MOMENTS WITH A MASTER

Composer, lyricist, musical supervisor, and all-around true New York City original, Adam Guettel (rhymes with “kettle”) is as comfortable with opera and musical theater as he is with pop.  As the son of esteemed composer and performer Mary Rodgers (Once Upon a Mattress), as well as the grandson of Broadway and Hollywood legend Richard Rodgers (of Rodgers and Hammerstein), Guettel has proven himself to be worthy of his genetic lineage. Born in 1965, Guettel is a graduate of Phillips Exeter Academy and Yale.

Guettel wrote music and lyrics for Floyd Collins (cast album on Nonesuch Records), which has been presented at Playwrights Horizons, New York; Prince Theatre, Philadelphia; Goodman Theatre, Chicago; Old Globe, San Diego; Bridewell, London; and elsewhere.

His other works include Love’s Fire, a collaboration with playwright John Guare for The Acting Company, and Saturn Returns, a concert at Joseph Papp Public Theater/New York Shakespeare Festival.  Saturn Returns was recorded by Nonesuch Records under the title Myths and Hymns.

Four of Guettel’s songs are featured on Audra McDonald’s Nonesuch Records release, Way Back to Paradise (1998), and two more appear on her 2000 album, How Glory Goes (including the title track).  Guettel himself performed a concert of his work at New York’s Town Hall in 1999.  Film scores, include Arguing the World, a feature documentary by Joe Dorman, and the score for Jack, a two-hour documentary for CBS by Peter Davis (1994).  He is currently partnering with William Goldman on a musical version of The Princess Bride.

Guettel is the recipient of the Stephen Sondheim Award (1990), the Obie Award (1996), the Lucille Lortel Award (1996), the ASCAP New Horizons Award (1997), the American Composers Orchestra Award (2005), and two Tony Awards for The Light in the Piazza (2005).

As you enjoy THE LIGHT IN THE PIAZZA, Adam Guettel would like each audience member to know that he thanks the U Cross Foundation, Sundance Theater Lab, The Intiman, The Goodman, and Lincoln Center Theater for bringing this piece to life.

Dominion Master Moments with Composer/Lyricist Adam Guettel

Collaboration.

That’s the word:  collaboration.

It’s what a composer and lyricist like Adam Guettel of THE LIGHT IN THE PIAZZA fame needs when working on a show; it’s what any kind of arts program successfully thrives on.  And when Adam Guettel collaborates with artists, students, staff members, musicians, technicians and a host of other folks from the theater community, Playhouse Square Foundation and WVIZ/PBS & 90.3 WCPN ideastream, you have collaboration at its finest!
           
Guettel came to Cleveland to be the first “master” artist in a series called Dominion Master Moments, a series of one-hour conversations with masters in the performing arts—producers, directors, performers, composers, choreographers and more.

Gina Vernaci, vice-president of theatricals for Playhouse Square Foundation explains that “the Dominion Master Moments series encapsulates the essence of collaboration between ideastream and Playhouse Square.  It is about giving more people the opportunity to experience the best of the performing arts, and that is made possible through the use of appropriate technology.”

Again, that whole collaboration concept.

Hosted by Dee Perry of ideastream, the show featuring Guettel was recorded in front of a live studio audience in the Idea Center’s Westfield Insurance Studio Theatre.  It was also transmitted to several schools and libraries in Ohio through distance-learning technology.  Rows of enthusiastic theater and musical theater majors from northeastern Ohio colleges filled the audience, many asking Guettel well-prepared questions about his background, his struggles, his successes, his shows and his collaborative efforts.  The show will be broadcast in January on WVIZ Channel 25, and on WCPN 90.3 FM, prior to the run of THE LIGHT IN THE PIAZZA at the Palace Theater, Jan. 16-28. Check local listings to confirm broadcast times currently scheduled for 10:00 pm on WVIZ on Thursday, January 11 and Saturday, January 13. The program is also set to air on WCPN at noon on Tuesday, January 16.

Guettel’s pleasant demeanor and willingness to answer “deep” showed through the entire program. His first instrument, he explained, was his voice, and he sang long before mastering the piano—or any other instrument.  He was a boy soprano, then alto, with the Metropolitan Opera, then a member of the opera chorus at the New York City Opera.  He began learning to play the piano at age 4, and laughingly explained that his parents “forced” him to do so.  At the time he wasn’t thrilled with the idea—he just wanted to sing—but later realized that he wasn’t all that good of a singer, and that the constant demand of piano playing was something he actually enjoyed.  He started writing music at age 7—in his words, a “very bad” piano composition which he actually played for the appreciative studio audience—but then a seven-year writer’s block overtook him.
 
Maybe it was his pedigree, maybe it was just his “time,” but at age 14 he took on the task of writing a new musical version of the “inescapable Pied Piper.  I got about one-third of the way through it, then never finished it,” he laughed.  As a teen, though, he decided he wanted to be an actor or singer.  “Neither one was meant to be, and it was after this time I sort of ‘backed into’ writing for the theater, even though it was so hard!”  It was then he began doing incidental music for shows. 

After writing a full-length operatic version of Charles Dickens’ “A Christmas Carol,”  Guettel, collaboration with a great director brought him success with the first workshop of Floyd Collins.  “The American Music Theater Festival, now the Prince Music Theater, commissioned me to write something new based on the true story of a Kentucky caver who got trapped while exploring and his ensuing ordeal.  My collaboration with director Tina Landau was wonderful as we tossed ideas about the show, the character of Floyd, storylines—everything! I went to Kentucky, went ‘caving,’ experienced Floyd’s loneliness (the same that writers often feel!), and realized the darkness into light is a great metaphorical experience,” Guettel explained.
           
The colors of the music speak volumes to Guettel, which is why he writes the lyrics last.  The music speaks to him, as he’s creating it, of course, as well as when he’s finished.  It is then he starts to shape words to the music.  He tries to do something different and new with each project, and his overriding approach to beginning PIAZZA was love.  “Love is in everything that’s good.  All songs are fueled with love,” said Guettel.

In addition to love, Guettel feels a grammatical connection to his music.  “Sometimes it must be ‘verb’ music from a basic energy, enabling me to write about the real thing, reaching and wanting.  That seems especially so in Princess Bride,” the stage musical he is currently working on with author William Goldman.  Again, he let the studio audience in on a little secret:  Act I of Princess Bride seems to be finished!  “For now, anyway,” he continued.  “You never know for sure, of course.  Re-writes, numbers dropped from the show.  You just never know.”  Sounds like some more successful collaboration to me!

Guettel has his own thoughts regarding working partners in a collaboration.  Three sentences always seem to be on his brain:  “I never would have thought of that.  Thank God they thought of that. Isn’t it wonderful that we’re a team?”   Obviously, it’s a successful approach---collaboration has been, and continues to be a large part of Guettel’s personal and professional success.

Collaboration may have come naturally to Adam Guettel.  After all his grandfather was Richard Rodgers, as in Rodgers AND Hammerstein or Rodgers AND Hart, collaborations that led to some of the best of musical theater.