Maury Yeston’s music and lyrics include the scores for his internationally acclaimed and produced Broadway musicals Nine, Titanic (both of which earned him Tony Awards for Best Score and Best Musical) and Grand Hotel (Tony nomination, Olivier Award), and his nationally and internationally acclaimed Phantom. Nine additionally won another Tony for Best Revival in 2003. A screen adaptation of Nine, directed by Rob Marshall for the Weinstein Company is currently in production, featuring Daniel Day-Lewis, Penelope Cruz, Marion Cotillard, Nicole Kidman, Dame Judi Dench, Kate Hudson, Fergie, and Sophia Loren, with a screenplay by Anthony Minghella. Headed soon for the stage are Yeston-penned musicals: Death Takes a Holiday and Hans Christian Andersen, now being cast. Yeston authored the December Songs (a song-cycle commissioned by Carnegie Hall for its centennial), and is, in addition, a symphonic composer, with his cello concerto premiered by Yo Yo Ma, and his American Cantata—a choral symphony commissioned by the Kennedy Center and premiered by the American Symphony Orchestra under the baton of Leonard Slatkin at the Lincoln Memorial. He holds BA, MA, and PhD. degrees from Yale and England’s Cambridge University, and was for 10 years Professor and Director of Undergraduate Studies in Music at Yale. His music can be found in numerous recordings, including “The Maury Yeston Songbook” (PS Classics), “December Songs”. Grammy-nominated cast albums of all his shows (Nine, Titanic, Grand Hotel, Phantom), in addition to recording projects featuring Barbra Streisand, Placido Domingo, Gloria Estefan, and Dionne Warwick, among others.

Buy Maury Yeston’s musicals
Nine
Phantom

Q & A with Maury Yeston

Q: Your musical, Nine, will soon be a major motion picture. Can you talk a little bit about the process of adapting your work for the screen?

This is a great question because it gets to the heart of why anyone would do an adaptation of a prior work in a new form. Musicals have been based on books, plays, films—even cartoons! Indeed films too are based on works from other media—including stage musicals. In each case, the only valid reason for spending years of your life adapting a project is out of love for the original, and a perception that you can transform it in order to adapt it beautifully into a new medium without actually destroying it. Indeed you must be rather adding something of your own to it that you hope will enhance the work of the original creator(s) that you have so come to love. Thus, like any good translation, it must change and still somehow be true to the original.

For me, my initial love of Fellini’s masterpiece, 81/2 impelled me to find a way for it to sing. The door that opened for me was the idea that we could hear the thoughts of the ladies who were victimized by the womanizing yet charming protagonist—Guido Contini the film director. The show had to work onstage, in terms of live theater, with added dancing, and singing. Thus, Nine became a theater-piece inspired by 81/2.

The first words out of my mouth to Rob Marshall were “Film is a director’s art, and you must feel free to re-adapt this stage piece in terms of the language and possibilities of film. Please do not, on my account, point a camera at the stage and hope it will be a movie. You have carte blanche to take my work and re-create it and bring yourself to it in a film, with as little interference from me as possible.” The fact that Rob elected to include me in his process nonetheless, even to add songs to the film where he felt necessary, has led to the most thrilling collaboration of my professional life. In fact, the brilliant cast he assembled have each inspired changes to the music and lyrics based on their extraordinary talents and performances. This is true of material sung by Daniel Day-Lewis, Dame Judi Dench, Sofia Loren, Marion Cotillard, Penelope Cruz, Fergie and Kate Hudson.

Q: Your work is enjoyed all around the world. Have you ever come across a production that made you see one of your musicals in a new or unexpected way?

This happens all the time. There are only two choices in such matters: either you overcontrol your work to death, and impede the natural creativity of artists who are paying you the ultimate compliment of mounting productions of your work . . . or you allow them, within reason, to make it right for their culture, their audience, and their actors. I merely write these things. Someone else has to get it across the footlights to the audience, and I adore visiting German, Japanese, Dutch, French, Argentinian, Irish versions of my piece and being so surprised and delighted by staging ideas that I never would have thought of. They keep my work alive and connected to the audience, and I a m so grateful for that.

Q: When and/or how did you know that you wanted to create musicals?

When I was very young I saw My Fair Lady and I was brought up in a very musical household. I have been composing since I was 6, and it has always been obvious to me that my love of melody, lyrics, the theater, and the way they can combine to move an audience was a wonder and a kind of miracle that I could devote my life to.

Q: You’ve worked extensively in the realms of both musical theater and classical music. How does your approach to composition change when you&rsqre writing for the stage versus the concert hall?

The essence of the difference between the two forms—indeed even between musical theater and classical opera—is the primacy of words, as lyrics, in the vernacular of the audience. It would be inconceivable for a Cole Porter, or Gershwin-brother score, to have premiered on an American stage in the 1930’s in German, with any hope of success. It’s those brilliant words in combination with the genius tunes, that make the evening happen. In many ways, this is as fresh an American creation as is jazz!

Classical composition proceeds by a kind of brilliant transition, which creates emotional contours and climaxes in purely musical terms. Thus musical form, beyond song form, becomes primary. The one domain where the two worlds meet and overlap is the world of art song, and this is why it was particularly gratifying for me to be asked by Carnegie Hall to write the “December Songs” because I was able to combine my love of pure cabaret with my devotion to the form of a pure classical song-cycle.

Q: What inspires you to take on a new project?

A story that screams out its need to be sung (Titanic). An iconic central character, larger than life (Guido). Anything that shakes me, moves me, even to the point of being willing to devote years to getting it right.