100 New Yorkers of the 1970s Part 30
Nearly half of his works have been composed in the last 20 years; some are quite melodic; others are so atonal and eery that to some people they suggest the rhythm of the universe itself, or music from the stars. One remarkable aspect of his compositions is that no two are even vaguely alike; another is that they come in so many different instrumental combinations. Besides his piano works, he has composed for violin, organ, cello, chorus and solo voice. In addition, there are his string quartets, his rhapsodies, his nine symphonies, and _Montezuma_, one of the most distinguished operas ever written by an American.
Why write in so many forms? "You might say I'm paid to," he explained, ordering a second espresso and lighting his pipe. "Generally when I write a big work, it's for a specific purpose." His eighth symphony, for example, was written for the New York Philharmonic to commemorate the orchestra's 125th anniversary.
When I asked Sessions whether he was concerned that most of his works are not available on alb.u.ms, he said calmly, "I never have tried to get my works recorded or performed. I decided years ago that people would have to come to me; I wasn't coming to them. Things move a little more slowly that way, but one knows that everything one gets is perfectly genuine. ...
When I wrote my first symphony, Otto Klemperer said he wouldn't dare to conduct it. So I conducted it myself. It would be easy nowadays. Even the Princeton student orchestra played it a few years ago and didn't do too badly. Orchestra players get used to the idiom and people get used to listening. ... The only thing is," he added with a chuckle, "I keep getting ahead in that respect."
He was born in Brooklyn in 1896 and moved to Ma.s.sachusetts at age 3, but Sessions noted that "I do have some memories of the inside of the house." He wrote his first opera at 13 and graduated from Harvard at 18.
>From 1925 until 1933 he lived in Italy and Germany, supported by scholarships. Shortly after Hitler came to power, he returned to the U.S., and not long afterward joined the faculty at Princeton, where he remained until 1946. Then he taught at the University of California at Berkeley for eight years before returning to Princeton, where he remained until his mandatory retirement in 1965. Since that time he has taught at Juilliard.
He and his wife Elizabeth have been married for 42 years; they have two children and two grandchildren. Said the composer: "I learned that I had a grandson just a few hours after I'd gotten the citation from the Pulitzer Prize Committee, and the grandson was much more exciting -- with all due respect."
A resident of Princeton, New Jersey except for the one night each week that he spends on the West Side, Sessions is now eagerly awaiting the performance of his ninth symphony. It was completed in October and will be premiered in Syracuse shortly.
In his Princeton study he is kept constantly busy composing new works, writing letters and correcting proofs. "I don't have any hobbies," he remarked at the end of the interview. "I like good books, but I don't get much time to read them. If I go a few days without composing, I start to feel a little bit depressed."
EASTSIDER d.i.c.k SHAWN Veteran comic talks about _Love at First Bite_
5-19-79
d.i.c.k Shawn's name keeps cropping up these days. The last time he made a big splash in New York was two years ago, when his one-man show, _d.i.c.k Shawn is the Second Greatest Entertainer in the Whole Wide World_, played at the Promenade Theatre for 14 weeks. But last fall, he gained millions of new fans with his sparkling appearances on the ill-fated network variety show starring Mary Tyler Moore, which folded after the third week. A commonly heard criticism of the show was: less Mary and more Shawn.
In George Hamilton's recently released film, _Love At First Bite_, Shawn plays the role of Lieutenant Ferguson, who teams up with a psychiatrist in order to make war on Dracula. Also he recently played the lead in the new Russell Baker/Cy Coleman musical, _Home Again_. But these are only a few of the highlights of Shawn's career, as I discover in an interview with the 51-year-old comedian at his plush Upper East Side apartment.
The word "comedian," he quickly points out, is not quite accurate. "I think of myself as a comedy character," he explains, relaxing on his couch with a plate of croissants and bacon that his pretty a.s.sistant has just brought him. "In _Home Again_, I played seven characters. ... They ran out of money; it just closed out of town. It needs another four or five weeks of work. They plan to bring it back around September."
With his middle-age paunch and full head of tousled grey hair that resembles a bird's nest, Shawn has a definite comedic look about him, but he seldom smiles and never laughs during our long conversation. Still, his answers are both entertaining and revealing.
On Mary Tyler Moore's variety show: "That was a total mistake. They didn't know what they were doing there. I thought she was going to get the best writers and the best producers. But it was totally inadequate. I knew from the very first day that it wasn't going to work. ... The whole concept was wrong. Variety isn't Mary's forte. You have to get yourself rolling around on the ground a little bit. She's such a nice, sweet girl that she doesn't come off as a clown."
The basis of all humor, believes Shawn, "is hostility. But it has to be sweet hostility. ... I think people become comedians because they poke fun at pretentiousness. They usually come from meager backgrounds, and then they can look up and see the pomposity and the hypocrisy of many human beings. That's why there are no rich comics. A great many of them are Jewish or black -- because as a kid they were told they were part of a minority group. They learned to have a sense of humor about themselves: they had to, in order to survive. Humor is their way of getting even with mankind."
Shawn's own background lends credence to his theory. Born Richard Schulefand in the steel town of Lackawanna, New York, he grew up in a family that was hard-hit by the Depression. While serving with the Army following World War II, he ended up in an entertainment troupe.
"I was delighted," he recalls, "and when I got out, I decided to pursue it."
In the early 1950s, he secured his first professional engagement as a stand-up comic in Bayonne, New Jersey, and was paid $25 a night. Since then, he has never been out of work, and has constantly used only his own material for his solo act -- songs as well as sketches.
"I don't really do jokes," he explains. "I do situation characters. Although the thrust of my humor is serious, I have always taken chances. In my club act, for example, I always ended up pretending to die on stage, rather than taking bows. Two guys would come with a stretcher and carry me out."
Among his more memorable performances over the years: the successor to Zero Mostel in Broadway's _A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum_, the freakishly funny beach b.u.m in the Stanley Kramer film _It's A Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World_, and a cavorting Adolph Hitler in Mel Brooks' zany 1968 movie, _The Producers_.
Still, no project has gained him as much personal satisfaction as _The Second Greatest Entertainer in the Whole Wide World_. After the New York run, the show played to enthusiastic audiences in San Francisco and Los Angeles, and earned Shawn awards for both Best Performer and Best Playwright of the Year.
An Eastsider for the past seven years, he names Elaine's as his favorite local restaurant because "the food is good, and there's a simplicity about the place the attracts me."
Shawn describes himself as "disciplined, but not as disciplined as I should be. Because my work is loose, I'm always adding or changing. Nothing ever stays the same. But comedy is a very rewarding profession. It's nice to know that something that pops into your head can cause a reaction from total strangers who are paying you money to be entertained. I think that's the ultimate."
Probably best-known for _The Prod ucers_.
EASTSIDER GEORGE SHEARING Famed jazz pianist returns to New York
2-3-79
The scene was a Boston nightclub in the early 1950s. George Shearing and his quintet were scheduled to play the second set of the evening; the opening act was a piano/ba.s.s/drums trio. But as soon as the first group's pianist hit the keys, a groan went up from the audience. It was a bad box, as they said in those days. The management's promise of a tuning had not been kept.
The trio retired in defeat 15 minutes later, and the audience called for Shearing. When the blind pianist was led on stage, he announced, to everyone's astonishment, that he would open with a solo. But when he sat down at the instruments, a small miracle took place. The notes rang out with the clarity of crystal; Shearing's acute ear had told him which keys to avoid, and the precise amount of pressure to apply to the others so that the poor tuning would be camouflaged. Those who were present to witness Shearing's uncanny musicianship may never forget the experience.
But attending any of his performances is hardly less forgettable.
He's now playing each Tuesday through Sat.u.r.day evening at the Cafe Carlyle, 76th Street and Madison Avenue, and will remain there until March 3rd. His famous quintet is no more -- the group was disbanded in 1978 after 29 years -- but Shearing, accompanied only by ba.s.s player Brian Torff, proves himself a master showman as he performs his unique brand of jazz, tells funny stories between numbers, and sings in his lilting, playful manner.
"I'm on the road about 10 months a year," he told the Carlyle crowd the previous night, when I went there to catch his show. "And one thing I cannot tolerate is the mediocrity of hotels and motels in this country.
Once, on my second morning in a hotel, I called up the room service and said, 'Could you please bring me some breakfast? I'd like two eggs, one of them poached and the other scrambled; two pieces of toast, one barely warm and the other burned almost to a crisp; and a pot of half coffee and half tea.' The person on the other end said, 'I'm sorry sir, I don't think we can fill that order.' I said, 'Why not? That's what you brought me yesterday.'"
The next afternoon I paid Shearing a visit at his new Eastside apartment, where he recently moved from San Francisco. An extremely amiable, witty, and knowledgeable man who speaks with a soft British accent, he guided me around the large, tastefully furnished apartment with great ease, showing me his braille-marked tape collection, his audio calculator and his braille library. He described everything, from the drapes to the furniture, as if he had perfect vision. Blind since birth, he is an expert bridge player and a fine cook.
"I've just started to take cooking lessons," said Shearing, stretched out n the sofa with a smile hovering constantly on his face. "My wife and I are taking the same course. It's at the Jewish Guild for the Blind. Naturally it's better for me to take lessons from someone who knows the idiosyncracies of cooking without looking. ... I'm very interested in taste.
If I were to cook some peas, for example, I would be inclined to line the saucepan with lettuce and add a little sugar and mint."
Born 59 years ago in London, the ninth child of a coalman, he began plucking out radio tunes on the piano at the age of 6, and by his early 20s was considered one of England's finest jazz pianists. He moved to the U.S. in 1947, and two years later became an overnight sensation when his newly formed quintet recorded "September in the Rain," which sold 900,000 copies. To date, Shearing has recorded more than 50 alb.u.ms.
When he finally broke up his quintet, it was to allow himself more musical freedom. His playing is a combination of jazz, cla.s.sical and pop that calls for much improvisation.
His most famous original composition, "Lullaby of Birdland," came to him "when I was sitting in my dining room in New Jersey, eating a steak.
It took me only 10 minutes to write it. I went back to that butcher several times afterwards, but I never got the same steak."
A popular television personality, Shearing has appeared on all the major TV talk shows. In the past 15 years or so, he has also become a frequent performer with symphony orchestras, usually playing a piano concerto in the first half of the program and a jazz piece in the second half. Lionized in England, he returned to London last December and played a sellout concert at the 6500-seat Royal Albert Hall.
New York is where his American career began, and he decided to move back after spending 16 years on the West Coast, primarily because New York is far more centrally located for his extensive travelling. He chose the Upper East Side because "it would be difficult to realize we're in the heart of Manhattan, it's so quiet here." No sooner did he speak the words than, as if on cue, a baby in a downstairs apartment began to cry loudly.
"Does somebody have a plastic bag?" he deadpanned.
One of Shearing's main interests -- besides music, bridge and cooking -- is business law. He once took a course on the subject "because I wanted to know what the other guy's rights are. If I know what his rights are, I know what mine are." Speaking of his many disappointments in hotels and motels, he said, "Misrepresentation and false advertising can be beaten at any time anyone wants to fight it. I have never lost a battle on this score yet."
He might have added, had modesty not prevented it, that he has also lost no battles in the game of life.
WESTSIDER REID SHELTON The big-hearted billionaire of _Annie_
12-22-79
_Annie_, the touching musical about seven little orphan girls in New York City at Christmastime during the Great Depression, has been the Broadway show against which all others must be compared ever since it opened in April, 1977.
That year it won seven Tony Awards. Later the movie rights were sold for a record $9.5 million. There are now companies performing the musical in Los Angeles, Boston, Atlanta, England, South Africa, Australia, j.a.pan and Scandinavia. The alb.u.m has gone gold. Still a sellout virtually every night at the Alvin Theatre, its tickets are the hardest to obtain of any show in town.
Two of the three leading characters -- those of Annie and the cruel, gin sodden orphanage director Miss Hannigan -- have been twice replaced by new performers. But Oliver "Daddy" Warbucks, the bald-headed billionaire with a heart as big as his bank account, has been played since the beginning by Reid Shelton, a Westside actor long known for his portrayal of powerful figures on stage -- cardinals and kings, statesmen and presidents.
On December 23rd, just a few days short of its 1,200th performance, Reid will finally leave the New York company to star in _Annie_ on the West Coast. He has no plans, at this point, of giving up the role that earned him a Tony nomination for Best Actor.
"I've had two three-week vacations and I've missed four performances in almost three years," says Reid in his dressing room on a recent afternoon.
Easing his tall, bulky frame onto a sofa, he immediately reveals a personality that is warm, good-humored and eager to please. His broad, all-American features give distinction to his gleaming, newly shaved head.