Jack Everly Transcript
Leah Roseman:
Hi, Jack Everly. I'm so glad you could join me today.
Jack Everly:
Hi, I'm thrilled to be here. Great to see you again.
Leah Roseman:
I really have missed seeing you on our podium and hearing your voice and working with you.
Jack Everly:
I have missed it so much. It's hard to verbalize. Truly making music is so good for our souls and for the most part it's been a lonely trip regarding that coming together and making music and being joyous the way we always love to do.
Leah Roseman:
Now you are a pianist. Have you been playing more now that you've been home during this time?
Jack Everly:
A little bit more. Yeah. It was my instrument at Indiana University along with other things as a split degree and all that. So yeah, it was helpful, I must say. I started looking at things by Albanese and my Beethoven sonatas that I hadn't played for decades, and it was fun to do that. And because I started playing those Albanese songs, I orchestrated one and we actually got to perform it and stream it with the Baltimore strings. So that was fun. Very fulfilling.
Leah Roseman:
Have you done any other arrangements during this time?
Jack Everly:
Well, actually, I'm working on several now because we are planning the annual Yuletide celebration. We were to have had our 35th anniversary of that great show that we do in Indianapolis every year, but obviously life intervened and even though we had written most of it on paper, I hadn't begun orchestrating it. So we've been having workshops once again, and the plan is to go forward. We're going to open first week of December as always, and finish on December 23rd as always, and get in about, I don't know, 35 performances in that amount of time. So I'm orchestrating rather in a frenzied way right about now, just to get these things done this summer and get to the copiest.
Leah Roseman:
Yeah, I've heard about that Yuletide celebration. In addition to everything else you do, you have a few sort of grand events that punctuate your years normally, like the July 4th and Memorial Day.
Jack Everly:
Yes, exactly. Yeah. And those are both done in DC telecast on PBS, as you all know. And this is my 11th year doing those two particular shows, and that's another set of requirements for a conductor when you're doing live TV. For the past two years that's been virtual, that's probably a word I never want to hear again, virtual or maybe zoom, but it's allowing us to be together. So for now, that's okay. But this year and last year, we had to do them all backwards, which means what's the duration of this particular piece by Grieg and or Mozart and or Alan Silvestri, for example. What do you want lengthwise? So I would then record with the forces from the N S O, different durations of the same piece of music, so that when they went into the editing room after the fact, they could put it all together. They had what they needed. That's the exact opposite of what you do when you're doing it live, of course. So not particularly rewarding to do it that way, but that's life these days. And hopefully this is the last year we'll have to do that.
Leah Roseman:
So not everyone listening will be in North America. So NSO is the National Symphony Orchestra.
Jack Everly:
Yes. Thank you for that. Yes, exactly.
Leah Roseman:
And are there parallels, because I played the National Arts Centre Orchestra here in Canada. Are there parallels with those institutions or just the names are similar?
Jack Everly:
Well, in a way, yes. The Arts Centre in Ottawa was built in the, was it mid sixties, I believe?
Leah Roseman:
Late
Jack Everly:
Sixties. Late sixties. Thank you. And Lincoln Center. And the Kennedy Center, these were all built in the early to mid sixties, and they all have their own orchestras. So there is a similarity with that. There was this, especially in North America, a huge boon of building arts complexes. And so they would have opera houses and concert halls and theaters all in one complex. That was a big deal in the sixties, and we're all benefiting from that wonderful visionary idea that came from that time. So yeah, there are similarities.
Leah Roseman:
So your career as a conductor I think is quite unique, wouldn't you say?
Jack Everly:
I think every conductor would tell you his or hers is unique.
Leah Roseman:
Of course. Yeah,
Jack Everly:
I understand what you're saying. I started after I graduated IU School of Music and moved to New York City, I wanted to do Broadway musicals. That was my passion among many other passions of music. I mean, I, growing up, I was the kid who loved to listen to classical music, and my parents kept throwing these popular music and Broadway show albums my way, even though I was listening to Beethoven and Mozart and Haydn just because I was this precocious little bratt. I loved listening to that stuff. But they said, here, listen to Mary Martin sing South Pacific, or the Sound of Music or whatever. So from a very early age, I had two entirely different genres of music coming at me, and I just absorbed them all and grew up loving them. So when I got to IU, it was, what am I going to major in?
Okay, it'll be piano. That was my instrument. My mom played the piano, and I started lessons growing up in that small town in Indiana. So I took that instrument and the string bass, which was something I had taught myself so I could be in the high school orchestra. I studied those at Indiana University as well as set design because I wanted to be Oliver Smith. Oliver gave us the original sets for such shows as West Side Story, my Fair Lady, Camelot, hello Dolly. And I just thought visually that was something I really wanted to do. So all these were parallel studies while I was at IU School of Music, and I must say they were a bit perplexed with me. I don't think they quite knew what direction I was going in, but they were very helpful and they tried to guide me and it was a wonderful experience.
So I moved to New York City after that, sorry for that digression. And in three years I got a big break, and it was as the assistant music director on a tour that was going to end up on Broadway of Hello Dolly with Carol Channing, the original Dolly. The original production had been in 1964, and this was in 1977 or eight, something like that. So for three months we were on the road and I was playing the piano and conducting every eighth performance on the road. Three months into it, the conductor said, bye, I've done this. I've had it. I'm going back to Europe and I'm going to do my opera career, which is what his passion truly was. And therefore, I remember, this was going to happen, no one knew who the music director was going to be as we were approaching the Broadway engagement. And Carol, I guess, felt very comfortable with the way I conducted the show once a week. And so she decided that I was going to be the new music director, and that was my big break. So thanks to Carol Channing, I ended up on Broadway at the age of 26 conducting Hello Dolly, which I will never forget as long as I live. It was just one of those major things. She was a great lady, wonderfully crazy, but sly, a fox and so knowledgeable about everything of the theater, and I learned a lot from her.
Leah Roseman:
What kind of things did you learn from her?
Jack Everly:
All things theatrical, and one thing, this is kind of hard to describe. One thing she said to me, we were in a performance one day and she changed so much of the rhythm and the timing and everything leading up to a particular musical number. And so I'm listening to this, watching this thinking, wow, this is different. What on earth is she doing? And I'm ready to give the downbeat to start this number. Anyway, it was all very different. And so after the show that day, I went to her and I said, Ms. Channing, I'm curious, just so I know for the future, what was that all about? And she said," Oh, well, I'm so glad you asked me that because, (and I'll dispense for that accent right now.) She said," The audience just wasn't with us, and I was sensing this, and it was a matinee just said, so they were thinking about lunch or shopping or anything, but of our performance, she said, and I was just getting them. "
I was listening to them not be engaged, and that was news to me. I thought, what on earth does that mean? She said," no, no, no, no, no. I needed to help them focus on us on stage. And that's why I changed the rhythm and my staging, and I just knew you were watching. So I knew there wouldn't be any problems leading into the music number." And so from that day forth, as odd as I thought that was at the time, I have always kept in mind, listen, not only to the great musicians that I'm working with, but listen to the audience because I'm the one that always has to turn around and start talking to the audience and engaging them before we do the next piece. And that taught me so very much. Always listen to the audience as well as the music that's being played so beautifully. Listen to the audience. They may not want to hear you ramble on Jack for five minutes about the next piece. Just sometimes you need to get there, go there, turn around and let them hear this fantastic orchestra. I will never forget that
Leah Roseman:
I have heard you do that, because normally when you do shows with us, it's three nights. And yeah, there's definitely a difference. And I'll think, oh, he cut that off, and we'll enjoy hearing different anecdotes because you're so knowledgeable and you're such a great storyteller, and it's not just about the music in these shows. What kind of research do you do? I know you just have accumulated a lot of knowledge, but you must read up or talk to people.
Jack Everly:
I'm always reading about, I'm reading biographies, historical things about either music or all things show business, especially the Broadway musical and Broadway composers, et cetera. I'm always reading. I just find it fascinating. I've read so much that it's not always illuminating these days when I read yet the 10th biography on Jerome Kern or someone like that. I mean, it's all there. It's all kind of the same. But I do find it fascinating. And over the years, I've just absorbed all of it. So hopefully it stays here. And I think you'll remember we were doing the film with the orchestra of an American in Paris, and I'm getting ready to do the next number. "Our Love is Here to Stay" with Gene Kelly and Leslie Carone, and they were about to do the song and dance number on the river Seine. And suddenly I realized, although I'm hearing the dialogue leading me into the next number, I'm looking at my video screen and I realize the imagery has frozen, and I looked up to the big screen there and the NAC I thought, okay, it's frozen. It's not just my video monitor, but the dialogue is going on.
What are we going to do here? So I look over to Stage right to Toby Hunt and just give her one of those looks that I often can give only her because peering around, she's realizing this. And of course what I don't know is backstage. They're going out of their minds trying to figure out why it's not working. So finally, I just motioned to her and do this, and she tells them, kill it, kill it. So it goes off the screen, goes off my video monitor, and the audience is chuckling, and I turned to them and smile, and it gets a bigger laugh. I mean, they all know, okay, hey, it's tech, anything can happen. I said, so what do you want to know? That was the beginning of five or eight minutes. It seemed like an eternity of talking about everything regarding Gershwin, Gene Kelly, Leslie Carone, Oscar Levant, and I could do it.
And that's very comforting in moments like that because it's all up here, just because of all the years of reading and understanding and knowing about these people in the creative process for the musicals and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. So it was kind of fun to have that moment. Some other people might've absolutely panicked and walked off stage, and that would've been very uncomfortable for the audience. But in the realm that we work in, the Pops milieu, it's all about being entertained sometimes on a profound level, sometimes on a very superficial level. And that's okay. So I'm glad I had that up here somewhere. So I instantly started coming up with all the factoids and the stories. Finally, after about eight minutes of that, I looked at Toby in the wings again, and she gave me one of those. I went, okay, well, we're going to have an early intermission and I'll see you in about 20 minutes. Enjoy the popcorn. And I walked off stage and that was it. We were two numbers from the end of the first act anyway, so sure enough, during intermission, they fixed it and we went on and the audience just adored it. I mean, they love being part of the glitches, if you will. Something goes wrong, maybe a singer doesn't come in. They kind of love it. It says, "yo, it's live! This is why we're here."
Leah Roseman:
Recently, I was reading about the Great American Songbook, all those great M G M movies and stuff, and the word song plugger came up.
Jack Everly:
Yes.
Leah Roseman:
And I read that George Gershwin was a song plugger.
Jack Everly:
Yes, he was. Yes. So many of our wonderful composers of great song worked at the publishing houses initially. This is where the term Tin Pan Alley came from. It was so noisy with all these piano, it was cacophanous sound, all these pianos going a mile a minute in all these different rooms on one floor, two floors, three floors, that it all sounded like absolute chaos if you were to walk by it. And somehow Tin Pan Alley came into the vernacular because of all of this. Yes, Gershwin was definitely a song plugger. And it really meant that you were given a copy of the sheet music of this latest song that they were publishing at Whitmark or Remicks or whomever, and you were told to basically sell it to people who would walk in and want to listen to a song before they bought the sheet music for probably 20 cents. I mean, can you imagine anything like that today? No, of course not. It was very personal and all about salesmanship. And let's face it, if you're the genius George Gershwin and you're playing everyone else's music all day long, every now and then you're going to throw in one of your own. Sure enough, that's how it got published by Remicks.
Leah Roseman:
I just wanted to circle back to the beginning of your career. I've heard these stories before. You're in set design. I'm curious about a couple things. Has that part of your creative life kept on a private at all, like drawing or any kind of design work, or do you wish it had?
Jack Everly:
Part of me wishes it had, because it's a different part of your brain. There you are given an entire empty space of a stage, now create the reality and then do it based on the reality of the playwright or the composer or the whatever. So you are interpreting other people's creativity and you're channeling that into your own creativity and you're creating an environment. So I do miss doing that. I had a great time doing that. I loved it very much. And no, I haven't kept that up because I've been very fortunate and that music has simply taken over my life and wonderfully, so I'm very gratified by that. I'll have to say that my office space, sometimes different rooms in the house, I would like to say benefit from all those years of stage design. How's that?
Leah Roseman:
And did you take conducting courses at IU?
Jack Everly:
I had one undergraduate course for a conducting course. Yeah, so don't tell that to anybody. Well,
Leah Roseman:
You learned on the job like a lot of great conductors.
Jack Everly:
Yeah, everything I did from Broadway musicals, which that lasted the whole Broadway musical thing for me, lasted about seven or eight years, one after another after another. So I learned a lot about theatrical pacing musicals, yes. But then I was offered American Ballet Theater when Nikko was running the company, and that's where I really learned the finer points of conducting and especially conducting in a symphony orchestra in a theatrical situation. That's where I learned a rehearsal technique that says, please be concise, please be precise, concise, et cetera, and clear, because if you're not clear, obviously no one has an idea what you really want. And ballet performances, even if it's Romeo and Juliet for seven shows in a row, those change from night to night because the dancers are different. The principal couples are not the same from one night to the next, and every one of 'em wants something slightly different.
Leah Roseman:
And we musicians, we can't see what they're doing. I'm
Jack Everly:
Just going to say that. Yes, and the world and the world of opera and musical theater, you can hear it. You can hear the phrase coming at you, but not in ballet. All you can hear is someone clump clump and you better hope they don't fall down. So it's all about a conductor's body language and being clear and giving them visual context because you've got your eyes as a ballet conductor on stage at the musicians and somewhat in your score, but you'd better know that score pretty much from memory. Otherwise, there's no time. It taught me a lot. I was with ballet theater for, oh golly, 14 years I think had a great experience.
Leah Roseman:
When you toured with them, you would be with different orchestras as well, right?
Jack Everly:
Yeah. And that's how the door was opened to me to return to some of those orchestras, which is the highest compliment you can be with an orchestra once and being asked to return is the highest compliment. This means you did something right and they want to see more of it, at least for a bit. So that's how that started to happen.
Leah Roseman:
We do. I don't think this is any secret. I'm sure other orchestras do that too. We fill out questionnaires when we have new conductors. Oh, yes. And one of the questions is, would you like to see them again? Yes or no? Or maybe, and then would you like to see them on a regular basis? So that's like,
Jack Everly:
Yes. But for lunch, yes. Conductor evaluations, one sees those little black boxes everywhere.
Leah Roseman:
I'm curious, in terms of tricks of the trade, there would be specific tempi. Let's see, for different soloists, when you're conducting ballet or musical theater or whatever, would you use a metronome knowing or just go with your gut?
Jack Everly:
I would go with my gut. It's funny, we never use metronomes at American Ballet Theater, but they do use them for New York City Ballet because George Balanchine was very explicit about it needs to be in this realm of metronome markings, and that's the way it's going to be. So that's how long it takes someone to go from here to there as far as whatever ballet position that might be. And that's what it needs to be to have that ballet look and sound the same every time someone sees it. It's very different with a BT, because Ballet theater was based on theater as opposed to pure classical choreography. And that theater could be the Russian classics like Swan Lake, sleeping Beauty Nutcracker, et cetera. Or it could be Rodeo and Fall River Legend and all the stuff that American Ballet Theater commissioned from the forties onwards. But it was always theater. And that's open to a different interpretation night after night after night. So the idea of metronomes in the pit on the conductor's podium never came into being.
Leah Roseman:
And speaking of timing, you alluded earlier to doing movies with Symphony Orchestra, which those who've been able to attend such productions are always amazed, but some people listening to this won't have seen that. So there's very complicated. I want you to talk about the analog clock and the lost scores, and then also they're able to remove the original music, but keep the voices in there, which is also amazing.
Jack Everly:
Yeah. There are a couple of different ways to approach presenting a film with live orchestra. One of them was, I think the first time films were offered to orchestras was a series of films that John Goberman produced. John, who's still with us, and very active today, was the original producer for Live from Lincoln Center on P B S. And he went on to create an evening at the Oscars, which was film clips such as Wizard of Oz, something from Ben Hur, something from an American in Paris, as an example, Citizen Kane and the correct music that went with those clips. And the way they would do it and offer it to conductors and orchestras around the world would be that on one video monitor, the conductor would see an analog clock with a second hand. That obviously goes around and around and around. And on the top of every two measures, it says the time where you're supposed to be if you're in sync with the film.
Okay, so that's up the conductor. No one has anything else to rely upon. Just please be with me and then we'll be fine. Especially if you're trying to coordinate with that with someone singing as an example. So that's one way of doing it, and it has its pluses and minuses, the analog clock thing. The other way, which is much more common, came from the forties when Max Steiner invented what became known as the click track. This enables people to very precisely synchronize music with the film, whether it be in the Hollywood studio originally, as they're putting the music to the film for the very first time, especially for cartoons, as you can well imagine, where those tempos change on a dime and they would record them in sections. Well, when you're doing it live for an audience with a symphony orchestra and the film up there, perhaps the most precise way to coordinate all this is indeed with a click track. Well, musicians don't like click tracks, and I know why, because I'm the one that has to wear the in-ear device that allows me to hear the click track. So as you've known before, every rehearsal of a film, I'll plead with people saying, please don't be behind the beat. That gives us this marvelous cushion of musicality. But it also takes us right out of the film, if we're playing Darth Vader, when Princess Leia is on the screen, we haven't synchronized it properly.
So usually after pleading with people, they take, they have all sympathy for me, and they will indeed be on the beat precisely where it needs to be because I've also said, alright, you're not on the click track. You could be. I could require it, the studio could require it. Fine. That is mine to bear, as it were. So all night long I'm hearing at various tempos, and it's very helpful. Yes, and I see what's called streamers go vertically from left to right across my video monitor, and that tells me Go, or if it's going across, it tells me to stop or slow down. So you have redundant information coming to the conductor, which is very helpful. Click track the visuals, and in the upper right hand corner, you actually see time code. So you have all this going on, and it's very helpful to me to absorb all of it at the same time, because these things happen very quickly. You could do eight minutes of really high speed chase music for Back to the Future or something in Star Wars, for example. And there's no time to think you just do it, and it's all subliminal with the click and the streamers and the time code and go.
Leah Roseman:
So when you're studying those scores and the movies, are you conducting along? Are you bothering with that or just in your mind?
Jack Everly:
It's a process for me. When I get my scores, I start marking them and I mark 'em very explicitly, phrases slow down, and then I go through and mark very large print whatever I'm supposed to be as far as minutes and seconds. So if it's one minute 19 here at Measure three, I'll put that large, much larger than how they print it, just so I can see as it flies by, because I know that's where I'm supposed to be arriving at that moment in the film anyway. And then I start listening to how it goes together in the film after I've studied the music, I study the music first, therefore I know the music. I make myself sing it as I'm going through it, just so I can do that automatically. And then I start applying the technicality, if you will, of following the film, being with the film and how it differs from one shot into the next.
Leah Roseman:
Are these scores, reduced scores or the full whatever, 20 lines you
Jack Everly:
See? Oh, they're huge. Yes, yes. No, they're not reduced. Thankfully. You mentioned lost scores, and that's kind of a passion of mine too. My dad first took me to see Jeanette McDonald and Nelson Eddie when I was a toddler. They revived a lot of the operettas from M G M, and they came to our very small town cinema. And strangely Mom didn't go because she was at home with my sister and she was the musician of our family but Dad took me on Wednesday evenings to see the likes of Rosemarie, the Chocolate Soldier, the Student Prince, the Merry Widow, you name it. And that's how I first had the experience of seeing a story and film and actors and choreography and heard those beautiful melodies. So that was a lasting impression as well. But in a way, I'm digressing. It's the original musical films of M G M that really did it, like Wizard of Oz singing in the Rain American in Paris, you name it, they did it.
And these were not Broadway shows. They have since become Broadway shows, but these were original film musicals. Okay. Well, in the seventies, the studio was having a hard time. Most studios were, and unfortunately, instead of saving all the music, they decided to trash it just to get some room. And what used to be the incredible M G M Music library, so scores like Ben Hur and Singing the Rain and all these great, great films, all the music orchestra parts and scores went into trash bags and were tossed out, and it became landfill somewhere. It was a huge loss.
And the only way you can do the original versions of these things now is to reconstruct them, because what did survive were piano vocal copies. They needed those to, if they needed to re-edit for a new digital format, for example, they needed something to stare at while they were doing that. So these rudimentary scores that are vocal lines, piano lines do exist. And if you listen to the originals and you get permission to stare at the piano vocals, you can reconstruct back into full score and then have it all copied and put on the music stands. Once again, that in essence is what John Goberman has done for an American in Paris Wizard of Oz singing in the Rain. It's just another process that frankly we shouldn't be having to do if we had valued this legacy earlier on. But that's what you do.
Leah Roseman:
And just one more technical question about the conducting. I've often wondered this. So people who aren't used to orchestras don't understand why we normally have a delay. If we play a Mahler Symphony, all 70 people on stage, we want to breathe together. So there's a natural delay after we see the beat. And it's not that we're being obnoxious, we just work better that way. And I'm sure different orchestras have a different delay factor that gets built in, but of course, we try to be with your stick in situations like this, but I know that you have to beat ahead still because it's not immediate, right? You have to give it. We have to respond. So you must have to be beating slightly ahead of that click track.
Jack Everly:
There are times when you're right. I do that. And so you can imagine what that does to one's brain. So your hearing as a conductor, you're hearing that's where the downbeats and the whatever beat should be, but you're actually conducting a little bit ahead of it to get the orchestra to be right where it's supposed to be. And if it gets off of where it's supposed to be, and the meters are changing right and left, by the way, so the click track goes on very unforgivingly, and you're hearing it as a conductor, you're hearing the click and you're not there. You're not there. You're three beats somewhere else, either ahead because the orchestra just sounded so fantastic. They got faster or they got a little bit slower. And you have to figure out as a conductor how you're going to bring 'em together at this crucial point of maybe a film edit or suddenly a lightsaber shows up or something, or someone starts singing. There will be huge dance portions prior to someone singing at the end of a ballet. Well, you have to be there when that voice comes in on the track. So there are all sorts of things you do as a conductor when you're trying to synchronize to compensate for what may have just happened.
It's death defying for a conductor to be in that position. But I don't know, as someone told me, most people in the performing arts are adrenaline junkies anyway, so you live for the thrill and the excitement of hopefully making it happen.
Leah Roseman:
There's a person who, a very loyal subscriber here in Ottawa, and they always sit right in the middle, in front of the conductor first row and seem to know the words to every song. No matter what genre we're doing, I'm always inspired by them. And maybe it's a Thursday night and I'm really tired from my other life and being a mom and teaching and whatever, and then I show up and I see that person and they're just so happy. I want to play for them. And I was thinking, of course, you have so much more adrenaline as a conductor, but I mean doing ballet theater, so many runs or Broadway, so many, many repetitions of Hello Dolly. I'm sure you did
Jack Everly:
Two years, eight shows a week.
Leah Roseman:
Yes. Okay. So what's your trick for bringing that freshness?
Jack Everly:
There's a thing in the theater that it's a mindset, and again, initially I heard it from Carol Channing because that was my first big break, but you can hear it from everyone in the theater, and that is, it's the audience's first time.
Therefore, it's our responsibility to give them everything we've got because it's their first time, whatever it is. Maybe it's their first time or their hundredth time seeing Romeo and Juliet or Ion or any of these things. But it may be the 200th time I've conducted a three hour Prokofiev ballet. It doesn't matter. One can never be, it's even more of a responsibility if you're on the podium and you then turn to the audience and talk to them. You must bring them along for the journey of that evening. That evening is a two hour musical journey, and you're taking them along with all of us, listening to it, thinking about it, and that's my responsibility to get them to think about it perhaps in a new light, give them context. That's always what I do. Context. You're about to hear this, think of this perhaps as you're listening to it. And then I tell them something, whether it be a story, a background or something about the composer, or maybe the original singer or something like that, how it came to be or just what this piece means in the legacy of popular music, something. And sometimes I do it differently every night, as you know, I don't always tell the same story or the same anecdote, so it keeps me on my toes too.
Leah Roseman:
So I know you've worked with many legendary artists, and the name Ella Fitzgerald came up once with the San Francisco Symphony.
Jack Everly:
Yes, yes, yes. Wow. That was one of my earliest experiences, which I will never forget. I still have the ad for the San Francisco Chronicle announcing Ella Fitzgerald with the San Francisco Symphony and little tiny print Jack Everly. So that of course made my day so early on. She was, oh my goodness, what an experience that was. Of course, it was sold out and it was Davies Hall, and I was to escort her onto the stage, and I was like, oh God. We'd had the rehearsal. We were ready to do the show that night, and she turned to me just before I think the orchestra was tuning, and so the side door was open. We were about to go out, and she looked at me and she looked out there, she said," oh my goodness, look at all those people."" I said, yes, you should be very excited," because I can't believe I was saying this to the great Ella Fitzgerald, but she seemed a little disturbed by all those people. I said, "and they've all come to see you." She looked at me again, and she looked out there, she said," let's go have a good time. I went, yes. And we walked out together and the audience went crazy, and we started the evening, and I'll never forget it. She was such a great spirit, such a lovely human being, and not at all complacent about doing anything. Every performance for her was the first time. Gosh, that just meant a lot.
Leah Roseman:
Are there maybe productions you wish you could have seen if you could go back in time to hear the original versions, like Broadway orchestras now have shrunk to a pale imitation of what they once
Jack Everly:
Heard? Absolutely. Yeah. The first show, I'd love to go back and see live was Camelot, only because Oliver designed it. It was the first show that Lerner and Loewe did after my Fair Lady, and they went out to Hollywood to do Gigi, of course, but then they came back and did Camelot. Camelot had enormous problems when it debuted at the, what is it? Is it now the Hummingbird Center in Toronto? Then it was the O'Keefe and it was the opening show of the O'Keefe, and it was a gigantic production, even by today's standards. It was bigger than Phantom of the Opera. It was bigger than anything because they had all this money from My Fair Lady, and they had the cast of Julie Andrews, Richard Burton, Robert Coote, Roddy McDowell. I mean, it was incredible. And they had an orchestra of 35 players. That's enormous for a Broadway show, and that's the show.
I'd love to go back and see and hear what it sounded like. The great Franz Allers was the music director. He had been conducting for Lerner and Loewe for decades with Brigadoon and Fair Lady. He was just one of those, I would say crusty, autocratic people. I met him once, and that's how I can say that, but just quite wonderful as a conductor. Anyway, that's the show. I'd love to go back in time, and it played the Majestic Theater where Phantom now is and where South Pacific played as well, and it had a very large orchestra pit, and that's how they fit in 35 Players. Other things I'd love to go back and see would be the original Tosca, the original Madame Butterfly. I really would. I probably wouldn't want to see the original Swan Lake because it was very different and it was not successful, for example. And I have 14 years of those memories anyway with Ballet Theater. So yeah,
Leah Roseman:
You have such a love of song. Do you sing in private with your piano?
Jack Everly:
Oh, my heavens no! Really,
because I don't want to ruin the song, so I don't sing them at all. I'll play them at the piano, the songs I love, but more often I will just listen to them as performed by great singers and great actors, and that's the best way for me to hear it, because that is the way the composers probably wanted them to sound. You listen to Glynis John singing Send in the Clowns from a Little Night Music, and you think, well, golly, other people can sing that much better as far as notes and connectivity and musical phrasing, yes, Renee Fleming would do a damn good job with that piece, of course, but Glynis brought you the pathos of that character of the fact that, wow, maybe life is about to pass her by. And that's how Prince and Sondheim wanted from that song, and that's what she gave it. And it still breaks my heart when I hear her do it.
Leah Roseman:
And without mentioning names, are there times, I know singers sometimes forget words or even set lists or whatever, if there've been real disasters where you've had to kind of save the day with performers, sharing the stage with you, without mentioning any names,
Jack Everly:
There have been a few moments. Yeah, there have been a few moments. There was a moment at the N A C and it was a wonderful Broadway singer, and she brought with her trio of piano, bass and drums, and we were into, it was like several songs that were put together, and there was this section that was to be just the trio and the orchestra was on either side of these three songs, and somehow she completely went up on the lyrics. And I'm trying to follow along knowing that I'm about to bring the orchestra in, and I'm just looking at the pianist and I'm looking at the drummer, and they're listening to her and they're knowing that she's completely up on the lyrics. She's making them up. She skips 16 bars. She goes to the other place and they follow. They're perfect. They're going with her.
But wow, these guys, they're really in the moment. And then she goes back though to the other verse, and so I'm okay, what am I going to do? I got to bring in 75 people here. When is that going to happen? And I'm watching the pianist and I'm kind of listening to her sing. I realize, aha, this could be the moment. This is where the orchestra comes in. And sure enough, it was, but she was everywhere. And thankfully it was just with the trio, because if that had happened with a full orchestra, it might've been problematic. But they were great. They kind of looked at me and went, yeah, I think this is it. And we all went, okay, and there we are. And we all came in and no one was the wiser until she told the audience what she had just done, and they loved it, and it was great, and we were all laughing. It was fun when those things happened that way.
Leah Roseman:
We were talking earlier about music and film, and I think it's a way to bring younger audiences in too, especially here in orchestra, which is great. But are there neglected parts of this repertoire you love that you're worried that you want to keep going, or composers that are special to you?
Jack Everly:
Yeah, there are several, but one in particular, I've always adored Miklos Rozsa. He gave us so many incredible scores of such great diversity. I've always wanted to do all three hours and 20 minutes of Ben Hur because it's a phenomenal score. It's really one of his best. Of course, he won the Academy Award for it. It's just some of the greatest writing ever, let alone for a film. And the screenplay is just brilliant. It still plays. I saw the film last year, I was going, one of my orchestras in Naples, Florida, and we were doing some holiday concerts, and they were still doing live concerts last December. And I had an afternoon tree and sure enough, silver spot cinemas was showing Ben Hur, and I didn't even know it until it was like, oh my God, I got five minutes to get there. And I raced over there and I got a ticket and there were five of us in the cinema, and I saw all three hours and 20 minutes of Ben Hur again.
I thought, wow, this thing really works. I mean, it is Stephen Boyd, Jack Hawkins, and just a great, great, great cast, and a screenplay is magnificent, and then there's Rozsa's score. So it's something that I would love to be able to do, but let's face it, it's over three hours. And that's tough to do, and I doubt if it's going to happen because I don't think the studios would allow you to edit scenes. I mean, it won 12 Academy Awards for heaven's sakes, and it's perfect. But that is a project I would love to do at some point.
Leah Roseman:
And do you have any advice for conductors starting out, especially in the genre of Broadway and
Jack Everly:
Well, if you want to start out on Broadway, that's a whole different environment. And it's tough these days. You really have to be on Broadway, you have to be a pianist, and it's because you're usually conducting from a synthesizer, sadly. But that's the way it is. So you do have to have that facility. Yeah, there are lots of different requirements for breaking into the Broadway scene. Once normalcy returns, then one needs for working in the orchestral world and for the pops genre with symphony orchestras, you also have to be very comfortable in talking with audiences and listening to them and responding to them as well as the great musicians that you're working with. So it's different sets of requirements and if you will, skills, I won't say talents, I'll just say skills, when to just sit back and let it go. Once you've started it, you've got 75 of the best musicians anywhere. So 'em have it. Let 'em have a good time. Don't always get in the way. Something I learned, especially in ballet, was to get out of the way we set this now, let it happen. Just stop flapping and let it happen. It's going to be great. Just get out of the way.
Leah Roseman:
I remember when you first started coming because the arrangements were so interesting and satisfying to play, I really appreciate how you, I don't know if on purpose sourced good arrangements, but it feels like you have,
Jack Everly:
It's very important to do just that. And finding where these things are is one of the greatest challenges. Sometimes they're on a shelf way back somewhere and the publishing houses forgot they had them. That still happens. A lot of Broadway, most Broadway composers, as a matter of fact, never took the time or had the interest in keeping all of their stuff intact. They sold it to the highest bidder. They went, okay, fine. It's the end of that. I mean, Jule Stein's music was chaos. When I did the overtures of Jule Stein at Abbey Road Studios in London, I spent three months sleuthing warehouses and garages and this and that, and Jule Stein didn't have a clue as to where some of this stuff was. So that's kind of disheartening. But if you're a musical detective, I like to be. It can be fun.
Leah Roseman:
So you recorded all his overtures for that album?
Jack Everly:
Every show he ever wrote, including two versions. We did the film version of Gypsy, the Broadway version of Gypsy, the original Broadway Funny Girl Overture, the film version of Funny Girl. Yeah, it was really overkill. And it was on two CDs for That's Entertainment Records in London that John Yap produced one of the highlights of my work. I just love it.
Leah Roseman:
So just to end, so in pre pandemic times, how much were you on the road in a given year?
Jack Everly:
Oh, that's a good question. About four to five months maybe. Sometimes five or six months, because an average year for me meant about 90 concerts a year, which of course I loved. I just loved the experience constantly. I was very lucky to have that happen, and hopefully that'll happen again. I know this year we're planning a lot of things all around North America starting in September that we're keeping our fingers crossed that this will all come to pass. So
Leah Roseman:
Do you have any perspective from this time being at home relating to your career?
Jack Everly:
A lot of people say, well, I'll never take that for granted again. And of course, we all understand that that's something we're all going through. Not that I'm an angel at all, but far from it. But I don't think I ever did take it for granted. There's something that was always, and will always be very, very special to me of standing in front of 75 great musicians, every individual with a unique personality, and that it's my pleasure to get to know over the course of time and understand how everyone's thinking. And I just love that because all I have to do is just look at someone and I go, yep, I know what they're thinking right about now. And it's fun, especially from night to night. If you do three or four repetitions of a given program every night, it's slightly different and it's slightly more fun in a slightly different way every time because these people, and it's truly one of my joys, is to work with all these people.
Leah Roseman:
Well, thank you so much for speaking with me today. It's been wonderful.
Jack Everly:
Oh, it's my pleasure. Thank you so much.
