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Hello, I'm Richard Ridge for Broadway World
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On Tuesday evening, February 20th, Manhattan Concert Productions will present Broadway Classics in Concert
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This star-studded event will feature songs from some of Broadway's most beloved
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award-winning composers and writers who we caught up with here at Sardi's
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right before the legendary night. And there was pistons Using, skipping a beat
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Singing a dream, a-la-la-la-la-la A strange insistent music Floating out heat, picking on steam, a-la-la-la-la-la
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The sound of distant thunder suddenly starting to fly Because the music of something beginning, an air of exploding
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Ragtime Ragtime Ragtime In the writing of Ragtime it was actually we auditioned to get the job
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So the requirement was writing four songs on spec, based on Terrence McNally's 65-page treatment
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So Lynn and I counted the number of days we had to write
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very intensive writing but it was a piece that I had loved for years and years and I loved the
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style of music. I loved that it was about large American themes and that said we had 11 working
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days to write four songs and by writing them I mean crafting the music, the lyrics. I did the
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vocal arrangements. We would record them. We would bring friends into the studio and we would say
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come Wednesday at two and sing something from Ragtime. And they would say, who do I play
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And of course, we didn't know because the song had not been written yet. So it was this kind of
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very exciting explosion of the writing of the music. Dr. O. had said Ragtime really is about
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America becoming itself It about metamorphosis So a lot of the songs were in a traditional musical These would be the transitions Actually they were the song moments themselves So there were many songs on trains on boats in cars
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getting to places. And creating the score was an amazing time for all of us
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And everyone was elevated by the quality of collaboration that was going on
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make them hear you that was one of the last songs that we wrote and we actually recorded the song
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before we had even workshopped it and we felt that the character of Cole House needed a final
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statement and I kept thinking of it as a western you know before the hero walks through the door
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and the hero makes a statement of what he believes and what he believes things could be
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And we knew it had to be a simple moment, but it had to be a powerful moment
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And the fact that so many different groups have seen themselves in that song
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out of all the songs we've written, that's one of the few that's actually had a life
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It was sung for the Nobel Peace Day. It was sung for Nelson Mandela Day by Aretha Franklin Aretha was singing it about Dr King A lot of LGBT groups have been singing it and it about believing in the power of your voice and the
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need to speak up and the need to say what's truthful. When you create a work of art, it
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speaks not only to the period where the piece is set, but also the time you create it in
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But whenever it's brought back or revived, it really looks at the time that you're currently living in
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So when we brought Ragtime back to Broadway after the Kennedy Center in 2009
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it was speaking in a totally different way to those audiences. And this past year I saw several beautiful productions
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One was at the Ford's Theater in Washington. in and to see the themes of immigration, the themes of racial and cultural unrest, it really
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spoke to those audiences so differently than it did 20 years ago when we first created the
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piece and it felt of the moment and I think that that's the thing that's most exciting
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if you're lucky to be able to write something that not only speaks to the time when you're
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writing but also to future generations
