Dan Moses Schreier has some
sound ideas of how
Broadway ought to be.

MICHAEL H. MARGOLIN SPECIAL TO THE JEWISH NEWS

he winner of the 1996
Drama Desk Award
for the sound score of
off-Broadway's Floyd
Collins, Dan Schreier
recently sat barefoot
on the deck of his par-
ents' Beverly Hills,
Mich., home talking about where
he's headed with his career.
A new father of Gemma and
spouse of lighting designer
Natasha Katz (Beauty and the
Beast), Schreier's receiving ma-
jor accolades these days for his
sound design work on this year's
four-time Tony Award-winning
musical, Bring in 'Da Noise,
Bring in 'Da Funk. The musical

ingham Groves in 1974.
At the University of Michigan,
he studied with Pulitzer Prize
winner Bill Bolcom; he went on
to Columbia and worked with
Stanley Silverman, another re-
spected composer. Because of his
skill as a copyist (one who care-
fully logs a composer's notes into
a coherent written score) and
his ear for musical balances,
Schreier was co-opted out of Co-
lumbia in 1976 to work on the
production of The Threepenny
Opera in its famous Lincoln Cen-
ter revival with Raul Julia.
"I listened to old recordings of
[Kurt] Weill; supervised [new]
and lifted [old] orchestrations,"
Schreier says. These
were worked into a
composite score used
for the revival. Once
the job was done, it
was back to school.
"My first job after
college was to mix the
score for The Pirates
of Penzance, the rock
version which starred
Linda Ronstadt. Je-

J EWISH NEWS

sus Christ Superstar

was another one of
the first to introduce
amplification into
what had been an
acoustic environ-
ment," says Schreier.
This has changed
Broadway theater, re-
sulting in shows with
huge sound and vocal
scores such as Bring

first opened at the Joseph Papp
Public Theater/New York Shake-
speare Festival, under the di-
rection of George C. Wolfe, and
then moved to Broadway in late
April.
Schreier, listed in programs as
Dan Moses Schreier, grew up on
Detroit's northwest side. The
family — mom Florence, dad
Bernard and five siblings — lat-
er relocated north, where
Schreier graduated from Birm-

in 'Da Noise, Bring in
'Da Funk, with its complicated

tap and percussive sound score.
'There are two kinds of sound
scores. One has more art to it,"

Above left:
Dan Moses Schreier: From Birmingham
Groves to Broadway.

Right:
Jared Crawford and Raymond King use
rhythms and energies of tap to celebrate
the evolution of the beat.