Forever Young Magazine

January 2007
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Section: Feature

Marvin Hamlisch
By Elena Cala Buscarino

Marvin Hamlisch, Pops Conductor of the Buffalo Philharmonic since its 2000-2001 season is New York born and bred, and he has news for Buffalonians: get the chip off of your shoulder. Hamlisch loves Buffalo’s people, its architecture, its space, and its great orchestra. But he feels that Buffalonians have a tendency to think that New York City is the closest cultural Mecca. Not so, he says, and thinks that people have to step away to see just what they have here.

That being said, Hamlisch also expresses a desire to see more young faces at his concerts. In the other cities where Hamlisch conducts: San Diego, Washington, and Pittsburgh, he sees a sea of young faces — children brought by their parents and grandparents. He would be happy to see the same in Buffalo, and strongly encourages fans to bring their young.

As for music and youth, Hamlisch doesn’t worry at all about what they listen to; it’s what they don’t get to hear that raises a fear in him — a fear that there will be no audience for his brand of music in the future.

Hamlisch knows what a strong influence music has, as one of the youngest students ever trained at the Juilliard School (at the age of seven). All his life he has been a fan of Richard Rodgers, Irving Berlin and Arthur Sullivan. He loved watching Perry Como on television, and credits him with bridging the gap between rock and the more mature music of impresario Sol Hurok and opera singer, Ezio Pinza. Still, he’s never been much of a fan of the classics, tending toward popular music and what he calls “show biz, commercial stuff.” When he looks back at his major influences, Hamlisch says that the people whose work he’s always loved are Leonard Bernstein and Jule Styne — though for different reasons. “Bernstein was artful, and Styne was commercial, Hamlisch says.

The marriage of both styles is better than either one alone, as far as Hamlisch is concerned, and it was at that juncture that Hamlisch builds his own style.

“I was a prodigy, but not like Horowitz,” Hamlisch maintains. “I had a good ear, and I always wanted to write for the theater.” He worked with Jule Styne on Funny Girl, but he spent more time than he wanted to as an assistant. Still rather young, Hamlisch couldn’t understand why, with his New York, show-bizzy background, no one was handing him a job to write for the theater.

Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra’s Musical Director, Joann Faletta with Marvin Hamlisch.
Photos by Jim Bush

That’s when he moved to LA to do movies. Another influence was Buffalo-born Michael Bennett, with whom Hamlisch was reacquainted after the Oscars in the early 70s. Bennett conceived, directed, and choreographed A Chorus Line, for which Hamlisch wrote the score. The 1975 musical won a Pulitzer Prize along with a dozen Tony Award nominations, and it is presently seeing a comeback at the Schoenfeld Theatre in New York City.

Hamlisch is not overly enthusiastic about the revival, saying, “They never stick around for longer than two years. But people who saw the original still love it, and people who never saw it adore it.” Most of all, Hamlisch is happy for the people who saw the movie — which he characterized as terrible — so that they will have a chance to see the musical as it was intended.

As Hamlisch states it, his objective is to be available to audiences and musicians. “The most important commodity at any given concert is the audience,” he says. The trick is to put on the best show he can with the money that’s available.

For those who wonder how Hamlisch’s path lead him from Broadway to LA, and then to various concert halls, he explained, “I get antsy when I’m not writing. I like to work.” His agent gave him the impetus by telling Hamlisch that George Gershwin did concerts, and that is how he came to spend six seasons in Buffalo. His February concert, Love is in the Air is going to be full of, in Hamlisch’s words, “wonderful love songs.” He hopes to take a request or two from the audience — an audience that will hopefully be populated by people who love good music and each other — both young and old.