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Saturday, Sep 06, 2008
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Rodgers and Charnin - An Interview with Martin Charnin |
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| Rodgers and Charnin - An Interview with Martin Charnin | ||
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by Miryam Gordon -
SGN A&E Writer Those who follow the Tonys, who know their theater and musicals in particular, know how lovely it is for Martin Charnin to have relocated to the Seattle area. If his name doesn't stir specific connections, the next word - Annie - will probably perk up your ears. Charnin was the director and wrote the music and lyrics with Charles Strouse for the famous musical. He won a couple of Tonys and a Grammy for it, too. Charnin's career has had him rubbing shoulders with what seems like every great singer and singer/actor in the last 50 years, including Leslie Uggams, Diahann Carroll, and Dionne Warwick. In 1963, he started collaborating in songwriting with Mary Rodgers, the daughter of the famous Richard Rodgers. He has some great stories about those days. I was able to interview him recently about a new work he is presenting through Showtunes! Theatre Company, called Rodgers && on October 6th and 7th at the Kirkland Performance Center. Rodgers had a long career writing music for musicals. It started well before his collaboration with Oscar Hammerstein where they produced shows like The King and I and Oklahoma. Charnin has been feeling like the world has forgotten some of Rodgers' great songs. He bemoans the fact that, nowadays, no one is writing lyrical, romantic melodies. "I'm bemoaning the loss of romance, the simple, quiet, elegant things that I grew up with. It's (music today) loud and it is not intelligent and it does not honor the concept of lyric writing. No rhymes. Rhyming is an art that, if it's not dead, it's on the operating table. I defy anyone writing today to do close to what Larry Hart (Lorenz Hart) was able to do in five songs. "I grant that the theater has changed dramatically and one has to catch up with it to stay functioning. I have no problem with that, but I have a problem with neglect. It upsets me that in a world that needs music desperately, the music they get is so unmelodic and unmusical. That's what this evening is. A tribute to how a great tunesmith wrote great songs." Charnin describes more about why he wanted to do a revue focused on Richard Rodgers. "It struck me that there's all of this constant celebrating of different composers, and while Dick gets his due with individual musicals he's done - King and I, South Pacific, Oklahoma - there's a bunch of basically unknown Rodgers that has left the scene, because I guess anything that seems old doesn't seem important. And those things he contributed with Larry Hart, preceding the world of American Idol seem to have disappeared and forgotten. You can't even find Rodgers and Hart in sheet music stores. All of the older, classic musicals have been relegated to a dusty counter in the back. Now, they've even been put together with sound track albums and sometimes there isn't even a musical theater area, at all. I guess I'm getting crusty. I think that music not only has to be remembered and recognized in whatever way it can, it has to be put into the consciousness again. The whole world of composing and lyric writing has changed dramatically. These days, the artist version has become more important than who wrote it and it's the artists' version that's known. Barbara Streisand's Somewhere. They don't know that the Gershwins wrote it and I think that's criminal. "I wanted to do an homage or tribute to probably the greatest American theater composer who ever lived. And I was fortunate to have been able to compose with him. I don't think anyone is going to sing You Pimp My Ride at their wedding. Where's that kind of moment? When someone sings Some Enchanted Evening or My Heart Stood Still& sing that at a wedding. "It turns out that nothing like this had been done with Rodger's music for a really long time; usually tributes are done with Rodgers & Hammerstein. I wanted to go into a whole career, to go deeper. The love of language that all of his collaborators had is rarely in evidence, there's very little lyrical poetry. Images and metaphors and the thrill of exquisite rhyme schemes. Where is it today? "I have the luxury of anecdotalizing this stuff. I was there for the last 30 years. The first show I ever wrote was with his daughter, Mary, in 1963. I wanted to become a lyric writer and director. So I was writing lyrics during my tenure on West Side Story. This is five singer/actors and me sitting by the side of the stage anecdotalizing. I'm kind of coming out of retirement. I tell a pretty good story and there are a lot of stories to tell." I figured he'd probably been asked this a million times, but still, I had to ask 'What comes first, the music or lyric?' He is unequivocal in his answer, "If you're doing a musical, what comes first is the book. If you don't have scenes you can celebrate, you're in trouble. Prior to Oklahoma, the books were silly and sort of settings for some interesting songs people had written. Once libretto became important and issues could be dealt with in the form of a musical, then you wrote the song. The text comes first. Who's singing it, why are they singing it? "Funnily enough, a lot of country music has more context than rock and roll has. Country music has become a repository of story songs. Not saying they're good stories or bad stories, just a beginning, a middle, an end. Rock and roll songs have a hook, but that's the repetitive thing you come back to, but they don't tell stories. A good song by Rodgers, (Frank) Loesser, (Lorenz) Hart, they wrote good stories, beginnings, middles, and ends, and good punch lines." So, what about Charnin's story songs? Does he hear music when he's writing words to a new song? "Oh sure! The way Rodgers worked, he had to write a complete first draft. He rarely wrote the music first. It was all text oriented. I hear rhythms. You hear structure, you hear where the stresses are. But you don't know if it's going to be a march or a soft shoe or a ballad. But it comes out of structure. That proceeds everything. In theater you have to go from page 8 to page 12 in a song otherwise it would be a scene. A musical is entirely different than a 3 minute record. "With Dick (Rodgers), you talk about it, I'd write a lyric and he'd come back with a tune. With Charles Strouse (Annie), we'd throw things (words, music) at each other and eventually it got sculpted into a song. For Annie, it came from the book. We knew we had to display in music what the kids were like and what their life was like. Again, it's the process. You can't just do the song and assume nothing continues. In theater things continue. On pop radio, a song plays and then it's over. Then somebody else's song comes on. In theater, you're there for 2 hours and you have to tell a tale and someone has to do something until the play is over." These days, does he like directing or writing more? He isn't sure it's such a good thing, but, "I won't do anything unless I both direct and write it anymore. I'll direct someone else's piece but won't only be the writer. I don't want to give up that control, I guess." He's currently got at least four projects he's working on, all at the same time. Aside from this production of Rodgers &&, a new work, Love Is Love will be mounted at the Village Theatre, November 30-December 16. It had some developmental productions done last year. He's also working on Robin Hood - The Legend Continues, picking up 20 years later where Robin and his Merry Men are now parents. Resting doesn't sound like it's in his vocabulary. I asked about when and why he relocated to Seattle. "In 2004, we (wife Shelly Burch) came together to Seattle to do Robin Hood and the third stage of Annie's tour scenery was built in Vancouver, BC or somewhere and then we did Robin Hood at the Village. What I do, I can do from anywhere. We loved Issaquah. I never saw a town or village where in 2 blocks are 2 sushi restaurants, 2 theaters, and 2 music stores. The air was wonderful and the mountains are terrific. I've reached a point where I loathe the humidity Back East. Seattle is a thriving theatrical community, and literate audience. I don't need to be on Broadway (to be happy). I can be in a 200 seat house and be as happy and satisfied as a 2000 seat house." After winning so many huge awards and working with such talented and famous people, I wondered if there was any particular project or outcome he is still waiting for. "No, I'm alive. I've made wonderful new friends here and & goals, happiness is a goal. Quiet. I don't know what I need. I suppose it would be nice if someone named a soft drink after me. I don't know. I just do it. I have no way of knowing. You can't predict what's going to happen. The world is moving too bloody fast to know that something you¬hing happens instantly, Annie took seven years from the time I thought of it to get on Broadway. Nobody believed it would work, until I found someone who believed. "Of course, I hope that I write things that will become successful. Almost enough. Enough is for an audience to agree with me. In theater, you live in a world of almost enough as opposed to enough and every now and again it gets to be enough because a 1,000 or 100,000 kids know my songs and&I'm so thrilled that so many kids have been introduced to songs I have written. Or for the Australian government to ask if they can use Tomorrow for a one minute commercial to sing about a hospital and sing about young children who are in terrible stages and the world is working to make things better. And I say please use it and they use it. That's what I want." I agreed. It can't get much better than that. |
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