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Ethan Popp: From Broadway to The Greatest Showman · Gilbert. K Show

• 0:02
  SPEAKER_00: Today on the Gilbert K Show, we're turning up the volume with Grammy nominated producer and three-time Tony nominated orchestrator, Ethan Pop.
• 0:11
  SPEAKER_00: From the greatest showman to Broadway's The Lost Boys and coaching Rami Malik for Bohemian Rhapsody, he helps bring unforgettable music to life.
• 0:20
  SPEAKER_00: Let's give a big welcome to the one and only Ethan Pop.
• 0:24
  SPEAKER_02: Hey Ethan, pleasure to have you on the show.
• 0:26
  SPEAKER_02: How are you today?
• 0:27
  SPEAKER_01: I'm wonderful, Gilbert.
• 0:29
  SPEAKER_02: Thanks so much for having me.
• 0:30
  SPEAKER_02: Thanks for joining me.
• 0:32
  SPEAKER_02: Uh okay, let's get into it.
• 0:33
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, the kid behind the music and the childhood.
• 0:37
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, before Broadway and movie sets, what did music sound like in your house growing up?
• 0:43
  SPEAKER_02: And which song would take you straight back there today?
• 0:47
  SPEAKER_01: Oh my goodness, what a great question to start with.
• 0:50
  SPEAKER_01: Um, you know, I grew up with a pretty eclectic soundtrack in my house.
• 0:54
  SPEAKER_01: You know, there was a lot of uh Kenny Rogers, uh Patsy Klein, uh Led Zeppelin, Janice Joplin, you know, and a lot of that wonderful, easy listening 1980s adult contemporary stuff that we now refer to as yacht rock.
• 1:09
  SPEAKER_01: Um and I think if you if you played me Kenny Rogers the Gambler today, I'd be sent straight back to my childhood living room, you know.
• 1:17
  SPEAKER_01: But I think there were there were really sort of two pivotal moments for me musically, right?
• 1:22
  SPEAKER_01: Um and that was the first uh was buying Michael Jackson's off the wall when I was eight.
• 1:28
  SPEAKER_01: Um I think the record really opened up an entirely different musical world for me.
• 1:33
  SPEAKER_01: And the second was getting my first Billy Joel album, uh uh probably Cold Spring Harbor, right?
• 1:40
  SPEAKER_01: Um I was studying classical piano and suddenly here's this guy sitting at a piano doing something completely different.
• 1:46
  SPEAKER_01: You know, it was total revelation to me.
• 1:49
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I realized that piano wasn't just an instrument where I had to reproduce music written by people who died 200 years ago.
• 1:56
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I could actually do something else with it, you know.
• 1:58
  SPEAKER_01: And I think those two discoveries alone really changed the direction of my life.
• 2:04
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I was actually I was like you.
• 2:06
  SPEAKER_02: Uh I I love music and stuff, and and I always like I was learning classical piano music, and I was telling myself, how can I play the music that's on on the radio, not like the people died 200 years ago?
• 2:20
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, so I went through the same process.
• 2:22
  SPEAKER_02: Um, so what's your earliest memory of making music for other people?
• 2:26
  SPEAKER_02: Were you the confident kid putting on a show or the nervous kid hoping nobody noticed a wrong note?
• 2:33
  SPEAKER_01: Oh goodness.
• 2:34
  SPEAKER_01: Uh both, I think it's in some ways.
• 2:37
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I've never had a problem playing in front of strangers, oddly enough.
• 2:41
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 2:42
  SPEAKER_01: Uh but uh uh I think my earliest memories of that weren't necessarily positive completely.
• 2:50
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, you know, my grandmothers, who I adored, used to send me, you know, books of like Christmas sheet music that they wanted me to learn on piano so I could perform at family holiday get-togethers.
• 3:02
  SPEAKER_01: Um and I remember, you know, at six, seven, eight years old feeling this sort of enormous pressure to perform, you know, because it wasn't just playing piano anymore, which I had done strictly for my enjoyment at the time.
• 3:15
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I was suddenly responsible for the evening's uh holiday entertainment, right?
• 3:20
  SPEAKER_01: And it I think it drove me away from wanting to perform for people for a while.
• 3:24
  SPEAKER_01: Um I loved, I loved, yeah, I love, I love the music, um, but the expectation that I had to get up and and play for people on command was was a different thing, uh, which is I think is pretty funny considering what I do for a living now.
• 3:38
  SPEAKER_01: You know, apparently my solution to that, to not wanting to perform for people was to build an entire career making music for other people to perform.
• 3:46
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 3:47
  SPEAKER_01: So I think I, you know, maybe I maybe I found a loophole there.
• 3:50
  SPEAKER_02: That's amazing.
• 3:52
  SPEAKER_02: So your your family, I guess, they were in the were they were they in the music industry or entertainment industry?
• 3:59
  SPEAKER_01: No, it's you know, as far back as we can go, I'm the only musician on uh on either side.
• 4:04
  SPEAKER_01: Uh you know, my mother uh uh was an artist and went to art school, um uh, but she was, you know, uh uh a painter.
• 4:14
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and my father studied political science.
• 4:16
  SPEAKER_01: And you know, as far back as we go on either side, you know, maybe some people took you know piano lessons for a couple of years here and there, but I was the first person to ever sort of make it make a go of it.
• 4:26
  SPEAKER_02: Professionally, yeah, that's amazing.
• 4:28
  SPEAKER_02: So, what was the first opportunity that made you this feel like a real career?
• 4:32
  SPEAKER_02: And what did you have to do before someone trusted you with it?
• 4:37
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, um, I think well, I I go back to when I was studying uh piano performance at the University of New Hampshire.
• 4:46
  SPEAKER_01: Um, you know, and at the time when I started that, I felt I felt a little bit lost, right?
• 4:52
  SPEAKER_01: I was I was being pushed deeper and deeper into classical repertoire.
• 4:56
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and all I really wanted to do was play play jazz and rock.
• 5:01
  SPEAKER_01: And I think I was struggling a bit to find figure out where where I fit.
• 5:05
  SPEAKER_01: And then I think towards the end of my first year, uh a friend of mine at UNH's theater department mentioned a local theater um that needed a music director for Joseph and the Amazing Technical Greek uh Dreamcoat.
• 5:17
  SPEAKER_01: Uh I got the job, and I think I at the time uh I made about 20 bucks a performance.
• 5:22
  SPEAKER_01: Uh so I actually had two other jobs to support my job in theater.
• 5:26
  SPEAKER_01: Uh but something clicked.
• 5:28
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I was making money, uh, working with other performers, uh, helping to sort of like uh mold and create and tell a story, and somebody was actually paying me to do it.
• 5:39
  SPEAKER_01: Uh not very much, not very much, admittedly, but it but it counted.
• 5:44
  SPEAKER_01: And then, you know, a few summers later, I was working at the same theater um making a little more money by then when I got a call about music directing and playing piano on stage uh for national touring production of a show called Forever Plaid.
• 5:58
  SPEAKER_01: Um and then suddenly there was a salary, uh benefits, health insurance, travel.
• 6:05
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, and I I remember thinking, like, wait a minute, this is actually a job?
• 6:09
  SPEAKER_01: Um and I think for me that's when it really became real.
• 6:14
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, that's great.
• 6:15
  SPEAKER_02: That's great.
• 6:16
  SPEAKER_02: So uh um, so you're an orchestrator, arranger, music supervisor, and producer.
• 6:23
  SPEAKER_02: If I hand you a song and say, Ethan, make the audience feel something, what happens next?
• 6:29
  SPEAKER_01: Oh Jesus.
• 6:30
  SPEAKER_02: Uh we're trying to explain your job to the audience.
• 6:34
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 6:35
  SPEAKER_01: And this this is something that I never articulate uh or or or try to articulate, you know, because I just uh, you know, and especially coming up in my era, you know, right now, there's so many wonderful university programs uh and graduate programs specifically devoted to what I do.
• 6:52
  SPEAKER_01: Um but but when I was growing up, when I was going through school, you studied you studied performance music, you studied conducting, you studied arranging, you studied orchestration, but not specifically for theater.
• 7:04
  SPEAKER_01: So a lot of it was just sort of uh you uh you learned by doing, uh, and quite often you learned by failure.
• 7:12
  SPEAKER_01: Um and I think the the first thing that I do in my process is ask what we're trying to make the audience feel.
• 7:20
  SPEAKER_01: Um because one single song can tell two completely different stories depending on how you present it.
• 7:26
  SPEAKER_01: You know, you can take a beautiful love song and make it feel romantic or nostalgic, uh uh heartbreaking or even vaguely threatening.
• 7:35
  SPEAKER_01: Um and sometimes all you have to do is change the instrumentation or the harmony or what happens uh, you know, in the silence between two phrases.
• 7:44
  SPEAKER_01: Uh and I always think that my job isn't just about making music sound good, it's to make sure the music is telling the same story as everything happening around it, right?
• 7:54
  SPEAKER_01: And I ideally uh the audience never consciously notices any of that work.
• 7:59
  SPEAKER_01: You know, if they're if they're sitting there thinking that uh, you know, how clever the orchestration or an arrangement is, uh, I've probably missed something.
• 8:07
  SPEAKER_01: You know, a lot of I feel like what I should do uh in my career is sort of not be noticed.
• 8:13
  SPEAKER_01: Um, you know, I I want an audience feeling something before they even realize why they're feeling it.
• 8:19
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, okay.
• 8:20
  SPEAKER_02: That's a great answer.
• 8:21
  SPEAKER_02: So we're gonna take a break and we're gonna play a game, this or that, and it's a rapid-fire game for the audience to get to know you.
• 8:27
  SPEAKER_02: In some instances, you can say both, but let's see and uh make it work.
• 8:32
  SPEAKER_02: Uh so Ethan.
• 8:34
  SPEAKER_01: With our 10-year-old, we never let him say both.
• 8:37
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 8:38
  SPEAKER_01: He wants to all the time.
• 8:40
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, let's see.
• 8:41
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, the roar of a Broadway audience or hearing a finished movie soundtrack in the cinema.
• 8:48
  SPEAKER_02: Oof.
• 8:49
  SPEAKER_01: Uh the roar of a Broadway audience.
• 8:52
  SPEAKER_02: A piano and a great voice, or full orchestra making the walls shake.
• 8:57
  SPEAKER_01: Uh full orchestra making the wall shake.
• 9:00
  SPEAKER_02: Uh the swagger of Queen or the Groove of Motown.
• 9:05
  SPEAKER_01: That's a tough one.
• 9:07
  SPEAKER_01: Uh there I'm gonna there I'm gonna choose both.
• 9:10
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 9:11
  SPEAKER_02: Uh jump into Back to the Futures, uh, DeLorean, or spend one night in the Lost Boys World?
• 9:18
  SPEAKER_02: Uh DeLorean.
• 9:20
  SPEAKER_02: Uh a big musical entrance or an ending that leaves the room silent?
• 9:26
  SPEAKER_01: Definitely an ending that leaves the room silent.
• 9:28
  SPEAKER_02: Uh bring your side a classic song to a new audience or help an audience fall in love with a brand new song.
• 9:35
  SPEAKER_01: Uh helping an audience fall in love with a brand new song.
• 9:39
  SPEAKER_02: Uh performer who nails the first take, or one who finds something surprising on take 10.
• 9:46
  SPEAKER_01: Uh performer who finds something surprising on take 10.
• 9:51
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, start with a sound you can't stop hearing, or an emotion you can't stop feeling.
• 9:56
  SPEAKER_01: Uh emotion you can't stop feeling.
• 10:00
  SPEAKER_02: And finally, a bold idea that divides the room, or reliable idea everyone likes.
• 10:06
  SPEAKER_01: Ooh.
• 10:08
  SPEAKER_01: Uh I'm gonna go with the bold idea.
• 10:11
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, great.
• 10:12
  SPEAKER_01: Not even I'm gonna go with it.
• 10:13
  SPEAKER_01: That's what I always strive for.
• 10:16
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 10:18
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, we're gonna move on to the next segment: the magic, the pressure, and the stories.
• 10:23
  SPEAKER_02: Um, with Motown, the musical people arrive carrying memories of those songs.
• 10:29
  SPEAKER_02: What was one musical choice where you had to balance what fans remember with what the story needed?
• 10:37
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, this was this was a really interesting process for me.
• 10:41
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, I think specifically because you know, I I developed this theory during that time that there's a really interesting uh dichotomy in music between the collective social remembrance of a musical moment in time and the and the actuality, the reality of that moment.
• 10:59
  SPEAKER_01: You know, and I think quite often uh the way we remember something is much more vivid, much bigger, and much more exciting than what it actually was.
• 11:08
  SPEAKER_01: You know, you think about any uh record you grew up loving, you know, in your in your memory, the drums are enormous, the horns might be explosive, uh, the whole thing feels larger than life.
• 11:18
  SPEAKER_01: But if you go back and really listen carefully to it, uh you sometimes or quite often, I think, discover that it's much smaller and much more restrained than you remember.
• 11:29
  SPEAKER_01: So when we were working on Motown, we had to make a really important decision.
• 11:34
  SPEAKER_01: You know, we weren't necessarily trying to recreate exactly what the recording sounded like, we were trying to recreate what people remembered, uh remembered them sounding like.
• 11:44
  SPEAKER_01: And I think those are uh two really different things.
• 11:48
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah, that's great.
• 11:49
  SPEAKER_02: Um, about Tina Turner, the Tina Turner musical, how did your musical choices make room for the Tina's vulnerability as well as her power?
• 12:01
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, everyone I think knows Tina Turner as this extraordinary force of nature.
• 12:08
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, not only through her vocal performance, but what you would witness from her on stage when she was performing.
• 12:15
  SPEAKER_01: Uh and I think if you had to make every musical moment enormous, uh eventually nothing feel nothing feels enormous, right?
• 12:23
  SPEAKER_01: If it's all that's true, if it's all at a hundred, uh nothing ever can feel uh a hundred percent.
• 12:30
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and I think sometimes the most powerful thing you can do in our work is sort of strip everything away.
• 12:36
  SPEAKER_01: So, you know, a voice with very little underneath it um can feel uh quite vulnerable, you know, and then when the band finally comes in, you've sort of you've earned that explosion, right?
• 12:48
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
• 12:49
  SPEAKER_01: And I think that's one of the things I love the most about about musical storytelling, whether it's in in uh film or on Broadway, you know, the power isn't always in what you add.
• 13:00
  SPEAKER_01: Uh sometimes it's what uh sometimes that power comes from uh comes within you know having the courage to leave leave stuff out.
• 13:10
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, that's true.
• 13:11
  SPEAKER_02: That's true.
• 13:12
  SPEAKER_02: Uh the greatest showman, as music director and music production supervisor on a greatest showman, what moment made you think, okay, this is going to hit people right in the heart?
• 13:24
  SPEAKER_01: Oh my goodness.
• 13:25
  SPEAKER_01: I think I think when it hit me.
• 13:30
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I I I think I grew up uh not really wearing my heart on my sleeve a lot, um, but really being struck by the power of music.
• 13:39
  SPEAKER_01: I grew up uh in in in southern New Hampshire, about 45 minutes outside of Boston at the time when John Williams was still conducting the Boston Pops, and I and I took trips with my school down to either afternoon student programs or open rehearsals uh that he would do for students, um, and really sort of feeling the power of the live orchestra was transformative and I think, you know, and quite emotional.
• 14:08
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and I think that sort of translated through my life to, you know, uh, and this happens on many projects, including, you know, most recently The Lost Boys, but with with the greatest showman specifically, I think it was getting the initial set of demos, you know, the composer's demos, um, which uh uh Justin Paul and Bench Pasick had done with you know enormous detail, you know, and hearing the the the first uh the initial demo of uh this is me, uh and just remembering being completely knocked out by it.
• 14:40
  SPEAKER_01: It was so anthemic, uh, so powerful, and the and the message behind it was just extraordinary.
• 14:47
  SPEAKER_01: Um, you know, and I think it moved me uh right to my right to my core.
• 14:55
  SPEAKER_01: And I think as a as a pretty jaded guy from from New Hampshire, it takes a lot to get through the exterior sometimes.
• 15:01
  SPEAKER_01: Uh and I remember thinking, you know, if this song is, you know, is having this kind of effect on me, uh, it's going to absolutely destroy people emotionally in the best possible way.
• 15:13
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah.
• 15:14
  SPEAKER_02: Great.
• 15:15
  SPEAKER_02: Um, Bohemian Rhapsody, you coached uh Rami Malik on vocals and piano for Bohemian Rhapsody.
• 15:22
  SPEAKER_02: What was one small detail you worked on that helped him look and feel more at home as Freddie Mercury?
• 15:29
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, goodness, what what an incredible talent uh Rami is.
• 15:34
  SPEAKER_01: Um I think one of the biggest challenges wasn't necessarily teaching Rami the mechanics of playing the piano or singing.
• 15:43
  SPEAKER_01: Um it was getting him to let go of the anxiety around doing those things.
• 15:48
  SPEAKER_01: You know, he approached the role as an actor's actor, uh and and initially didn't think of himself as as much as uh as much of a musician.
• 15:58
  SPEAKER_01: And I think when you're portraying somebody like Freddie Mercury, this iconic figure, you know, who had this extraordinary uh uh musical confidence, it can be intimidating.
• 16:09
  SPEAKER_01: And I think part of our work was getting him comfortable just sitting at the piano, making sounds, experimenting with his voice and not worrying about whether everything was technically correct.
• 16:20
  SPEAKER_01: Um, you know, and then moving into getting him to sit there um uh not worrying about you know playing the right notes or or necessarily singing the right notes, but but you know, actually expressing something, you know.
• 16:33
  SPEAKER_01: And I think once we broke down that wall uh for Rami, once he stopped thinking of himself as a non-musician, trying to imitate a musician, everything started to flow much more naturally.
• 16:44
  SPEAKER_01: Um, you know, we joked around a lot about it and we we we had fun because his musical instincts were there.
• 16:51
  SPEAKER_01: We just had to create an environment where he felt free enough to discover that.
• 16:56
  SPEAKER_01: Um and I think that translates to through to much of what I do in my career.
• 17:01
  SPEAKER_01: Um, you know, sometimes the best coaching isn't about give just giving somebody more information, it's about helping them get out of their own way.
• 17:08
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, that's great.
• 17:09
  SPEAKER_02: That's great.
• 17:10
  SPEAKER_02: Um, back to the future.
• 17:12
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, your back to the future, the musical orchestration with Brian Crook.
• 17:17
  SPEAKER_02: If the music is our DeLorean, what familiar sound has to take us back immediately?
• 17:23
  SPEAKER_02: And where you uh and where can you surprise us?
• 17:28
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, I think for me, uh the absolute foundation of Back to the Future is Alan Silvestri's uh iconic, extraordinary film score.
• 17:37
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, and and was actually uh one of my you know huge influences growing up.
• 17:43
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I I talked about what played on our record player and what albums I got, and of course, my experience with John Williams, this incredible film composer, but I remember Silvestri's score for Back to the Future in particular, um, really having this profound impact of me.
• 17:58
  SPEAKER_01: And I think because the music is so iconic and because I personally, you know, as an eight-year-old when it came out, uh have, you know, and I've always considered myself a super fan uh of the movie, um, you know, I think the music, aside from being iconic, is inseparable uh from the from the film's identity.
• 18:18
  SPEAKER_01: You know, you hear those opening, opening gestures, you know, and uh the incredible uh orchestral language behind it, you know, and I think you're immediately transported in the world in into that world.
• 18:29
  SPEAKER_01: And I think from the very beginning, I knew that we couldn't give audiences some kind of like reduced Broadway chamber orchestra approximation of it.
• 18:38
  SPEAKER_01: Uh because we'd be I I feel I felt like we'd be shortchanging them.
• 18:42
  SPEAKER_01: Uh you know, people don't come to uh Back to the Future wanting a smaller version of the experience they remember.
• 18:49
  SPEAKER_01: They want the DeLorean, they want the adventure, they want that enormous cinematic sound.
• 18:54
  SPEAKER_01: Uh and of course, the challenge behind that was the fact that the orchestra uh was recorded with you know 110 plus musicians and we were going to have 18.
• 19:04
  SPEAKER_01: Uh so how do you deliver uh that sound with 18 musicians and still get the emotional and sonic impact?
• 19:12
  SPEAKER_01: Uh and I think that's where orchestration becomes a fascinating exercise in uh in in musical engineering, if you will.
• 19:20
  SPEAKER_01: You're you're making uh deliberate decisions uh about register and instrumental color, uh harmonic density, how to create the the perception of scale.
• 19:31
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and I think for us, the goal was never to make people think, wow, that sounds pretty good for 18 musicians.
• 19:39
  SPEAKER_01: I think the goal was for them to forget that there were only 18 musicians in the first place.
• 19:45
  SPEAKER_02: Wow.
• 19:45
  SPEAKER_02: So what what did you do in that case?
• 19:47
  SPEAKER_02: Did you add more synthesizers or I don't know?
• 19:53
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, you know, I I think there was sort of a lot of uh technical trickery.
• 19:58
  SPEAKER_01: Um, we used some playback elements, but we also, you know, we had to service two worlds.
• 20:03
  SPEAKER_01: There was there was the sort of contemporary pop musical store um that you know was uh so cleverly clafted crafted by uh Glenn Ballard and Alan Silvestri, these two iconic musical forces.
• 20:17
  SPEAKER_01: But then there was this whole uh you know orchestral side of it as well, and we had to be able to service uh service both masters, if you will.
• 20:25
  SPEAKER_01: So we had to figure out uh a contingent of musicians that would serve uh you know the composition and also and also serve the score.
• 20:36
  SPEAKER_01: Uh and then we used you know uh what I refer to very early on as um uh what did I refer to it as?
• 20:45
  SPEAKER_01: Uh uh we we looked honestly for for what I refer to as rhythmic unison.
• 20:52
  SPEAKER_01: Um so if if one instrument was playing, you know, that the iconic melody, da, we would look for other instrumentation that that was playing that exact same rhythm or a variation on that rhythm, and then be able to layer in sounds via synth programming, via playback.
• 21:13
  SPEAKER_01: So, you know, uh, so perhaps a keyboardist could play, you know, a full orchestral section playing that melody, but also within that uh you know, have uh have another instruments layered in into that sound, playing that same rhythm, but perhaps in a in a completely different tonality to sort of beef beef up uh the orchestral sounds.
• 21:36
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and then with the within our live contingent, we we looked for you know what I refer to as section leaders.
• 21:43
  SPEAKER_01: Um so there was always live instrumentation playing every sound, and then anything happening via synthesizers or uh programming playback uh sort of became you know uh the method by which we expanded upon that that sounds.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_02: That's amazing.
• 22:01
  SPEAKER_02: That's that's that's amazing.
• 22:03
  SPEAKER_02: So The Lost Boys, imagine I'm sitting in the theater with my eyes closed.
• 22:08
  SPEAKER_02: What musical detail would tell me, Gilbert, you are definitely not safe here?
• 22:15
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, that was so important to me from the get-go.
• 22:18
  SPEAKER_01: And I remember in developments uh uh talking about an expansive use of immersive audio uh throughout throughout the production.
• 22:29
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, you know, for for 25 years, there have been elements of of surround sound, if if you will, uh in Broadway, but typically it's to make you know one sound, you know, become sourced, you know, from the rear left or the rear right or the sides, um, but not a lot of motion behind it.
• 22:48
  SPEAKER_01: And I thought there was a lot of unexplored territory there.
• 22:51
  SPEAKER_01: Um, you know, over the last 20 years specifically, there's been such a change in terms of how audiences experience sound uh that I think was amplified then during COVID when people only experience sound through the screen and people are used to even in their headphones being in an immersive environment, uh being at home, you know, watching you know Netflix or Apple TV and having sound sort of you know bathe them.
• 23:19
  SPEAKER_01: Uh and I think what I love about horror is that music doesn't necessarily have to tell you something terrible is happening.
• 23:25
  SPEAKER_01: Sometimes it's much more interesting uh when the music makes danger attractive.
• 23:31
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 23:32
  SPEAKER_01: You know, the Lost Boys lives in a world where where seduction and danger are almost inseparable, I'd say.
• 23:40
  SPEAKER_01: And I think you can create an incredibly inviting musical texture by uh but put something subtly uh uh unsettling underneath it.
• 23:49
  SPEAKER_01: So maybe it's a harmonic choice or a sound that doesn't quite belong there, uh, or a rhythmic pulse that makes you feel like something's coming.
• 23:56
  SPEAKER_01: The audience may not be able to explain why they're uncomfortable, they just know something isn't right, and I think that's exactly what you want.
• 24:06
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, that's great.
• 24:08
  SPEAKER_02: Um, we're gonna talk about the Tony nomination.
• 24:10
  SPEAKER_02: The Lost Boys brought you a third Tony nomination for orchestration shared with the rescues.
• 24:16
  SPEAKER_02: Who was the first person to you wanted to tell?
• 24:19
  SPEAKER_02: And what was the part journey that that nomination bring back?
• 24:23
  SPEAKER_01: Oh my goodness.
• 24:24
  SPEAKER_01: Uh well, the first person I wanted to tell was actually sitting right next to me when the nominations came out.
• 24:30
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but that would a hundred percent be Vanessa.
• 24:34
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, my wife of we just celebrated 17 years together.
• 24:38
  SPEAKER_01: We've been together uh 19 years.
• 24:41
  SPEAKER_01: Um I say that without question.
• 24:44
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, thank you, thank you very much.
• 24:46
  SPEAKER_01: Uh best decision of my life.
• 24:48
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, and I think there's a pretty incredible story behind that.
• 24:53
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, in that uh about 18 years ago, I was signed on to be uh the associate music director of a of a huge Broadway musical that was in development.
• 25:04
  SPEAKER_01: Um, we were a few weeks out from starting rehearsal, and it was a huge show, a solid job, uh, and exactly the kind of opportunity you work toward in this business.
• 25:14
  SPEAKER_01: And then uh, like I said, three weeks before rehearsals, uh, we're we're going to start.
• 25:19
  SPEAKER_01: I got a call about this little tiny off-Broadway musical.
• 25:22
  SPEAKER_01: It paid almost nothing, and it was scheduled to only be performed uh for 100 performances, and I was going to turn it down.
• 25:31
  SPEAKER_01: Um which is which is kind of insane, I think, because uh I'd spent my entire life dreaming about creating theater and being part of something from the ground up.
• 25:40
  SPEAKER_01: And here I was ready to pass up exactly that opportunity because I was afraid to walk away from what I thought was such a sure thing.
• 25:47
  SPEAKER_01: And Vanessa was the one who said essentially, like, what are you doing?
• 25:51
  SPEAKER_01: This is what you've always wanted, wanted, this is what you've always dreamed of, just go and do it.
• 25:56
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, and I did, and that's where the story got ridiculous because that little off-Broadway show opened, finished its run, transferred to Broadway, uh, and opened there before the big Broadway show.
• 26:07
  SPEAKER_01: I'd been afraid to uh leave, even made it to New York.
• 26:11
  SPEAKER_01: Uh and it ended up running almost six and a half years longer than that other show, had multiple national tours, international productions, and ultimately gave us the the sort of uh financial stability to buy our first house.
• 26:24
  SPEAKER_01: Um that little show was uh Rock of Ages.
• 26:29
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 26:30
  SPEAKER_01: Oh so so so when I when I got that third Tony nomination, of course, uh you know celebrating it with Vanessa was incredibly special because I can draw a pretty straight line from that decision 18 years ago to where I am today.
• 26:44
  SPEAKER_01: And if she hadn't had I been left to my own devices, I genuinely uh don't know what my career would look like.
• 26:51
  SPEAKER_01: And I think you know, after Vanessa, it would be my mom and dad, of course.
• 26:55
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah, that's very inspiring.
• 26:57
  SPEAKER_02: Um, so the person beyond the credits, this is our next segment.
• 27:02
  SPEAKER_02: When the music doesn't work, tell me about a musical idea you love that simply didn't work in the room.
• 27:09
  SPEAKER_02: How did you let it go and what replaced it?
• 27:13
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, that happens constantly.
• 27:18
  SPEAKER_01: Uh you know, my my I feel like my career is in uh revisions.
• 27:24
  SPEAKER_01: Um, you know, I think the ideas you're most in love with sometimes are the ones you have the hardest time letting go of.
• 27:31
  SPEAKER_01: And and I think you can spend spend days uh building an arrangement that sounds fantastic on its own, uh, and then you put it in a scene and realize it's just the wrong thing.
• 27:42
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, you know, maybe it's maybe it's too busy, maybe it's telling the audience uh what to feel before the actors are in the moment.
• 27:50
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and I think that's a really important distinction for me because I genuinely believe that when I'm doing my job at its best, uh, and I alluded this to this before, uh, I feel that the audience shouldn't even be consciously aware of any sort of musical decisions uh that we're making.
• 28:08
  SPEAKER_01: It should always, you know, just feel uh natural and completely integrated into the storytelling, that no one stops to think about why it's working.
• 28:16
  SPEAKER_01: Now that doesn't mean that the music can't be spectacular uh or draw attention uh to itself when the story calls for it.
• 28:23
  SPEAKER_01: I think that means that the attention should always be on the emotional experience, not just on the person who made the musical decision.
• 28:31
  SPEAKER_01: Um, you know, nobody bought buys a ticket to admire my arrangement, they buy a ticket to experience a story.
• 28:37
  SPEAKER_01: And sometimes the best musical decision you make all day uh is deleting something that you spend three days creating.
• 28:44
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah, that's great.
• 28:46
  SPEAKER_02: So, what comes next?
• 28:47
  SPEAKER_02: Your your work with live musicians, you work with live musicians, recording tools, immersive audio.
• 28:54
  SPEAKER_02: What new possibility makes you feel like a beginner again?
• 28:58
  SPEAKER_02: And what would you love to try next?
• 29:01
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, I love this uh because it's something I think about all the time.
• 29:05
  SPEAKER_01: Uh and I spoke a little bit about this before, you know, in terms of immersive audio.
• 29:10
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I think I'm fascinated by the idea that music doesn't necessarily have to come from one place anymore.
• 29:15
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, I think for most of uh you know history, specifically on Broadway and Beater in general, uh the relationship between the audience and the orchestra has been relatively fixed.
• 29:25
  SPEAKER_01: You know, here it is in stereo or coming from an orchestra pit.
• 29:28
  SPEAKER_01: Uh and I think we've reached a point where sound can become part of that physical environment of the story, right?
• 29:34
  SPEAKER_01: Um not just you know, in terms of you know, making sure that harmonic choices, melodic choices, and orchestration sort of fit in, but it can help really build uh the environment.
• 29:46
  SPEAKER_01: And I think what excites me isn't the technology itself, but it's what the technology allows us to make an audience feel.
• 29:53
  SPEAKER_01: We don't want somebody walking out of a theater and ever saying, Wow, that was an impressive uh impressive sound system.
• 30:01
  SPEAKER_01: I want them walking out saying, you know, I have absolutely no idea how they made me feel that way.
• 30:07
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 30:07
  SPEAKER_01: I think that's golden, and that's why we learn so much from our from our audiences.
• 30:12
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, that's great.
• 30:14
  SPEAKER_02: And finally, the last note if the kid from our first question could sit beside you during the Lost Voice, what would you want him to understand about the life between that childhood song and this moment?
• 30:28
  SPEAKER_01: Wow.
• 30:30
  SPEAKER_01: Uh I think I tell him that the thing he loves about music right now is still uh the thing he's going to love about it decades later.
• 30:40
  SPEAKER_01: Um you know that the technology will change, the projects will get bigger, uh, the stakes will get higher, uh, and there will be days when when the business of making music seems to have very little to do with with the joy um yeah that you feel as a child.
• 30:56
  SPEAKER_01: But I think underneath all of that, you're still trying to do the exact same thing.
• 31:00
  SPEAKER_01: You're trying to make somebody feel something.
• 31:02
  SPEAKER_01: And if and if you can hold on to that, you're doing okay.
• 31:06
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah.
• 31:07
  SPEAKER_02: So so Ian, do you have any tips or recommendations for upcoming musicians that you wish somebody told you throughout your career?
• 31:17
  SPEAKER_01: Uh yeah, no, I appreciate that uh very much.
• 31:21
  SPEAKER_01: And I think about this quite often because you know, often I will uh go to go to universities and uh you know hold master classes or or uh or be a guest speaker to you know to to precisely that to the to the next generation of artists.
• 31:37
  SPEAKER_01: And one thing that I always tell them is is uh is to lead their career with yes as the first answer um and figure everything else out later.
• 31:47
  SPEAKER_01: You know, we spend, I think, as as humanity a lot of time thinking about our past and thinking about decisions that we've made, uh, you know, the what the why or how of it all.
• 32:00
  SPEAKER_01: Um and I think for my own career, I could look back over the last 25 or 30 years and say, oh, what if I did this or what if I did that?
• 32:09
  SPEAKER_01: But you know, every decision that I've made, every yes that I've given as an answer has led me to where I am today.
• 32:16
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and a lot of that, especially because I uh because I didn't study what I do uh as a profession, because I because I studied just performance piano.
• 32:29
  SPEAKER_01: Um and and quite honestly, because I dropped out of school and had and had to sort of learn it, learn it on my own, uh, it was always about sort of answering, you know, putting yes first and then figuring it out afterwards.
• 32:43
  SPEAKER_01: You can you can always read a book, you can always talk to somebody, you can always, you know, in this day and age, you know, look, you know, look things up, you know, online.
• 32:51
  SPEAKER_01: Uh uh but I but I think first and foremost, you know, be being positive and and like I said, leading with yes, that's the most important thing.
• 33:00
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, that's a great tip.
• 33:01
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, Ethan, we're nearing the end of the show.
• 33:03
  SPEAKER_02: That's all, folks.
• 33:04
  SPEAKER_02: Thank you for watching.
• 33:05
  SPEAKER_02: Ethan Pop, everyone.
• 33:06
  SPEAKER_02: Thank you, Ethan.
• 33:07
  SPEAKER_01: It was a thank you very much, Gilbert.
• 33:09
  SPEAKER_02: Thank you.