Arts & Entertainment
ON THE COVER
Charles Strouse
Broadway melodies from a master.
A
dear little girl was sitting
beside her dog. She had no
mother, no father, no one to
love her. She walked along the streets
of New York, waiting for parents to
come get her from the orphanage. Now
what she needed was a bit of hope.
Charles Strouse was about to give it
to her.
"Tomorrow," the girl sang. That's
when the sun will come up. Just think-
ing about the day "clears away the cob-
webs and the sorrow Ill there's none."
He wrote one of Broadway's most
famous songs, from the musical Annie,
and he's a three-time Tony Award win-
ner, but Strouse is a modest, genial
man who, like Annie, is full of hope.
Strouse was born in 1928, a child
with the kind of musical talent "only
parents can appreciate," he says. "I
wrote a lot of ditties about family
events."
In college he studied theory and
counterpoint, graduating from the
Eastman School of Music in Rochester,
N.Y., then continuing his studies
at Tanglewood, the Massachusetts
center for musicians established by
Serge Koussevitzky. Among Strouse's
instructors there was composer
Aaron Copland, with whom he studied
for three years. Perhaps because of
Copland's homosexuality, completely
unacceptable at the time, the composer
was "a very guarded man, a hidden per-
sonality," Strouse says. "Even his very
close friends find it difficult to describe
him."
After Tanglewood, Strouse landed
in New York City, where he earned his
living playing for dance classes and
coaching singers. An acquaintance sug-
gested he work at Green Mansions, a
summer resort, where, during the early
1950s, he began writing the kinds of
tunes that would eventually be played
on Broadway.
"I loved it," he says. In college, his
classical compositions were greeted
with "appreciation and a lot of slow
nodding" from fellow students. "They
sometimes acted as though they had
just read a legal brief." But at Green
Mansions, audience members clapped
wildly and called out and yes, Strouse
thought, this is it. Soon would come the
glamour of the theater, too, "and the
beautiful girls; that certainly appealed
to me. I loved it all."
Theater in the 1950s had elegance
and harbored a naivete long since for-
gotten. Unlike today, the focus was not
on accommodating tourists and extend-
ing the length of each production for as
long as possible. Shows were a smash
(or not) and played for a bit, then
moved on. It's unlikely they would tack-
le, head on, social issues of the time or
make loud political statements. It was,
Strouse says, a time of glamour.
Strouse met and worked with many
leading singers, actors and artists of
the 1950s, including Cole Porter ("On
opening nights, he
the idea: "I've got a play
always went with his
about a circus. Can you
friends to the theater,
write something for a love
then greeted everyone
scene?" So the idea is
in the audience"), Frank
set. But what comes next
Sinatra and Sammy
is "the way you love your
Davis Jr. ("a compli-
collaborator," Strouse says.
cated man").
An idea, then the creative
Davis was the star of
team at work, is how music
Strouse's Golden Boy,
is made.
which followed his first
"I have none," he says,
huge hit, in 1960, Bye,
laughing, about interests
Bye Birdie, starring Dick
outside music. But he
Van Dyke. ("Tomorrow"
does like reading biogra-
Charles Strouse
may be the song for
phies (most recently, one
which Strouse is most
on Lauren Bacall, another
quickly recognized, but he also is the
about composer Hector Berlioz) and
man behind "Put On a Happy Face,"
literature (one Strouse project was a
from Birdie.)
musical based on the Theodore Dreiser
Strouse's Broadway success with
novel An American Tragedy). He also
Applause, starring Lauren Bacall, was
loves mysteries and sounds completely
followed by some not-so-successful
sincere when he says he never looks at
plays. These are painful. "When you
the back for the answer.
have public success, you will have pub-
Strouse, who continues to compose
lic failure, too," Strouse says. "And it's
classical music (his Piano Concerto
all right there in front of your friends,
No. 2, written when he was in his 20s,
and your erstwhile friends."
made its debut in Maryland in 1995),
"It hurts, of course," but Strouse can
says that a musician is constantly chal-
count on his wife, director and choreog-
lenged by the balance of making art
rapher Barbara Siman, for support. Or
that he loves and art that will sell.
one of his four, now-adult children, will
"It's a very tricky question," he says.
assure him, "Dad, it was wonderful, and
"Do you go where you want to go [with
who cares what anyone else says."
your work], where people like it to go,
Strouse says that learning to work
or do you hit on something that has no
successfully with a partner is key to
connection and make it connect?"
making beautiful Broadway music. A
producer will approach a team with
- Elizabeth Applebaum
Margot Leverett
Klezmer meets bluegrass.
M
argot Leverett doesn't travel
without her light bulbs. They're
the energy-saving kind, and a
few concertgoers will receive them as gifts.
Others are likely to get pamphlets about
global warming, a longtime concern of
Leverett's.
A founder and former member of the
Klezmatics, Margot Leverett is playing a
cool new sound these days. With her band
the Klezmer Mountain Boys, she's fusing
klezmer with bluegrass.
The idea may sound a bit strange: An
Eastern European Jewish melody meets
"I Am a Man of Constant Sorrow" from Oh
Brother, Where Art Thou?
But it works, Leverett says, because both
42
March 1. 2007
share a kind of "deep soulfulness."
Leverett began playing clarinet in her
elementary-school band. It's not that she
yearned to play the clarinet, but that's
what was available.
After performing for many years with the
Klezmatics, she moved on to a solo career.
Next in line would be the Klezmer Mountain
Boys.
She had "enjoyed playing fiddle tunes
— old-time music and Cajun songs — on my
clarinet for a long time," Leverett says.
"But it was just a hobby. I didn't think any-
one would want to hear it."
Then one day she started playing an
Appalachian song and a friend joined in
on his mandolin, performing a Jewish
Margot Leverett and the Klezmer Mountian Boys
Margot Leverett on page 45