[Dixielandjazz] Joplin Meets Berlin - The Stage Play

[Stephen G Barbone]

Might be an interesting show, especially for the piano players on the  
list. In any event, the last 3 paragraphs of this article are  
interesting given the frequent discussions we have about "art music"  
vs. "music business". <grin>

Cheers,
Steve Barbone
www.myspace.com/barbonestreetjazzband



NY TIMES - July 5, 2009 - NY TIMES
When Scott Met Irving ... Or Didn’t

By MARK BLANKENSHIP
IT’S one of Mark Saltzman’s favorite moments in his play with music,  
“The Tin Pan Alley Rag,” and he won’t even take the credit. Near the  
end of the show, which imagines a meeting between the composers Scott  
Joplinand Irving Berlin, Joplin responds to a painful memory by  
playing “Bethena,” a ragtime waltz he wrote in 1905. And when he  
plays, nothing else happens. There are no words, no dances, no set  
changes. There’s just the sound of a classic piece of American music.

“The Tin Pan Alley Rag” is in previews at the Roundabout’s Laura Pels  
Theater (it opens July 14), and for Mr. Saltzman, who’s been a fan of  
Joplin’s ragtime for more than 30 years, the wordless scene is a risk  
that pays off. “It’s kind of rare in the theater for it all to boil  
down to a piece of music,” Mr. Saltzman said. (That music is played  
live by offstage pianists while actors sit at pianos, hands obscured.)  
“You wonder if people are going to be fidgety, or if they’re going to  
say, ‘We didn’t pay for a piano concert.’ ”

“I’m so happy when I see that the audience is listening to this music  
as intently as if they’re listening to dialogue,” he said. “I feel  
some kind of personal triumph about that.”

Yet despite the “Bethena” moment, “The Tin Pan Alley Rag” is not a  
jukebox musical (or Victrola musical) of hits from pre-Depression  
America. Mr. Saltzman and the director, Stafford Arima, have created a  
show about the lives, work and aesthetics of two influential  
songwriters without relying heavily on their songs.

Joplin’s and Berlin’s tunes do figure throughout the production, but  
they are often subservient to the plot. Joplin (Michael Boatman) might  
play a section of his “Maple Leaf Rag,” but it underscores a scene  
about his past. The ensemble might sing “I Love a Piano,” an early  
chestnut from Berlin (Michael Therriault), but the number is  
interspersed with dialogue.

Mr. Arima, who is best known for directing splashy musicals like  
“Altar Boyz” and (coincidentally) “Ragtime,” said he likes using the  
music this way. “Our instincts in the musical theater are about  
buttoning the numbers or extending them,” he said. “By avoiding that  
musical comedy feel, we allow the audience to focus on the story  
instead of the greatest hits. I want them to discover who these men  
were and not just wait for the next song they know.”

Strangers to the history of American music can learn from the show.  
Mr. Saltzman may have invented the relationship between his lead  
characters, but he includes facts about their troubled personal lives  
and their enormous influence on the nascent pop-music business, which  
was often boosted by sheet-music sales of a Joplin rag or a Berlin hit.

Mr. Arima said he feels that highlighting the composers’ lives could  
instill new appreciation for their music. “If all you know of someone  
is that they were perfect and they wrote perfect music, then they’re  
untouchable,” he said.

Audiences can also learn from the musical styles alone. Joplin’s early  
ragtime tunes sound starkly different from his ambitious opera  
“Treemonisha,” written a few years before he died in 1917. When the  
ensemble performs a snatch of the opera, it’s striking to realize how  
much he evolved. Berlin, meanwhile, is represented by “Alexander’s  
Ragtime Band” and other songs from the beginning of his career. While  
they rarely stray from the Tin Pan Alley formula he perfected, they  
exhibit his genius for delivering exceptional variations on a theme.

These compositions also demonstrate the conflict between art as  
personal expression and art as commerce. Mr. Saltzman’s plot hinges on  
Joplin’s unsuccessful attempts to publish “Treemonisha,” and when he  
asks Berlin to back him, they clash over whether music should be  
creative or profitable. The question is moot for “Treemonisha,” of  
course, since by the time it had its premiere with a full production  
in 1972, Scott Joplin’s music had already passed from commercial  
viability into canonized respectability.

But for Mr. Saltzman, Joplin’s decision to write the piece was an act  
of artistic integrity. “If you’re Joplin, why would you want to risk  
an opera?” he said. “There’s the ridicule that could come from people  
saying: ‘Where do you get off, writing like you’re Puccini? Why defy  
the fact that you’re comfortable, wealthy, famous?’ “

Mr. Saltzman added, however, that things weren’t as simple as Joplin  
the Artist and Berlin the Industry, and that both men strove to  
balance those extremes.

The struggle between art and business is partly what drew Todd Haimes,  
the Roundabout artistic director, to the play. “I’m not sure which  
perspective is correct,” he said. “Sometimes art can be commercial,  
and sometimes being a martyr doesn’t serve anybody. Who’s to say that  
‘God Bless America,’ ” which Berlin wrote, “isn’t as great as  
‘Treemonisha?’ ”

Mr. Haimes said he faces these questions when he’s programming the  
Roundabout’s season and that engaging the company’s 42,000 subscribers  
sometimes means eschewing untested work in favor of proven titles.  
While the company does produce smaller productions of new plays —  
including this year’s “Distracted,” a comedy about the attention- 
addled Internet age, and 2007’s “Speech & Debate,” a dark high school  
romp — the company’s mainstage slate generally features stalwarts like  
“Waiting for Godot,” “Hedda Gabler” and “Pal Joey.”

“Does that make our work any less valid, or is it just valid in a  
different way?” Mr. Haimes asked. “I constantly get into this argument.”