Maury Yeston

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Maury Yeston
Born
Jersey City, New Jersey, U.S.
Alma materYale University, University of Cambridge
Occupation(s)Composer, Lyricist, Musicologist
SpouseJulianne Waldhelm
Websitewww.mauryyeston.com

Maury Yeston (born October 23, 1945) is an American composer, lyricist and

music theorist.[1]

Yeston has written the music and lyrics for several

Golden Globe for two of his new songs in the film version of Nine (Take It All and Cinema Italiano
).

His musical version of the novel

classical crossover song cycle commissioned by Carnegie Hall for its centennial celebration; An American Cantata: 2000 Voices (a three-movement choral symphony commissioned by the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts for its millennium celebration); Tom Sawyer: A Ballet in Three Acts, a full-length story ballet commissioned by the Kansas City Ballet for the opening of the new Kauffman Center for the Performing Arts in Kansas City; a Cello Concerto, premiered by Yo-Yo Ma; and other pieces for chamber ensembles and solo piano.[3]

Earlier in his career, Yeston was an associate professor of music and Director of Undergraduate Studies in Music at

Theater Hall of Fame
in 2023.

Life and career

Early years

Yeston was born in

madrigal singing.[7]

As an undergraduate at

Woodrow Wilson Fellowship to teach for a year at Lincoln University in Pennsylvania, the country's oldest traditionally black college. At Lincoln, Yeston taught music, art history, philosophy and Western Civilization, and founded Lincoln's course in the history of African-American music.[9]

He then pursued a musicology doctorate at Yale, teaching the same African-American music history course there that he had taught at Lincoln. While there, he enrolled in the

Ed Kleban, Alan Menken, and Howard Ashman,[10] were able to try out material for established Broadway producers and directors. He completed his Ph.D. at Yale in 1974, with his dissertation published as a book by Yale University Press: The Stratification of Musical Rhythm (1976),[11] Soon afterwards, his cello concerto was premiered by Yo-Yo Ma and the Norwalk Symphony with Gilbert Levine conducting.[12] He then joined the Yale Music Dept. faculty where he taught for eight years, ultimately becoming Yale's Director of Undergraduate Studies in Music.[13] He subsequently published another theory book with Yale University Press, Readings in Schenker Analysis and Other Approaches (editor, 1977),[14] (both of his books are noted for their discussions of rhythmic structure and Schenkerian analysis)[15] and was twice cited by the student body as one of Yale's ten best professors.[7]

Musical theatre career

Nine and La Cage

While teaching at Yale, Yeston continued to attend the BMI workshop principally to work on his project, begun in 1973, to write a musical inspired by Federico Fellini's 1963 film 8½.[16] As a teenager, Yeston had seen the film and became intrigued by its themes. Yeston told The New York Times in 1982:

"I looked at the screen and said 'That's me.' I still believed in all the dreams and ideals of what it was to be an artist, and here was a movie about... an artist in trouble. It became an obsession". Yeston called the musical Nine (the age of the director in his flashback), explaining that if you add music to 8½, "it's like half a number more."[7]

In 1978, at the O'Neill Conference, Yeston and director

high C.[17]

In 1981, while collaborating on Nine, Tune asked Yeston to write

Cloud Nine.[18] Tune was also engaged to work on the musical La Cage aux Folles, based on the 1978 film of the same name, and the producer, Allan Carr, was seeking a composer. Yeston was engaged to write the music and lyrics, with a book by Jay Presson Allen. Their stage version of the film was to be called The Queen of Basin Street, set in New Orleans; it was hoped to be staged in 1981. Mike Nichols was set to direct and Tommy Tune to choreograph. Yeston took time off from Yale to work on the project and had already written several jazzy songs, but Carr was unable to put together the financing for the show, and the project was postponed.[18] Carr searched for executive producers and found them in Fritz Holt and Barry Brown, who immediately fired the entire creative team that Carr had assembled, except for Yeston, who later withdrew from the project.[19] These creatives, other than Yeston, eventually filed lawsuits, but only Yeston collected a royalty from La Cage.[20][21]

Meanwhile, Yeston and Tune turned back to Nine, which opened on Broadway on May 9, 1982, at the 46th Street Theatre and ran for 729 performances. The cast included Raul Julia as Guido. The musical won five Tony Awards, including best musical, and Yeston won for best score. A London production and a successful Broadway revival of Nine followed in 2003, starring Antonio Banderas and winning the Tony Award for Best Revival of a Musical. In 2009, a film version of Nine, directed by Rob Marshall and starring Daniel Day-Lewis, Judi Dench, Sophia Loren and Marion Cotillard, was released. Yeston wrote three new songs for the film and was nominated for the 2009 Academy Award for Best Original Song for "Take It All" and the 2009 Golden Globe Award for Best Original Song, "Cinema Italiano".[22]

Phantom and next projects

After the success of Nine, Yeston left his position as associate professor at Yale, although he continued to teach a course there every other semester alternating between songwriting and Schubert Lieder. He then turned to writing a musical version of Gaston Leroux's novel, The Phantom of the Opera. He was approached with the idea by actor/director Geoffrey Holder, who held the American rights to the novel. Initially, Yeston was skeptical of the project. "I laughed and laughed.... That's the worst idea in the world! Why would you want to write a musical based on a horror story?.... And then it occurred to me that the story could be somewhat changed.... [The Phantom] would be a Quasimodo character, an Elephant Man. Don't all of us feel, despite outward imperfections, that deep inside we're good? And that is a character you cry for."[9]

Yeston had completed much of

RCA records. Yeston's Phantom is more operetta-like in style than Lloyd Webber's, seeking to reflect the 1890s period, and seeks to project a French atmosphere to reflect its Parisian setting.[7]

Meanwhile, Yeston's In the Beginning, a musical poking good-natured fun at the first five books of the Bible from the perspective of ordinary people living through the events described, had been workshopped at the

Francisco de Goya and suggested to producer Allan Carr that Yeston would be the right person to create the vehicle, since Domingo admired Nine. Yeston wrote the piece, Goya: A Life in Song. Because of Domingo's time commitments, the musical was made into a concept album and was recorded in 1988.[9] The album was produced by Phil Ramone and included the song "Till I Loved You" (a 1988 cover by Barbra Streisand and Don Johnson reached number 25 on the Billboard Hot 100.[25]). Domingo also recorded a Spanish-language single of the song with Gloria Estefan titled "Hasta amarte", which peaked at number 8 on Billboard's Hot Latin Songs chart.[26] Domingo sang the role of Goya, with Jennifer Rush, Gloria Estefan, Dionne Warwick, Richie Havens, and Seiko Matsuda in other roles.[9][15]

Grand Hotel and December Songs

Also in 1989,

Robert Wright and George Forrest
. Yeston wrote eight new songs for Grand Hotel and revised much of the existing 1958 lyrics. After Grand Hotel opened on Broadway in November 1989, Yeston, along with Wright and Forrest, was nominated for the Tony Award and two Drama Desk Awards for best score. The show ran for 1,077 performances.

After this, Yeston wrote

Edyta Krzemien),[29] and six times in English, including as December Songs for Voice and Orchestra (2022), featuring orchestration by Larry Hochman with Victoria Clark as soloist.[30]

Titanic

The discovery of the wreckage of the

Vaughan Williams; this was for me an opportunity to bring in the musical theater an element of the symphonic tradition that I think we really haven't had before. That was very exciting."[31]

The high cost of the Titanic musical set made it impossible for the show to have traditional out-of-town tryouts. Titanic opened at Broadway's Lunt-Fontanne Theatre in 1997 to mixed reviews. The New Yorker offered a positive assessment: : "It seemed a foregone conclusion that the show would be a failure; a musical about history's most tragic maiden voyage, in which fifteen hundred people lost their lives, was obviously preposterous.... Astonishingly, Titanic manages to be grave and entertaining, somber and joyful; little by little you realize that you are in the presence of a genuine addition to American musical theatre."[32] The show won Tony Awards in the five categories in which it was nominated, including Best Score and Best Musical and ran for 804 performances and 26 previews, toured America for three years, and has had international productions, including in the UK, Japan, Korea, China, Australia, Germany, Holland, Belgium, Hungary, and has toured across America.[33]

An American Cantata: 2000 Voices, Death Takes a Holiday, and later works

In 1999 Yeston was commissioned by the

Kennedy Center to write and orchestrate a three-movement orchestral work for the millennium celebration, An American Cantata: 2000 Voices,[34] which was performed by the National Symphony Orchestra under the baton of Leonard Slatkin at the Lincoln Memorial in July 2000, with a chorus of 2000 voices and tenor soloist Norm Lewis. Yeston used "2000 Voices as a celebration of the year the piece was created ... chosen from 108 local ensembles."[35] The piece was praised by the Washington Post, comparing its score to Copland and Randall Thompson and singling out in particular the second movement, which has a text from Martin Luther King Jr.'s Memphis speech he gave the day before his death, I have been to the mountaintop and I have seen the promised land."[36] Orchestrated by Yeston, the piece celebrates the evolution of the idea of individual liberty and equality, along with our inherent and universal entitlement to it, as our civilization's greatest intellectual achievement of the past 1,000 years. Sung by a mixed chorus, children's choir, and gospel choir, texts include excerpts from the Magna Carta, and the writings of Thomas Jefferson, in addition to the Memphis Speech, and lyrics by the composer.[36]

After composing the incidental music for Broadway's 2009 revival of

Outer Critics Circle Award for Outstanding Musical and Score,[40] and cited as one of Time Magazine's top ten plays and musicals of the 2011 season.[41] An off West End production played in 2017 at London's Charing Cross Theatre.[42]

In 2011, Yeston's ballet Tom Sawyer: A Ballet in Three Acts premiered at the Kauffman Center for the Performing Arts in Kansas City, Missouri, with the Kansas City Ballet.[43][44] Alastair Macaulay's review in The New York Times observed:

"It's quite likely that this is the first all-new, entirely American three-act ballet: it is based on an American literary classic, has an original score by an American composer and was given its premiere by an American choreographer and company. ... Both the score and the choreography are energetic, robust, warm, deliberately naïve (both ornery and innocent), in ways right for Twain."[45]

In 2019 Anything Can Happen In the Theater – The Musical World of Maury Yeston, a revue, with Yeston's songs, was created and directed by Gerard Alessandrini, at the York Theatre in Manhattan.[46][47] In October 2020 on the PS Classics Label, Yeston released Maury Sings Yeston: The Demos, a compendium of his own vocal recordings of forty of his classic Demos.[48]

Assessment

According to Show Music magazine, Yeston "has written some of the most formally structured music in recent musical theatre. But he also has the gift for creating ravishing melody – once you've heard 'Love Can't Happen' from Grand Hotel, or 'Unusual Way' from Nine, or 'Home' from Phantom, or any number of other Yeston songs, you'll be hooked."

Broadway World praised "The genius of Yeston's songs – intricate yet emotional, cerebral yet romantic, clever yet unendingly melodic [and] his immense breadth of style – from the hilarious to the deeply moving."[47]

Family

Yeston has been married twice. His first marriage was to Judith A. Rabkin.[citation needed] The couple have a son, Jake.[citation needed] He had a son Max with his second wife, Anne Sheedy.[citation needed] In 1995,Yeston married Julianne Waldhelm.[citation needed]

Work

Broadway
Off-Broadway
Film
Ballet
Other works
Concert
  • Concerto for Cello and Orchestra, premiered by Yo-Yo Ma, Gilbert Levine conductor.
  • December Songs – for voice and orchestra (2022)
  • Sonata for Piano
  • Aube, (Arthur Rimbaud) for soprano and chamber orchestra
  • Five Ecstatic Songs – for soprano and piano
  • Trilogues for Three String Quartets
  • Song for Violin and Piano
  • My Grandmother's Love Letters (Hart Crane), for voice and piano
Publications
  • The Stratification of Musical Rhythm (1975 Yale University Press)
  • Readings in Schenker Analysis and Other Approaches (1977 Yale University Press)
  • Rubato and the Middleground, Journal of Music Theory. Vol. 19. No. 2. (Autumn, 1975). pp. 286-301

Awards and recognition

Yeston served on the board of the

Musical Quarterly; he is a past president of the Kleban Foundation, an advisor to the Yale University Press Broadway Series.[55] He is an honorary ambassador of the Society of Composers & Lyricists, and a founding member of the Society for Music Theory.[citation needed
]

Discography

Notes

  1. ISBN 978-1-56159-263-0. (subscription or UK public library membership
    required)
  2. ^ Roberts, Michael J. (October 20, 2007). "Stage Door Chicago: Phantom". Broadway World.
  3. ^ Yeston, Maury. "Classical Works", accessed July 2, 2023
  4. ^ a b c Pogrebin, Robin (19 May 2003). "A Song in His Psyche, As Hummable as Fame". The New York Times. Retrieved February 16, 2022.
  5. ^ a b Kalfatovic, Mary. "Maury Yeston Biography", Musician Guide, 1997, accessed August 26, 2023
  6. ^ Playbill, May 31, 1997, pp. 18–20
  7. ^ a b c d e f "Who is Maury Yeston and what are his contributions to music?". Enotes.com. Retrieved February 16, 2022.
  8. ^ "Maury Yeston: Bio", MauryYeston.com. Retrieved May 29, 2023
  9. ^ a b c d e f g Vitaris, Paul. "The Unsinkable Maury Yeston." Show Music The Musical Theatre Magazine Spring, 1997, pp. 17–23
  10. ^ Archived at Ghostarchive and the Wayback Machine: "Theater Talk: Maury Yeston, composer/lyricist, "Nine." Pt. 1 of 2". YouTube.
  11. ISBN 0-300-01884-3
    .
  12. ^ "The Bridgeport Post from Bridgeport, Connecticut on March 21, 1977 · Page 7". Newspapers.com. 21 March 1977. Retrieved February 16, 2022.
  13. ^ "Maury Yeston: Bio", MauryYeston.com. Retrieved August 19, 2023
  14. ISBN 0-300-02114-3
    .
  15. ^ a b Swed, Mark. "Goya Composer Yeston Combines Colors from His Musical Pallette", Los Angeles Times, August 26, 1988, retrieved April 29, 2023
  16. ^ "Broadway Buzz | Videos, Interviews, Photos, News and Tickets". Broadway.com. Retrieved 2014-07-04.
  17. ^ Pat Cerasaro. "InDepth InterView: Maury Yeston – Part II: New Words". Broadwayworld.com. Retrieved 2014-07-04.
  18. ^ a b c In Depth Interview: Maury Yeston Part I: Getting Tall. BroadwayWorld, May 7, 2010.
  19. ^ Suskin, Steven. "On the Record: Ernest In Love, Marco Polo, Puppets and Maury Yeston", Playbill, 10 Aug 2003, accessed June 25, 2013
  20. ^ Laurents, p. 118
  21. ^ Christiansen, Richard. "La Cage Aux Folles` Producer Is Bringing His Love Home"[dead link], Chicage Tribune, May 25, 1986, accessed June 25, 2013
  22. ^ "Maury Yeston", Golden Globe Awards. Retrieved September 10, 2023
  23. ^ The New York Public Library Archives & Manuscripts. "Manhattan Theatre Club records". Archives.nypl.org. Retrieved 2022-02-16.
  24. ^ Connema, Richard. "Regional Reviews: San Francisco – In the Beginning", Talkin' Broadway (2000), retrieved April 29, 2023
  25. ^ "Barbra Streisand Chart History", Billboard. Retrieved December 20, 2023
  26. ^ "Latin Music: Hot Latin Songs (1992-06-27)". Billboard.com.
  27. ^ Yeston, Maury, translated by Wolfgang Adenberg. Dezemberlieder (Marina Komissartchik, piano), Anything Goes Records (2007)
  28. ^ Yeston, Mary, translated by Boris Bergman. "Isabel Georges: December Songs" (Stan Cramer, piano), PS Classics (2006)
  29. ^ "Opowieści zimowe", Spektakle, accessed September 6, 2023 (in Polish)
  30. ^ Gans, Andrew. "New Recording of Maury Yeston's December Songs, With Tony Winner Victoria Clark, Released November 11", Playbill, November 11, 2022
  31. ^ a b BMI Music World, Fall 1997, pp. 24-29
  32. ^ Franklin, Nancy. New Yorker, May 12, 1997, pp. 102-03
  33. ^ Yeston, Maury. "Titanic", MauryYeston.com. Retrieved August 19, 2023
  34. ^ Yeston, Maury (25 June 2000). "Theater; Why I Took a Classical Break from Broadway". The New York Times. Retrieved November 29, 2023.
  35. ^ "Classical Beat: Leonard Slatkin, Maury Yeston, Herbert Fox", MTV News, July 5, 2000
  36. ^ a b McLellan, Joseph (2000-07-03). "'American Cantata': Once in a Millennium". The Washington Post. Retrieved 2022-02-16.
  37. ^ 2011 "Death Takes a Holiday is an evening devoted to an examination of all the different kinds of love". todoMUSICALES.com, accessed August 8, 2011
  38. ^ Jones, Kenneth. "Julian Ovenden's Reaper Has a Song in His Heart in Death Takes a Holiday, Premiering in NYC" Archived 2011-06-22 at the Wayback Machine. Playbill.com, June 10, 2011
  39. ^ Gans, Andrew."Drama Desk Nominations Announced; 'Death Takes a Holiday' and 'Follies' Lead the Pack" Archived 2012-04-30 at the Wayback Machine, Playbill.com, April 27, 2012
  40. ^ Gans, Andrew. "62nd Annual Outer Critics Circle Award Nominations Announced; 'Nice Work' Receives Nine Nods" Archived 2012-04-26 at the Wayback Machine, Playbill.com, April 23, 2012
  41. ^ Zoglin, Richard (7 December 2011). "Death Takes a Holiday - The Top 10 Everything of 2011 - TIME". Content.time.com. Retrieved February 16, 2022.
  42. ^ Hitchings, Henry. "Death Takes a Holiday, theatre review: Musical romance with a distinctly Gothic flavour", Evening Standard, January 24, 2017
  43. ^ Horsley, Paul. "An American Ballet: KCB Presents World Premiere of Ambitious New Piece", KCIndependent.com, accessed June 23, 2012
  44. ^ Jones, Kenneth. "Maury Yeston's Tom Sawyer Ballet Will Get World Premiere in 2011" Archived 2010-11-12 at the Wayback Machine, Playbill.com, November 9, 2012
  45. ^ Alastair Macaulay (2011-10-24). "Yes, Those Are Tom, Becky and Huck Leaping". The New York Times. Retrieved 2024-03-29.
  46. ^ Vincentelli, Elisabeth (13 December 2019). "Review: Five Pieces from 'Nine,' and Plenty More from its Composer". The New York Times.
  47. ^ a b "Review: Anything Can Happen in the Theater: The Songs of Maury Yeston (2019)", BroadwayWorld, retrieved April 29, 2023
  48. ^ "Maury Sings Yeston| The Demos", PS Classics. Retrieved March 13, 2023
  49. ^ "Focus on a Playwright: Maury Yeston – Breaking Character". Archived from the original on 2018-11-26. Retrieved 2018-11-26.
  50. ^ "Broadway Asia Interview with John Rando and Marc Routh" (PDF). Broadwayasia.com. Retrieved February 16, 2022.
  51. ^ "Five Towns College Undergraduate 2010 - 2011 Catalog | PDF | Bachelor's Degree | Curriculum". Scribd.com. Retrieved February 16, 2022.
  52. ^ a b "Maury Yeston". Mtishows.com. Retrieved February 16, 2022.
  53. ^ "Encompass New Opera Theatre Will Honor Estelle Parsons and Maury Yeston with Musical Tribute". Playbill.com.
  54. ^ Gans, Andrew. "Mandy Patinkin, Bebe Neuwirth, Laurie Metcalf, More Among 2023 Theater Hall of Fame Inductees", Playbill, July 7, 2023
  55. ^ "Maury Yeston | The Official Masterworks Broadway Site". Masterworksbroadway.com. Retrieved July 4, 2014.
  56. ^ Gans, Andrew. "New Recording of Maury Yeston's December Songs, With Tony Winner Victoria Clark, Released November 11", Playbill, November 11, 2022

References

  • Laurents, Arthur. Mainly on Directing: Gypsy, West Side Story, and Other Musicals, New York: Knopf (2009).
    ISBN 0-307-27088-2
  • Yeston, Maury (1976). The Stratification of Musical Rhythm. New Haven: Yale University Press.
    ISBN 0-300-01884-3
    .

Further reading

External links


  1. JSTOR 843592
    .
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