You've been very outspoken about the connections between popular music and musical theatre in America. Can you speak about that?

Yeah, it's kind of my cause. If nothing else, I try to be a student of the game. And in my research, I found that in the Golden Age of Broadway, when the Porters and the Gershwins and the Hammersteins and the Berlins were writing, they were really writing the popular music of the day. They were trying to write for the public, for as many people as they could. Back in those days, the theatre really was the forum where they could have their stuff performed, it was before there was a record business. Somewhere along the line, the popular music of the day and the music of the theatre really became two different things. So most of the time today, the music of the theatre has nothing to do with what the rest of the world listens to. I just feel there you have to bridge that gap between pop music and theatre music. Otherwise the future of the theatre will not be a healthy one.

You have to bring young people into the theatre. Young people today, they've listened to a lot of music. They don't even realize how much they hear because it's on every TV show and movie and commercial, as well as turning on the radio. And I just think using the harmonic and melodic vocabularies of today mixed in with theatre music helps to create a bridge between those two worlds.

The problem in the theatre today is that they've really turned a deaf ear to what the rest of the country is listening to.

It's something I feel passionate about and something I will keep talking about. It's something I think we should take a responsibility for- for bringing new audiences into the theatre.

Tin Pan Alley

Frank Wildhorn was inspired by the "Tin Pan Alley" songwriters who worked in both popular music and the musical theatre in the Golden Age of Song writing. But what was Tin Pan Alley?

On a summer day in 1900, Monroe H. Rosenfeld wandered down West 28th Street between Broadway and Sixth Avenue. Dozens of music publishers had their offices on this single block; he was there to write a story for the New York Herald on this growing industry. It was a typical hot New York summer, and all the windows in all the buildings on the block were wide open. As Rosenfeld walked down the street, he heard dozens of upright pianos banging out tunes, creating a glorious cacophony that reminded Rosenfeld of the clatter of pots and pans. He christened the block "Tin Pan Alley," and the songwriters who toiled there took the name for their own.

The Tin Pan Alley song writers included such geniuses as Irving Berlin, Jerome Kern, Oscar Hammerstein II, Richard Rodgers, and Cole Porter. They moved easily between theatre and popular music- at that time, musical theatre was popular music. In his book "Yesterdays: Popular Song in America," (W.W. Norton, NY. 1979) Charles Hamm writes, "There is no way to tell, from listening to a song by Irving Berlin, or any of his contemporaries, whether it was written for vaudeville, musical comedy, the movies, or simply composed for radio play and possible recording."

Interview with Nan Knighton

Ideas for Research and Discussion