephen Sondheim’s favorite among his own songs is “Someone in a Tree” from the 1976 musical Pacific Overtures. I love this song too, but it’s never been clear to me exactly why it stands out in particular for Sondheim.

Revisiting the Trunk: “You Must Learn”

Throughout the year I’ve been occasionally posting recordings of songs from my earlier musical The Ghost of Wu. Today’s installment is the song “You Must Learn”, in which an ambitious mother lectures her naïve daughter, a concubine, in the ways of the Emperor’s court. This song is probably the most Sondheim-derivative thing I’ve ever written. [...]

Choral Music for Bedtime

About a year and a half ago, I posted a little something about my son’s taste in orchestral music. He was about to turn three then, and now he’s four and a half. Since that time, my ability to play music for him has been limited for various boring technical and life reasons. A few [...]

Sondheim Like That

This is asking for trouble; I’m sure of it. In recent days a large number of people have found this site by way of a Google search on the words “sondheim like that”, mostly from the Washington, D.C. area. Someone please tell me what this means. Should I also be Googling this phrase?

Sondheim, Shakespeare and Andy Dick

Two items: Am I the only one who didn’t know that Stephen Sondheim composed incidental music for the Public Theater’s current production of King Lear with Kevin Kline. (Thanks for the tip, Mom!) Set your Tivo! Sondheim has a cameo in this Sunday’s episode of The Simpsons. It’s possible there’s something wrong with a world [...]

“Musical” ≠ “Broadway”

I get into such trouble with this stuff: I’m a classical composer who wants to write musicals; I’m a theater composer with Uptown training whose music is weird, unpredictable and unnecessarily difficult. In classical circles, it’s OK, actually. As far as I know, I haven’t been judged negatively because there are musicals in my bio, [...]

Addressing Sondheim

Well, I just did a search, and in over a year of blogging, the name “Sondheim” has only been mentioned in passing in 7 posts. I’m not sure why this is, considering that Stephen Sondheim is by far the most influential composer upon my aesthetic and even my choice of a career. To catch up [...]

StudyScores.com

So here’s StudyScores.com. The idea is that, while Amazon.com and SheetMusicPlus may each have a pretty good selection, it’s pretty hard to find anything at either site unless you already know what you want. You have to sift through all the easy piano stuff and ColdPlay anthologies, etc. StudyScores.com is organized around finding scores by [...]

Adam Guettel on NewMusicBox

How’s this for a sentence: From Floyd Collins, where Southern string band music, contemporary folk song, and Feldman-esque introspection seamlessly blend with a dramatic sensibility totally informed by the tradition of the musical, to the quasi-operatic and completely infectious The Light in the Piazza, Guettel has shown himself to be a musical omnivore for whom [...]

“About the Composer”

The entries here date back to 2005 when I started my blog "About the Composer". I no longer post regularly but this archive remains available for posterity.
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