[clicks] [orchestra music] [piano music] -[applause] -Our orchestra, thank you very much.

Our conductor, Mr.

Larry Blank.

There was music in my house all the time.

There was music on the piano, music on the radio, and there were a lot of great TV shows.

I got to see everything in kind of the golden age of musical theater.

[piano music] ♪ Could be, ♪ ♪ who knows?

♪ ♪ There's something due any day ♪ ♪ I will know right away ♪ ♪ soon as it shows ♪ ♪ It may come cannonballing ♪ ♪ down through the sky ♪ -♪ Gleam in its eye bright as a rose ♪ -I played the piano reasonably well, and I knew all the show tunes.

I started getting hired for low-budget shows.

There were a lot of shows in New York at that time.

Aside from Broadway, there was Off-Broadway.

There were school productions.

They needed people to play the piano.

At this point, I had no mentorship so much as just an interest, and because I was the right price and played reasonably well, I got hired, where I met a lot of important people.

Don Pippin, who was one of the major music directors on Broadway, took me under his wing, and we remained friends until he died just a few years ago at the age of 95.

My good friend and conductor, Don Pippin.

[applause] [orchestra music] He was my first mentor.

He took me under his wing.

Don was a very good pianist.

Even though I played piano rather regularly, he said, "When you go to the piano, try not to be too good."

He said, "Because if you do, you'll be chained to the piano as a rehearsal pianist rather than walking around the room talking to people," which was a good piece of advice.

-[piano music] -I remember it well.

We dined with friends.

We dined alone.

A tenor sang.

A baritone.

-Ah yes, I remember it well.

-That dazzling April moon.

I met Don because he was the conductor of MAME, Then, I was starting to get jobs, and some of the musicians in the pit of local shows I was doing said, "Do you know this kid?

He's pretty good."

Don called me up and started recommending me for jobs on the basis of hearing it from some of his pals.

At that point, I then became his student.

I was doing these Broadway shows.

Here I was between the age of 22 and, let's say, 30, 31.

I was doing one show after another.

Some were flops, some were hits.

I was in the pit every night.

Now think about this.

That meant eight shows a week.

Every night, I had to get something to eat, head over to the theater for an eight o'clock show.

No musician went to school thinking, "Wow, I can't wait to get into a hole in the ground, so no one can see me playing my instrument."

Your days are planned around going through the theater, conducting the show, and it's the same show every night.

There's no time for life.

[music] Later on, the other person who became my surrogate father was a man named Irwin Kostal, who was very well-known because he orchestrated West Side Story and The Sound of Music and, most importantly, Mary Poppins, the movie.

He lived out in LA, and I was living in New York at the time.

When I came out here for something, I called him up and said, "We're going to be working together.

Can we meet?"

He was so flattered that I knew who he was because even though he was famous within the business, arrangers, conductors, and piano players are unknown to the general public.

When I finally came to New York, Irwin and I were doing the show together.

The first time we actually worked together was in a recording studio, and I was conducting the orchestra.

He observed me conducting, and he came out.

He put his arm on my shoulder.

He said, "I have to tell you."

He said, "I've done a lot of shows."

He said, "You're one of the most talented conductors I've seen do this sort of thing," which flattered me no end.

[orchestra music] He taught me the teachings of a man named Nicolai Malko.

At which point I was looking at Irwin, there was a tear in his eye.

I said, "Something wrong?"

He said, "I was Malko's last student."

That was the beginning of my career.

[laughs] There are four musicals nominated as best of the season.

The first nominee is They're Playing Our Song.

About the time I was doing They're Playing Our Song on Broadway, which was a big hit show written by Marvin Hamlisch.

I had done A Chorus Line on the road.

I forgot to mention that one.

Because of Don Pippin, I did that for a year, and that was a very big success.

I said, "I got to get out of here."

I left New York and moved to California, hoping to get into movies.

Then, I started trying to find some work on television, writing music.

There were so many TV shows going on, and each one had music.

Now, with the synthesizers and everything else, you don't have the same thing.

Every day, there would be recording sessions with a whole bunch of musicians recording the soundtracks for TV shows and movies.

That, over time, has now disappeared to nothing.

[piano music] Well, the very sad thing that happened.

In 1994, when Kalen was home, and we invited him for lunch, Irv, Irwin, he sat down at lunch, and I asked him for some advice.

He started yelling at me, which he had never done, ever.

He said, "You're 42 years old now.

You don't need my advice anymore.

You don't need my help.

You're successful.

You're conducting shows.

You're writing music."

It was terrible.

I was almost in tears at lunch.

When Irv passed, it changed my attitude about a lot of things.

I remember sitting in my office in this house in the back at two o'clock in the morning, and I had lots to do.

I put my head down, and I said, "Wow, I have no one to call to help me.

I have no one to call and say, 'How do I do this?

I need help with this.

I don't have the foggiest idea.'"

This was eight years after he died that I made this revelation that I had no one to call.

Yes, I have other friends and people I could have asked for advice, but I didn't have him to call and help me with this.

It was a big revelation to me.

I have my associate, Adam Jones, who's worked with me on a few projects.

Very talented young guy.

We all have our gifts, and he's got a lot going for him.

I can tell you that the first call I ever got from Larry was actually a text while I was in Trader Joe's in North Hollywood.

I'll never forget looking at it.

He was like, "Are you busy?"

I said, "Of course I'm not.

Whatever you need."

He just said, "We just got the Dolly Parton Christmas on the Square film."

That was the ultimate goal when moving here was to get a text like that.

I called up Adam and said, "You want to do a movie?"

I didn't know what was going to be involved.

It turned out to be a lot of music.

I was able to assign a lot of stuff to him.

He was great at it, and everybody loved him.

Larry had known that I had done some Dolly Parton work previously, so I was tied in with their team.

This was the big fish that I was waiting for.

It just luckily popped up.

Got the text.

All my stuff was still in the car, and I was parking it outside his house and coming in and meeting somebody that I had seen his name on so many things.

Obviously, I was begging for work, but trying my best not to come across desperate for work.

It sounded wonderful.

The saxophone's very first grade.

I didn't even realize I needed somebody to really show me the lay of the land here and how things really work in Los Angeles, which is completely different than the way that they work in New York.

Luckily, he had understood both being in New York for so long and then moving out to LA.

He was able to tell me where things were going to be different.

Other than that, it was not a meeting where he was like, "Let me bring you under and show you everything and hire you for everything that I'm doing."

There was a lot of time of just me hoping that he was somebody that I could send an email to or call if I needed some assistance.

[singing] The biggest piece of advice Larry has given me is make sure they take the music seriously.

Especially when you're hired on a project is to give them a reason to be happy that they hired you, but also to hire you back.

I have been able to confidently take that approach with me, knowing that that comes handed down through other mentors, but also through him.

My whole experience with Larry has been a reference in that exact sense.

Whenever I find myself in the thick of it and can't come up with the answers, I call Larry.

He tells me to come up, and he shows me something that he has just recently done that solves that puzzle, or, if not, an orchestrator that he knows that has solved that exact puzzle.

I had an intuition that mentorship was going to be a very important part of the process.

I had always looked for teachers to help me, or at least tell me what I was missing.

All I felt was the luck.

How lucky I am to have met the people that I have met that have given me such good role models, and how that is not always the case.

[piano music] [orchestra music]