2003-04 YEAR IN REVIEW
LEARNING FROM PERFORMERS
Learning From Performers: A Vital Part of the Undergraduate Educational Experience
Learning from Performers Visiting Artists: 2003-04
A Vital Part of the Undergraduate
During 2003-04, Learning From Performers, the OFAís visiting-artist program, sponsored or co-sponsored 49 events featuring 27 artists. From master classes with the Tony Award-winning composer/lyricist team of Stephen Flaherty and Lynn Ahrens, Messiaen Piano Competition winner Pierre-Laurent Aimard, and former George Balanchine prima ballerina Suzanne Farrell, to conversations with composer Randy Newman and cellist Yo-Yo Ma '76, programming involved an audience estimated at 6,650 (direct and indirect participation by students, faculty, administration, and the public).
These connections between professional artists and students have become a vital part of the undergraduate educational experience at Harvard since the program was first established by the OFA in 1975. The length and scope of the artistsí visits varyóthis year, opera singer Lorraine Hunt Lieberson taught a master class with three students and a standing-room-only crowd of observers, while pop and jazz music master Quincy Jones spent several days on campus talking to members of the Harvard Jazz Band, addressing student arts leaders at a Faculty Club lunch, discussing his film scores with a professor from the Department of Visual and Environmental Studies, recording an interview with a student for Harvard radio station WHRB-FM, and participating in an evening of music and conversation before a near-capacity crowd at Sanders Theatre. Whether itís for two hours or two weeks, the interaction always produces a tangible spark of learning that enhances and enriches the undergraduate experience.
Programming this year also included specific links to the college curriculum: Director Ed Zwick '74 discussed his film The Last Samurai with Prof. Harold Bolithoís Literature & Arts C-42 Core course Constructing the Samurai; video and performance artist Wynne Greenwood performed and discussed her work with students enrolled in Visual and Environmental Studies Visiting Lecturer Elisabeth Subrinís VES 193 course History of Video Art; legendary musical-theater lyricist and librettist Betty Comden met with students of Prof. Carol Oja's Music course The Broadway Musical(see article on next page); and Leon Gruenbaum '85 demonstrated his self-invented, relativistic computer keyboard in Visiting Prof. Eric Chaslowís Music 167 course Electro-Acoustic Composition.
Lynn Ahrens, lyricist/librettist (Ragtime, Once on This Island, Seussical)
Pierre-Laurent Aimard, pianist; 1973 Oliver Messiaen Competition first-place winner
Augusto Boal, actor/director; founder, Theatre of the Oppressed
Jason Robert Brown, composer (Parade, Songs for a New World, The Last Five Years)
Betty Comden, lyricist/librettist (Wonderful Town, On the Town, Singin’ in the Rain, The Will Rogers Follies)
Stephen Flaherty, composer (Ragtime, Once on This Island, Seussical)
Suzanne Farrell, former New York City Ballet prima ballerina
Wynne Greenwood, video/performance artist (Tracy + the Plastics)
Philip Grenadier, jazz trumpeter
Leon Gruenbaum ‘85, electronic musician/composer; keyboard inventor
Jim Hall, guitarist; 2004 National Endowment for the Arts Jazz Master
Quincy Jones, musician/composer/producer
Tom Jones, vocal coach
Robert Kraft ‘76, music producer/composer; President, Fox Music Inc.
Lorraine Hunt Lieberson, opera singer
Werewere Liking, actor/author
Yo-Yo Ma ‘76, cellist
Robert Mann, violinist; founder, Juilliard String Quartet
Natalie Mugavero, jazz percussionist
Saqlain Naqvi, poet/vocalist
Randy Newman, composer/vocalist (“Sail Away,” “Short People”; scores for Toy Story, Toy Story 2, Seabiscuit, Monsters Inc.)
Bob Nieske, jazz bassist/composer
Richard Notkin, ceramist
Ramona Peters, ceramist
Jody Pinto, environmental artist
Janet Sung ‘96, violinist
Jay Schieb, theater director
Broadway Betty Comden
by Lesley Bannatyne
“The light sustains me. The light and the view,” smiles Betty Comden as she looks from her 26th floor apartment across the rooftops of Lincoln Center toward the Hudson River. Up here in the pink apartment, traffic noise and the jumble of buildings that are the Upper West Side are muted. Comden—Tony- and Grammy-award winning Broadway lyricist—is hosting Professor Carol Oja’s undergraduate seminar in musical theater for lunch and an interview. The students have come prepared with questions and are eager to talk.
“These students,” says Oja by way of introduction, “are passionate about musical theater.”
“Oh?” quips Comden wryly. “Well then let’s get a barn and put on a show!”
Along with Adolph Green, Betty Comden wrote lyrics for “Just in Time,” “The Party’s Over,” “New York, New York,” and Wonderful Town (1953), which was revived last season at the Hirschfeld Theater a few blocks down the street. She was a member of the Revuers, a nightclub act which also included Judy Holliday, and she collaborated with Green on the screenplay for Singin’ in the Rain (1952), the lyrics for Peter Pan (1954), book and lyrics for On The Town (1944), and acted on stage and in films and television.
Comden is 85 now and happy the class has come to her home, rather than asking her to travel to Harvard, which had been the original plan. She’s comfortable here, surrounded by her things. They’re amazing things…signed photographs from Groucho Marx, Fred Astaire, and John F. Kennedy. Tony awards, a Kennedy Center Lifetime Achievement Medal, a Grammy. A signed Picasso, an original Chagall, a Matisse. Her piano.
The students pack around Comden’s dining room table, asking her about training, creative process, collaboration, especially with her longtime partner, Adolph Green, who died two years ago.
“Adolph and I worked every day for 60 years. He came at 1:00, and we worked from 1 to 5. We worked every minute when we were in the middle of a project. The piano was in my home, so we worked there.”
Yet no matter how close the working relationship, there were things Comden never knew he knew.
“About 1954-55, we were working in Hollywood on a movie and Cyd Charisse had to recite a list of heavyweight champions. I was going to look it up at the MGM library. But Adolph recited the whole list of 50 champions off the top of his head. And he was right. I checked!”
Comden stresses how important it was that songs come at the right time in a show: “Song has to come naturally out of what characters want to say to each other and has to further the story. We’d find a situation that needed music, decide what form—get together with Lenny, and think about music and lyrics at the same time.”Lenny is Leonard Bernstein.
“There’s no one in the world like Lenny and there won’t be again ever I think,” muses Comden. “He had a classical background.”
Comden’s interests, too, were originally classical. She spent many weekends as a girl attending productions staged by the Metropolitan Opera at the Academy of Music in Brooklyn in the late 1920s and 1930s: “I loved La Bohème. I don’t care what anyone says. And I loved Wagner—for about two years I sang the leitmotifs around the house.”
The questions come faster and faster:
Did people think she and Green were married?
“We never thought we were. That’s the important part.”
What does she think of musical theater now?
“If Steve [Sondheim] is writing, it’s a wonderful place.”
How is it different now?
“It doesn’t start off any differently. Someone thinks it up and then everyone contributes. You hope everybody gets along and has the same idea of how it’s going.”
What was it like to write roles for herself?
“It’s not easy.”
For people she knew?
“It’s good to know strengths or weaknesses of a performer; you can write to those limitations.”
Do you have to know someone to get anywhere in this business?
“It was always about knowing people. Some people stand out because what they have to offer is outstanding.”
Did she ever experience prejudice being a woman?
“It was rare. Maybe because I had a male partner, maybe because I’d been performing so long that they knew me. Theater is one of the places where there is little prejudice. There’ve always been actresses, female opera singers.”
What was her worst experience?
“One New Year’s Eve—we were fired in the middle of the night after one show.” (“I’m just trying to discourage you,” she winks.)
Her happiest moment?
“Hearing Judy [Holliday] sing ‘The Party’s Over.’ Stella Adler said there were two people you shouldn’t try to imitate—Judy was one. Judy didn’t have a style—she did what she did so artfully you didn’t think of it as a performance. When she did Born Yesterday (1946) I went to see the performance again and again, and it moved me immediately.”
Is she working on anything now?
Comden helped cast the Wonderful Town revival, and she’s writing a book about her collaboration with Green.
The visit ended with students Michael Mitnick ‘06, Pedro Kaawaloa, and Susan Merenda ‘07 (accompanied by Ben Green ‘06) singing a combination of their own tunes, a song with lyrics by Comden and Green, and another by Fats Waller.
“I can’t believe I’m playing on Betty Comden’s piano,” said Mitnick. “I wonder if she’ll autograph one of the books we read for the class!”
Of course she would, and did, along with signing CDs, notebooks, anything the students could find so that each one left with a memento. And in turn, Prof. Oja gave Comden a Harvard sweatshirt on behalf of the class, in gratitude for their visit.
One senses it’s not just the light through her windows and the view that keeps her going. It’s the theater, the music, the city, her art, friends, photos, memories, and a chance to connect with young people.
It all sustains her.
Lesley Bannatyne is Communications Coordinator for the Harvard Department of Music.
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