My professional life has primarily been spent in the study of America’s great songwriters – beginning with my early infatuation with the songs of Cole Porter and then unavoidably spreading over to Rodgers & Hart, Gershwin, Irving Berlin, Frank Loesser, Jule Styne, Johnny Mercer, Sammy Cahn, et al. It’s a world of creative artistry that somehow I find endlessly fascinating.
I created my first revue of Porter’s music as a senior in high school. “Senior Projects” were not a thing then as they are now, but I wanted to create my own tribute to his music, and my theatre teacher and other high school staff made it possible for me to cast 4 of my classmates, rehearse, and perform a show in our high school theatre.
Now I understand exactly what was required for that – janitors in the building, staff oversight, etc. But I didn’t fully get it then. How fortunate was I…..
In the years that followed, I would create many more tribute revues and concerts, taking long dives into the life’s work and personal lives of these formidable artists. There is no way that I could have gained as much knowledge of them and their music had I taken college courses in them.
The HOURS I spent researching rarely heard music, reading & watching interviews to get to know who these geniuses were as people… I don’t think any college even offered a course in what it was I was studying.
And all the time I kept wondering WHY this was so important to me.
The history of music and musical theatre was a clear passion. In my mid-50s it became clear that I was concerned that these brilliant pieces of art would disappear from human awareness. A published book (unless all copies are burned….) stays a piece of art that can be experienced by anyone at any time. Likewise, a painting. A film – even an old television program, if correctly preserved – stays a piece of art that can be viewed at will, for the most part. All visual arts are easily successful if you know where to look. Performance art, not captured on film….. not so much.
I think Dance is the art most at risk for disappearing without ongoing care and attention, but in my world a Truth I’ve been leaning into harder and harder with each passing year is: “If nobody hears a song, the song has no life.”
I understand now why so much of my life has been focused on finding and sharing brilliant pieces of music before they completely fade away from our culture. When I finally embraced my own value as a songwriter, what also became clear was that I was pulled to not just contribute my own creative voice to the world of musical expression, but to continue to keep alive the work that had been done by my heroes in the decades before me.
As I work on the concerts I now present in Puerto Vallarta that celebrate the songs of great American songwriters, it becomes more apparent why their music is the way it is. That comes from taking the time to get to know who they were as people so you can understand a bit about how they saw the world and wrote the way they wrote.
