Throughout Marvin Hamlisch’s career, which spans 40 years and includes writing hit Broadway plays, music for movies, and conducting pops concerts around the country, he has stayed true to his Yiddishe mama’s teachings: to never perform on Rosh Hashanah or Passover.
“At the beginning of every new year,” he told me, “I always get out the calendar and circle those two dates.”
Last year, however, he made a slight exception: “I asked a friend to hold off on starting the Passover seder in Boston.” But as soon as he stepped off the stage, he made his way to his host’s table.
Hamlisch was in town last March to prepare for and talk about his new job as the principal pops conductor for the Seattle Symphony. We sat down to discuss this project, a gig he is duplicating in four other cities as well: Pittsburgh, Washington D.C., San Diego and Milwaukee.
We also talked a little bit about him personally. Hamlisch is the composer of over 40 motion picture scores, the Broadway smash hit A Chorus Line, and many other original compositions, and I was curious to know if being Jewish had an impact on the type of music Hamlisch writes.
“After you hear Kol Nidre a thousand times, this music gets jumbled up in your brain and does tend to come out occasionally when I compose,” he said. An example he gave me was the score he wrote for a movie called The Swimmer with Burt Lancaster.
“It definitely has a Jewish tone to it,” he said.
Hamlisch said he has a passion for 20th-century popular music and is worried that the next generation will miss out on knowing about this powerful genre.
“I’m excited about bringing it to a new audience,” he said.
He doesn’t want composers like Richard Rogers, Cole Porter and Irving Berlin to die from our collective memories, so his aim is to continue their legacy by presenting these concerts. But don’t be fooled by the seeming formality of presenting his vision in our classy downtown Benaroya Hall. He’s planning to make these shows real events, with singers, dancers and local choirs bringing the music alive.
Starting this fall, Hamlisch and the Seattle Symphony are presenting a series of five concerts to highlight different styles, like swing, or New Orleans jazz, or individual composers such as George Gershwin. Hamlisch will conduct three of these concerts.
He kicks off his tenure with a program called “Swingin’ with Marvin Hamlisch and the Pops.” The Sept. 18 concert opens the Symphony’s 10th-anniversary pops season by celebrating “Sing, Sing, Sing,” an historic concert at Carnegie Hall that featured Ella Fitzgerald, Benny Goodman, Count Basie and Irving Berlin. That concert took place in 1938 and is regarded by many as the most significant event in jazz history, because after years of work by musicians from all over the country, jazz had finally been accepted by mainstream audiences. And while the Big Band era would not last much longer, that time laid the groundwork for multiple other genres of popular music.
But back to 2008. The featured vocalist in this first concert will be Nikki Yanofsky, a 14-year-old jazz singer prodigy from Montreal, Quebec. Yanofsky made her stage debut two years ago at the Montreal International Jazz Festival and since then has skyrocketed to success, appearing with such jazz and pop luminaries as Herbie Hancock, Billy Ocean, Celine Dion, and, of course, Hamlisch. The concert will also feature the Jazz Ambassadors, the United States Army’s premier touring jazz orchestra. Hamlisch says that he adores this group because they are top notch musicians who are able to play band music with a larger orchestra. He also said he gets a kick that the army musicians call him Sir.
The other concerts in the series include a program in early December called “A Marvin Hamlisch Christmas.” Following that, the New Orleans Jazz Orchestra, conducted by Irvin Mayfield, will appear in January. In February, former “Tonight Show” bandleader Doc Severinsen will bring his all-new show, El Ritmo De La Vita (Rhythm of Life), which features music of the Americas with a jazz flair. Finally, Hamlisch will finish off the season in May with Gershwin’s masterpiece, “Rhapsody in Blue,” with Kevin Cole as the soloist.
I asked Hamlisch about his vision for the pops series beyond this year. He couldn’t say because he hadn’t yet sat down with Tom Philion, the Seattle Symphony’s executive director. At the time, Hamlisch was looking forward to brainstorming with Philion to figure out exactly where this series will go. One thing he could share was that he likes planning concert programs around the various holidays.
“That way you can make an “˜evening out’ around the show,” he said. “If it’s Valentine’s Day, you can have a romantic dinner, if it’s St. Patrick’s Day, have a corned-beef sandwich and then head to the symphony. Or if it’s Passover, go the symphony — then have the seder.”
A Jewish tone
