About a thousand years ago, I ran into a pianist friend of mine, Paul Trueblood, on the street one day. He told me that Johnny DeMaio was looking for a partner to form a duo-piano team to go into the Rainbow Room, a plush show place and restaurant on top of Rockefeller Center, to replace the duo-piano team Whitmore & Lowe who would be finishing their engagement there. I called Johnny who came over to my place to hear me play and he decided that we would make great partners.

The moment we sat down at twin Steinway Grands in Andrew Litton's parents apartment we sounded as if we had been playing together for years. Johnny had the most fantastic technique and musicianship I had heard on a pianist since my friendship at Juilliard with Van Cliburn. I told Johnny, "We have to not only be better than any of the other teams, we have to be different. We're going to play popular and show music the way Rachmanninoff, Brahms, Beethoven, Chopin and the other great masters would have written or played those numbers.

We were instant successes and we practiced on a weekly basis turning out new arrangements. The Rainbow Room had a policy of celebrating a different famous composer each month. Cy Coleman came to hear us do our arrangements of his sings, Jo Sullivan came to hear our arrangements of Frank Loesser and Stephen Sondheim came with Hal Prince to hear our arrangements of his music. He was the only one who wasn't taken with us. He was not amused at hearing "SEND IN THE CLOWNS" against Rachmaninoff's 18th Variation on a theme of Pagannini, or "COMEDY TONIGHT" combined with The Polka and Fugue from Weinberger's Scwanda - The Dudelfeiffer. He also hated the waltz from "A LITTLE NIGHT MUSIC" combined with a round of "Ach de Lieve Augustine". I have never seen such fury glare from a mans eyes as I did from his eyes that night.

On October 13th. Johnny and I gave our legendary concert at Lincoln Center. In the audience was every musical celebrity in town, most of the faculty from Juilliard, Fred Steinway, Mrs. J.C. Penny and many of the composers and lyricists whose material we were playing. The evening was recorded live and the CD is available here.

Johnny and I became Steinway Artists and performed for several years around the country until we both became tired of living out of suit cases.

In Gay Company was my first attempt at writing lyrics as well as music for a theatrical work. Actually I had started writing my own lyrics in 1966 when I wrote THE TWELVE DAYS AFTER CHRISTMAS. How that came about is an interesting story in itself.

I had just moved into a remarkable rent controlled Penthouse at 78th and Amsterdam Avenue in New York City. It was the first week in December and I was up on a ladder painting the ceiling of my living room. Because I had just moved in, my stereo wasn't set up yet so I had a radio on. The carol, The Partridge In A Pear Tree started playing. I have always disliked that carol so I climbed down the ladder to change the station. Having done so I resumed painting when they started playing it on the different station. In my haste to get down the ladder to change stations again, I slipped and twisted my ankle. In anger, and in pain I screamed out, "What the fuck did she do with the Goddamn gifts!" Eureka!

I grabbed a pencil and in 15 minutes wrote the lyric to the TWELVE DAYS AFTER CHRISTMAS. My friend, Don MacAfee published it, and my agent, Bruce Savan sent it to Carol Burnett who performed it on her Christmas Show on CBS. That night the switchboard lit up at CBS as over 10,000 people asked how to get a copy of it. I made more money from that song than anything else I have ever written. It also taught me a metaphysical lesson. There is no difference between a stumbling block and a stepping stone.

It's how you approach and use the experience.

IN GAY COMPANY came about because of a bet I made with one of my closest friends. Joe and I had gone to see some horrible piece of Gay trash at an off-Broadway theater on the West side. I am angry when I see bad work so I told Joe I could write a hit musical revue about Gay life in three weeks. He said, " if you can write it I'll produce it."

I wrote the draft of the musical, and about twelve songs, on the beach at Fire Island. I remembered a character, Florence Dana Moorehead, in the play I Remember Mama. She was a successful author who told Mama that her daughter, Katherine, had talent but that to use it she had to write about things she knew, things she had experienced. I decided to take this advice and wrote about Gay life in New York City in the late fifties and early sixties when I came out. It was about my experiences. It was about what I thought was funny, or touching and beautiful.

I was a member of Lehman Engel's writer's work shop produced by BMI. With great trepidation I played and sang for the class three songs I had just written out in Fire Island, A BEGINNER'S GUIDE TO CRUISING, HANDSOME STRANGER and IF HE'D ONLY BE GENTLE. The class went wild with laughter and Lehman Engel was beaming.

He told me in front of the class that the writing was original and that I had a great gift for comedy. He programmed those three works at the annual show of works created for the class at the Edison Theater in The Hotel Edison in New York City. Almost anyone who was anyone in the theater was in the audience.

Three years later the show opened at The Little Hippodrome Theater in the east sixties of New York City with a cast of Five, four men and one beautiful young woman. The production was directed by Sue Lawless with sets by Michael Hottop and musical direction by Dennis Franceshina. Business was slow because the press reviews were coming out slowly. Because of the title and subject this show was not on everyone's 'A' list. As each press review that came out was a rave, each surpassing each other, business gradually picked up and we were full weekends.Then as business began to pick up after the rave review in the NY Times some wonderful things happened. Arnold Weissbereger, the top theatrical lawyer in the business and his partner, Milton Goldmar the top theatrical agent in New York City, bought out the entire house and arranged a private performance for their clients and friends. In the audience that night was Truman Capote, Hermione Gingold, Alexis Smith, Lee Radizell (Jackie Kennedy's sister), Maureen Stapleton, Marilyn Cantor Baker (Eddy Cantor's daughter who was to become a close friend) and other celebrities whose names escape me.

Truman Capote took me aside and told me that with my talent I should be writing full length plays. When I told him that I didn't know how he offered to teach me. The saddest thing I remember about the evening was the magnificent Maureen Stapleton chasing two of the men in the cast. She was obviously a bit inebriated and in quite a romantic mood that evening.

GAY COMPANY was nominated by the Outer Drama Critics Association for the OBIE but lost to a show which had opened later that season at Joe Papp's Theater called A CHORUS LINE. Still the Lincoln Center Archives thought it an important enough work to include it in their Video Tape collection in black and white. An original cast album of the New York Production was never made although Clive Davis offered to release one if I would insert a rock ballad into the show. The show was frozen by that time so I wasn't able to fulfill his request The Los Angeles original cast album is available and I sell it as well as the Vocal selections on this website. I also license the work and can provide working scripts and scores of the show

For Heaven's Sake was not only my first published show, but the one that was to bring me my first success and recognition. I had recently been signed to a music publishing contract by Rodgers and Hammerstein's publishing company, Williamson music after winning the first Rodgers and Hammerstein award ever given to a composer for the Musical Theater. Williamson Music published the vocal score and Baker's Plays in Boston licensed and published the script and production rights.

The story of how For Heaven's Sake came about is an interesting one. Across the street from Juilliard was Union Theological Seminary. I used to spend a lot of leisure time in their lounge which had a grand piano in it. When I'd sit down and play I always had an admiring crowd around me. One of my friends, Harland Jyhlla introduced me to Bob Seaver who was the head of the Drama department there. He liked my music and offered me a commission to write the score for a musical revue with Lyrics and book by Helen Kromer. The show was to have only one performance at The Henry Hill Auditorium at the University Of Michigan in Ann Arbor Michigan on August 20th 1961.It was to be produced by the North American Youth Assembly and was funded by the National Council Of Churches. The subject of the revue was modern American values towards contemporary Christian values and our reaction to them. I was paid $2,000.00 to write the music. It was my first commission and I was very excited.

I met Helen Kromer and we hit it off at once. She struck me as a very chic and strikingly beautiful woman who lived on West 104th Street at the time. Being Jewish was an asset in setting her lyrics to music. There was nothing "churchy" about my music. My score was bright, jazzy. bluesy and lyrical all at the same time to suit her lyrics which were well crafted, hip and to the point. I completed the score in three or four weeks.

The cast starred Thelma Carpenter, Charles Berry, Robert Lone, Robert Margolis, Bill Moor, Paul Wheaton, Janet Frank, Liz Ingelson, Fredericka Pickford and Elizabeth Thompson. The Musical Director and Pianist was Reginald Beane. Robert Seaver directed.

Miracle of Miracles after the curtain came down there was a fifteen minute standing ovation. The audience insisted on reprises and got them. The Saturday Evening Post did a rave write up on it as did News Week magazine titled "The Church Takes Up Show Business.

The reaction to the show was so strong that CBS televised some of the material on "Look Up And Live" and a cast recording was released. The show was reprised a few weeks later in New York City at the theater in Riverside Cathedral. The Archbishop of The Anglican Church of North America when introduced to my parents said, "Mister and Mrs. Silver, you are to be congratulated on raising such a fine young Christian boy!" He didn't know that their name was Silverberg and that Silver was my nom de plume. I overheard my father say to my mother in a whisper, "For this he was Bar Mitzvahed".

For Heaven's Sake was performed thousands of times that year and every year after that by amateur groups around the world. The $5,000.00 advance I was given by Williamson Music was paid off within under six months just from my share of the royalties on the vocal score.

Why is it that when you try to do a good deed, or a favor for friends it turns out to be a night mare? It reminds me of a saying, "No good deed will go unpunished." I wrote GOOD LITTLE GIRLS for three women friends. All of them had studied with me and two of them met the third in my performance classes. They approached me because there was a scarcity of work for actresses in their mid to late forties in New York City. They asked me to write a three character revue for them. I did and it was called US. It was about three middle aged women who meet in a divorce lawyer's office after hearing the same radio and TV Commercial from a divorce attorney named Martin Schlockwood who you reach by dialing 1-800-D-I-V-O-R-C-E.

I wrote most of the score and lyrics down at my weekend house in Ocean Grove, New Jersey. Two of the ladies lived close by and the third took the train some weekends to rehearse and learn the material. I knew we had something wonderful on our hands. I did not ask to be paid for my work. It was a labor of love. Then the three of them decided that they wanted to own it outright and control it's use. That's when I saw red and said enough is enough. That ended our friendship with bitter arguments. Each claimed they should own ten percent of the work because I wrote it around them. I wrote it for them, not about them.

In 1988 I did a small reading of the musical in progress with John Fearnley narrating, Rita Gardner and Leigh Beery singing and another actress whose name escapes me at Nola Studios in New York. It was very successful and on the basis of it Lucille Lortel decided to produce it for one weekend at her White Barn Theatre in Westport Connecticut the following summer. John Fearnley directed, Peter Howard played and did the musical direction. Rita Gardner brilliantly again played Jane. Critics praised the wit of the lyrics and the score but my book was lethal and the characters really were not defined yet. This was a work in progress.

A close friend of mine, JoAnn Miller flew in from Granbury, Texas and decided to produce it at the Granbury Opera house which she had built up into a Texas landmark and a first class theater. It ran 12 weeks there to good reviews. I knew I had to add male roles and make it less a revue and more a book show. I rewrote it at least seventeen times and created a part for an actor playing four different male roles. Finally there was light at the end of the tunnel. It played a few years later in Granbury and worked like a charm.

A few seasons ago it was chosen by the Key West Theater Festival for the 2000 season and surprised everyone by becoming the hit of the festival. A CD of the demo recording is available.

Here are the proven tactics and techniques for auditioning in the musical theatre, by Back Stage's own "Audition Doctor" columnist, Fred Silver, a leading New York vocal coach who has worked with thousands of actors, including E. G. Marshall, Sandy Duncan, Nancy Dussault, and Marsha Mason. Drawing from his more than twenty- five years of coaching performers, his six years as a columnist for one of the leading theatrical trades, and his own musical training, Silver has created the one book that will prove invaluable for performers auditioning for Broadway, Off-Broadway, regional and dinner theatres, or summer stock productions.

In straightforward, economical prose, using dozens of specific examples, Silver describes how to "act" a song effectively, and how to choose attention-getting material and tailor it to different performance situations. He tells actors what to wear to an audition, how to use eye contact, how to handle the accompanist, what to sing at a callback, how to choose a voice teacher and a vocal coach, how to playa comedy song, and much more. A special feature of the book is a list of more than 130 excellent yet unusual audition songs, ideal for showcasing a performer's talent-including selections suitable for juvenile actors, romantic leads, character actors, comics, and performers who are primarily dancers. Auditioning for the Musical Theatre gives you the edge you need to get the parts you want.

FRED SILVER has coached thousands of actors, including Sandy Duncan, Betty Hut ton, E. G. Marshall, Nancy Dussault, Diane Ladd, Pat Hingle, Tovah Feldshuh, Barbara Barrie, and Marsha Mason. For the past six years, he has written the "Audition Doctor" column for Back Stage magazine. He received Bachelor's and Masters' degrees from Juilliard, where he was awarded the first Rodgers and Hammerstein Scholarship for a composer of musical theatre. He has written seven musical shows that have won more than fifteen ASCAP awards and a nomination for "Best Score" from the New York Drama Desk Circle, and he has also been musical director for both Upstairs at the Downstairs and Plaza 9 in New York City.

Fred Silver uses his twenty-five years of experience in the theatre, training thousands of actors, to give vital advice on: