Jonathan Larson

1432 Words3 Pages

Jonathan Larson ~ RENT
(February 4, 1960 – January 25, 1996)
Composer-lyricist-librettist of RENT, a rock opera inspired by "La Bohème", Jonathan Larson was born in Mt. Vernon, New York, and raised in suburban White Plains, the second child of Allan and Nanette Larson. Both Jonathan's parents loved music and theatre, and show tunes and folk music were always playing in their home. Jon and his sister Julie took piano lessons during elementary school. He could play by ear, and his teacher encouraged him to experiment with rhythm, harmony, and setting words. By high school, he was called the "Piano Man" after the enormously popular song of that title by Billy Joel; he also played tuba in the school marching band. Active in school and community theatre, Jonathan had major roles in several musicals.
In 1978, Jonathan entered the acting conservatory at Adelphi University with a four-year full-tuition merit scholarship. He told an interviewer in 1993 that the program was "an undergrad version of the Yale Rep [the theatre where students of the Yale School of Drama work alongside veteran professionals]. And I was serious enough about theatre to know that this was what I wanted to do." He earned his Equity card doing summer stock and received a BFA with honors in 1982.
His favorite part of the Adelphi curriculum was the original political cabarets. With classmates, Larson wrote rock-flavored attacks on the New Christian Right, Reaganomics, and the mind-numbing effects of television. He also scored EL LIBRO DE BUENAMOR (1979) and THE STEAK TARTARE CAPER (1981), musicals with lyrics and libretti by faculty members. He had a knack for pastiche and for complex ensemble numbers that used themes in counterpoint.
In class, Jonathan studied the theatre of Bertolt Brecht and Peter Brook. Among his musical influences were JESUS CHRIST SUPERSTAR, the Beatles, Prince, and the Police, but the writer he admired most was Stephen Sondheim, to whom he wrote during his last year in college. The distinguished composer-lyricist answered him and became an adviser to the young songwriter.
After graduation, Jonathan moved to Manhattan, went on acting auditions, performed in a nightclub trio, and composed songs for a musical version of Rudyard Kipling's "Jungle Books". In 1982 he adapted George Orwell's "1984" for the musical stage. Deeply affected by the novel, and unflappably confident, he completed book, music, and lyrics, recorded a demo tape, sent a script to director Harold Prince, and wrote to Orwell's estate.

Show More
Related

  • Joseph P. Reilly

    1195 Words  | 3 Pages

    Joseph P. Reilly filed a complaint against Gwynne G. Zisko, Esq., on or about April 8, 2016. Reilly asserts that Zisko violated the Rules of Professional Conduct by serving a subpoena on his employer, the Plymouth County Sheriff’s Department. The details of the case relating to the subpoena will be discussed further on in this report. Within the complaint, Reilly alleges that Zisko has violated Mass.R.Prof.C. 3.4, as well as 4.4.

    Read More

  • Theme Of Rhetorical Devices In The Thing Hings They Carried

    901 Words  | 2 Pages

    Analyzing innocence has always been a difficult task, not only due to it’s rapid reevaluation in the face of changing societal values, but also due to the highly private and personal nature of the concept. The differences between how people prioritize different types of innocence - childhood desires, intellectual naivety, sexual purity, criminal guilt, etc. - continually obscures the definition of innocence. This can make it difficult for people to sympathize with others’ loss of purity, simply because their definition of that loss will always be dissimilar to the originally expressed idea. Innocence can never truly be adequately described, simply because another will never be able to precisely decipher the other’s words. It is this challenge, the challenge of verbally depicting the isolationism of the corruption of innocence, that Tim O’Brien attempts to endeavour in his fictionalized memoir, The

    Read More

  • Leroy Anderson

    1063 Words  | 3 Pages

    Leroy Anderson was born June 29, 1908 in Cambridge, Massachusetts. His parents, as children, immigrated to the United States from Sweden with their families. His father, Bror Anton Anderson, worked as a postal clerk in the Central Square post office. He also played the mandolin. Anna Margareta Anderson, his mother, was the organist at the Swedish church in Cambridge. He lived in the suburbs of Boston for twenty seven years with his parents and brother.

    Read More

  • Writers of the 1920's

    483 Words  | 1 Pages

    Another author of great influence was Earnest Hemingway. Hemingway was a genius. He had a way of making his novels talk to his readers. Hemingway had a very well to do childhood, but as he grew older he resented his parents. Hemingway's first writing job was for the Toronto Daily Star. (Nelson32) At the star he did a lot of police and hospital beat ...

    Read More

  • Jacob Lawrence

    1738 Words  | 4 Pages

    One the most distinguished artists of the twentieth century, Jacob Lawrence was born in Atlantic City and spnt part of his child hood in Pennsylvania. After his parents split up in 1924, he went with his mother and siblings to New York, settling in Harlem. "He trained as a painter at the Harlem Art Workshop, inside the New York Public Library's 113 5th Street branch. Younger than the artists and writers who took part in the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s, Lawrence was also at an angle to them: he was not interested in the kind of idealized, fake-primitive images of blacks - the Noble Negroes in Art Deco guise - that tended to be produced as an antidote to the toxic racist stereotypes with which white popular culture had flooded America since Reconstruction. Nevertheless, he gained self-confidence from the Harlem cultural milieu - in particular, from the art critic Alain Locke, a Harvard-trained esthete (and America's first black Rhodes scholar) who believed strongly in the possibility of an art created by blacks, which could speak explicitly to African-Americans and still embody the values, and self-critical powers, of modernism. Or, in Locke's own words, "There is in truly great art no essential conflict between racial or national traits and universal human values." This would not sit well with today's American cultural separatists who trumpet about the incompatibility of American experiences - "It's a black thing, you wouldn't understand" - but it was vital to Lawrence's own growth as an artist. Locke perceived the importance of the Great Migration, not just as an economic event but as a cultural one, in which countless blacks took over the control of their own lives, which had been denied them in the South: When years later he told an interviewer that "I am the black community," he was neither boasting nor kidding. He had none of the alienation from Harlem that was felt by some other black artists of the 1930s, like the expatriate William Johnson.

    Read More

  • Jacob Lawrence

    486 Words  | 1 Pages

    Jacob Lawrence Jacob Lawrence's unique career has earned him a National Medal of Arts, election to the National Academy of Arts and Letters and the National Academy of Design, a National Council of the Arts commisionership, and dozens of honorary degrees and awards, including the NAACP's Spingarn Medal. His paintings have been featured in several major art exhibitions and many different museums. Lawrence's parents came from the south, but they moved to Harlem, where Lawrence grew up. Lawrence was born in 1917 and grew up in Harlem during the Great Depression. He had many extraordinary educational opportunities as well as his first employment as an artist.

    Read More

  • Elmer Bernstein's Impact On Music And Music

    1694 Words  | 4 Pages

    Elmer Bernstein was a composer best known for his many soundtracks displayed in movies. Bernstein began his career at a young age and continued composing for five decades. He is praised for his many contributions to the film industry with his “golden touch”. His impact on music is still felt today, and he will always be mourned by friends, family, and especially moviemakers. It is common for artists to be pigeonholed as a composer for just one category, but Elmer refused to accept just one label and decided to wear them all. Bernstein composed for westerns, epics, comedies, and intimate dramas. Every moment in Elmer’s life molded him into a remembered well rounded composer and aspects such as his family, education, and work sent Elmer to

    Read More

  • Steve Reich: A Lasting Influence

    988 Words  | 2 Pages

    Steve Reich was born in New York on October 3, 1936. His parents soon divorced, leaving Reich to constantly commute between New York and California via passenger train. Reich has stated that is was the sound of the wheels on the train tracks that helped to develop his strong rhythmic sense at an early age (Ross, 541). He studied philosophy at Cornell University with a minor in music before switching to composition full-time at Juilliard School and Mills College with Luciano Berio and Darius Milhaud (Mertens, 47). Although both great composers, Reich didn’t fit well within either of their styles. In the early seventies, Reich studied with a drummer of the Ewe tribe in Ghana and participated in a Balinese gamelan seminar where he began to develop a strong concordance with world music. This influence is clearly evident in many of Reich’s compositions.

    Read More

  • Behaviorism Essay

    699 Words  | 2 Pages

    Skinner exceled and enjoyed the school. He finished second in his high school class and was accepted to Hamilton College, a small liberal arts school in New York. Skinner had an intense passion for writing and wanted to become a writer. When Skinner was in college he met the famous poet Robert Frost. Frost asked Skinner to send him some of his work and Frost was very impressed with Skinner’s writing.

    Read More

  • Difference Between Exodus 20 And Deuteronomy 5

    872 Words  | 2 Pages

    The Decalogue occurs in Exodus 20 and Deuteronomy 5. Even though Exodus 20 and Deuteronomy 5 were from different sources (E and D respectively), the words and sentences were often repeated verbatim. While Exodus 20 and Deuteronomy 5 were nearly identical in text, there are some key distinctions that sets them apart. This distinction is the reason for following the Decalogue. Exodus claims that people will follow it because they aspire to emulate God. In contrast, Deuteronomy states that people will follow it out of fear first and then change their reasoning to be aspirational.

    Read More

  • Essay On George Gershwin

    782 Words  | 2 Pages

    George Gershwin was an American composer and pianist. He expressed his times through his music. Among his best known works are the orchestral compositions Rhapsody in Blue, An American in Paris, and the opera Porgy and Bess. His compositions have been adapted for use in many films and for television, and several became jazz standards recorded in many different ways. His compositional style was somewhat like his jazz piano improvisations in that he “varied” melodies more than he “developed” them. Gershwin succeeded as both a popular songwriter and a concert-hall composer.

    Read More

  • George Gershwin: Classical Music And American Music

    1432 Words  | 3 Pages

    George Gershwin was one of the greatest songwriters in American history, and he enriched this very vibrant period of music, but also a gifted "serious" composer who merged the worlds of classical and popular music. Gershwin was most influenced by such styles as jazz and

    Read More

  • My Customer Service Styles: My Customer Service Style

    933 Words  | 2 Pages

    Communication is the first medium for dealing with the customers and is the most important one. Communication styles

    Read More

  • Pros and Cons of School Uniforms

    797 Words  | 2 Pages

    One of the first cons of wearing school uniforms is that kids lose their freedom of expression. Self-expression is important for kids to have. If kids aren’t expressing themselves through clothing they will in other routes, such as the wearing of makeup, the use of jewelry, tattooing and piercing. Wearing uniforms stop kids from being unique, having their own individuality. Uniforms detract from a child’s individuality by forcing them all the wear the same clothes.

    Read More

  • Persuasive Essay: Why Do School Uniforms Are Ideas?

    806 Words  | 2 Pages

    Often times, it is a challenge for teachers to maintain this pristine student behavior, but this can be easily accomplished with school uniforms. When equipped with school uniforms, students are more poised and courteous in the learning environment ("School Dress Codes Are Necessary"). Consequently, students are less distracting and more respectful towards instructors. Furthermore, not only do school uniforms improve behavior inside the classroom, but outside the classroom as well. For instance, by implementing school uniforms at California’s Long Beach School District, crime, suspensions, and sex offenses all dropped by at least 90% ("School Uniform Statistics."). Nearly depleting such momentous issues results in a much safer learning environment. Obviously, integrating school uniforms into schools is an intelligent decision, for they improve student behavior inside and outside of

    Read More

More about Jonathan Larson

Open Document