| 12/21/2006 11:31:00 AM | Email this article • Print this article | Composer, conductor, performer. Which of these?
For the ultra-talented Marvin Hamlisch, the deciding factor is fun
When Marvin Hamlisch joins the Dayton Philharmonic Orchestra and the U.S. Army Jazz Ambassadors Orchestra on the stage of the Schuster Center January 5 and 6, he'll be doing what he loves. Well, one of the things he loves, at least.
And in his life Hamlisch has had a lot of things he could choose to love. A child prodigy, not quite seven, he became the youngest person ever accepted to the prestigious Juilliard School of Music. But he chose not to become a concert pianist.
"I realized I didn't love classical music, you know," Hamlisch recalls. "What I was loving was popular music, show music. I mean, I'd go to a show, and I'd just go crazy. And I think, to be really honest with you, I knew I was never going to be Horowitz."
His interest in jazz began when he was growing up, stimulated by jazz pianist Errol Garner. "I loved Errol Garner," Hamlisch states. "I would sit at the piano, and I would always emulate Errol Garner. I just really, really enjoy jazz."
His first success as a composer came when he was 21 years old with the pop hit Sunshine, Lollipops, and Rainbows followed by California Night, both Top 5 songs. So, why did he switch gears again and focus instead on writing music for film and theater? The publisher for his third pop song made Hamlisch wait for two hours. "And when I walked into his office I said to him, 'You know, if this is the best I can do, after I've had two songs that were in the Top 5, this is not the business for me, because I really don't like waiting two hours.'"
Asked to play a party in New York Cty for movie producer Sam Spiegel, Hamlisch accepted a job offer from Spiegel to go to California and write the score for The Swimmer, the first in a long line of scores for films, such as The Sting, The Way We Were, Ordinary People, and Sophie's Choice.
And Broadway plays like The Goodbye Girl and musicals like A Chorus Line.
Film success notwithstanding, "My first love has always been the theatre," Hamlisch notes. He had been an assistant to people in the theatre, writing dance music for shows, one of which, Henry, Sweet Henry, was directed by the man who later directed The Sting and choreographed by Michael Bennet, who later did A Chorus Line. "Making the right friends and the right combinations are just really a part of the necessity in this business. I mean, you can be really talented, but if you are not on the right team, you can have a lot of problems. And, thankfully, I met a lot of people who were really the best."
Hamlisch conduct the Pittsburgh Symphony, Buffalo Philharmonic, and San Diego Pops Orchestras and was the first person to be Principal Pops Conductor for the National Symphony Orchestra. So, does he prefer conductinging to writing?
"No. The thing about writing for me is that I am a writer on hire. Someone has to hire me to write. When I'm not writing, I can get very antsy, very fidgety. So the nice thing about conducting is that it gives me something to do that I enjoy doing when I'm not writing. And performing is more fun (than either writing or conducting). Writing is a job that I love, but I enjoy performing, because it lets me have a lot of fun."
Now what could be better than that?
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