This week I interview composer, conductor, pianist, arranger, music journalist and author Joshua Rosenblum on his book, Closer than Ever: The Unique Six-Decade Songwriting Partnership of Richard Maltby Jr. and David Shire.
FROM AMAZON.COM
How do musical theater songs actually get written? What enables some composer and lyricist partnerships to last for decades?
Composer David Shire and lyricist Richard Maltby, Jr., two of the most gifted songwriters of our time, are revered among musical theater lovers for their ground-breaking off-Broadway revues Starting Here, Starting Now and Closer Than Ever, as well as for the Broadway musicals Baby and Big. Rosenblum sets out to increase appreciation for Maltby and Shire’s large and impressive body of work and establish their place in musical theater history. This book chronicles their sixty-six-year (and counting) partnership, giving full behind-the-scenes accounts of their musicals, interspersed with deep-dive analyses of standout individual numbers. Other well-known artistic figures who feature prominently in the Maltby/Shire story include Stephen Sondheim, Hal Prince, Michael Stewart, Francis Ford Coppola, Craig Lucas, Mike Ockrent, Susan Stroman, John Weidman, Charles Strouse, Garth Drabinsky, Adam Gopnik, Jason Robert Brown, and Jonathan Tunick.
Using his experiences as a Broadway conductor, music journalist, and professor of musical theater composition, as well as his long-term personal and professional acquaintance with both Maltby and Shire, Joshua Rosenblum is uniquely suited to chronicle their lives, careers, and creative output. The songwriters, both of whom are engaging and articulate in describing what they do, are quoted liberally throughout the book in exclusive interviews, creating the impression that one is spending time with two inspiring creative artists who happen to be great company.
FROM RosenblumMusic.com
Joshua Rosenblum is an American composer, conductor, pianist, arranger, music journalist, and author. He has composed extensively for the concert hall as well as for musical theatre, and currently teaches Composing for Musical Theater at Yale University, his alma mater, as well as Conducting at New York University.
Joshua Rosenblum is a composer, conductor, and pianist with wide–ranging experience in classical, contemporary and theater music. For the theater, Rosenblum wrote the score to the cult hit musical Fermat’s Last Tango, which had a critically acclaimed Off-Broadway production at the York Theatre Company, and received its international premiere at Lisbon’s Teatro da Trindade. He is also the composer and creator of BUSH IS BAD, the smash Off-Broadway musical revue, which Variety magazine described as “a sensation,” as well as the composer/lyricist of Fermat’s Last Tango, Einstein’s Dreams, Garbo and Me, The Haunted Hotel (winner of a development grant from the Signature Theatre), and Mark Felt, Superstar, the musical saga of Watergate’s “Deep Throat.” Recordings of his instrumental music include Impetuosities—Music of Joshua Rosenblum, and Sundry Notes, both available from Albany Records. Rosenblum has also composed two ballet scores for choregrapher Chase Brock and The Chase Brock Experience. Einstein’s Dreams, based on the bestselling novel by Alan Lightman, will have its Off-Broadway debut at 59E59 Theaters in November, 2019.
As conductor, Rosenblum has led the orchestras for thirteen Broadway and Off-Broadway shows, with a specialty in flying vehicles (Miss Saigon, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, Dr. Seuss’s How the Grinch Stole Christmas). Other conducting credits include guest appearances with the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra, the Brooklyn Philharmonic, and the American Repertory Ballet, as well as the soundtracks to five major motion pictures. He is also the founder and music director of the critically acclaimed Pit Stop Players, an eclectic and genre-defying chamber ensemble.
As a pianist, Rosenblum has appeared with the New York Pops at Carnegie Hall, the New York Chamber Symphony, the New Jersey Symphony, the American Symphony Orchestra, and the City Center Encores! series, among others. He has also performed with Daniel Rodriguez (the “singing policeman”) and Karl Scully of “The Three Irish Tenors.” Additionally, he and his wife, soprano Joanne Lessner, have concertized extensively in recitals of art songs, cabaret songs, and Rosenblum’s original compositions.
A summa cum laude graduate of Yale College and the Yale School of Music, Rosenblum now teaches Composing for Musical Theater at his alma mater. Rosenblum and Lessner are the proud parents of Julian, a recent Yale graduate who works as a software engineer at Facebook, and Phoebe, a senior at New York’s LaGuardia High School.
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