Manhattanhenge

 

A Special Installment of “A Helluva Town” 

[A ”beloved event, known as Manhattanhenge, occurs when the setting sun aligns perfectly with the numbered streets that run east and west on Manhattan’s city grid, bathing traffic and skyscrapers in its warm red light.”  That’s the way Nicholas St. Fleur, a science reporter for the New York Times and a children’s STEM author, characterized this celestial spectacle in a 2016 Times article.

[For four days every year, New Yorkers and visitors to the Big Apple get excited about a daily occurrence: sunset.  In a special revival of an ad hoc series I ran on Rick On Theater for a couple of years, “A Helluva Town”—about New York peculiarities, oddities, curiosities, and idiosyncrasies—I’m going to present some of the interesting facts and factoids about this astronomical phenomenon.

[Readers who live in or near New York City and have never seen Manhattanhenge and ROTters who live somewhere else and have never heard of it should find this interesting.  Maybe it’ll entice you to come see it.  Anyone who has seen the spectacle might learn something she or he didn’t know about it. 

[In any case, it’s an intriguing marvel that happens to be real, contrived by nature, and has somehow blessed New York City above all other cities in the world.  Read on and see what you think.]

In the spring and summer of every year, New York residents and visitors are treated to some astronomical eye candy.  On two days in May and two in July, the setting Sun lines up with the city’s street grid, producing a solar exhibition perfectly staged within the proscenium formed by Manhattan’s west side skyscrapers.  The phenomenon known as “Manhattanhenge” illuminates the streetscape in evening’s warm rosiness as ol’ Sol meets the New Jersey horizon across the Hudson River.

In her 2022 New York Times article about the phenomenon (reposted on line on 30 May 2023, with updated dates and times; How and Where to Watch Manhattanhenge Tonight - The New York Times (nytimes.com)), Shannon Stirone wrote: “As if New York couldn’t become any more magical, the sunsets of Manhattanhenge illuminate the streets with a glow of deep tangerine and bubble gum pink, transforming the bustling streets into a place to pause and say, ‘wow.’”

In 2023, the spring celestial performances were on Monday, 29 May, at 8:13 p.m. New York time and Tuesday, 30 May, at 8:12 p.m.  The next showings will be on Wednesday, 12 July, at 8:20 p.m. and Thursday, 13 July, at 8:21 p.m.  On the first and fourth evening of the phenomenon, half Sol’s disk sits on the horizon (“half sun”); that is, the horizon bisects the Solar disk), but at the second and third sunsets, viewers find the entire ball of the Sun on the horizon (“full sun”).

Though Dr. Jackie Faherty, senior scientist and astrophysicist at New York City’s American Museum of Natural History, asserts that the full sun is the real star of the show, Neil deGrasse Tyson, director of the Hayden Planetarium at AMNH’s Rose Center for Earth and Space, calls the half-sun display, “My personal preference for photographs.”

Ya pays yer money and ya takes yer choice!

(Actually, it's a completely free show, of course: a natural phenomenon that happens four times a year.)

The dates of Manhattanhenge depend on when the summer solstice happens, but it doesn’t take place on the solstice itself, which was 21 June this year.  It happens about three weeks before the solstice and again about three weeks after it.  

The reason Manhattanhenge doesn’t occur on the solstice is that the city’s grid isn’t aligned perfectly with Earth’s geographic north-south axis; it’s tilted a little under 30 degrees east of the line.  There are sites on the Internet that give the astronomical reasons for this discrepancy for those who are curious—or scientifically inclined.

(Two are on the sites of Scientific American magazine and AMNH: “Manhattanhenge: What It Is, and How to See It” by Joe Rao, Manhattanhenge: What It Is, and How to See It - Scientific American, 29 May 2018, and Tyson’s “Manhattanhenge,” Manhattanhenge 2023: Where & How to See It | AMNH.)

The summer solstice, the first day of summer, occurs when one of Earth’s poles is pointed most directly at the Sun.  It happens once in each hemisphere, the northern in June and southern in December.  In each hemisphere, it’s the day with the longest period of daylight and shortest night of the year, when Sol’s at its highest altitude above the horizon at noon.

(There’s also an opposite phenomenon known as “Reverse Manhattanhenge” or “Winter Manhattanhenge” which occurs on the east side of the island during sunrises over the East River and Long Island in early January—the 11th and 12th last winter—and late November—the 29th and 30th this fall.  

(Reverse Manhattanhenge is associated with the winter solstice—the first day of winter—in the same way as Manhattanhenge is with the summer one.  The January event followed the winter solstice of 21 December 2022 and the November display will precede the solstice on 22 December 2023. 

(Reverse Manhattanhenge is a less popular spectator draw than the sunset event because of its early hour—a little after 7 a.m.—and the chilly temperatures at dawn in the late fall and winter, usually between 30 and 60 degrees Fahrenheit, or -1 to 16 degrees Celsius.

(Aside from the cold—and even possible snow for the January event—less conducive to good viewing for the morning phenomenon is that the cityscapes of Long Island across the East River are closer to Manhattan than the expanses of New Jersey across the wider Hudson.  The eastward views can be obstructed by the tall buildings of Brooklyn and Long Island City, Queens.  Bad visibility due to cloudiness is also more common in winter and late fall than in summer and late spring.)

Obviously, the solar alignment existed before modern-day Manhattanites began celebrating it in the late 20th century—at least 18,000 years ago when the last ice age carved out the island and the landscape beneath New York City—but Sol-worshipers are the beneficiaries of the island’s rectangular grid plan that was conceived in 1811 and was implemented over the succeeding 60 years. 

The name “Manhattanhenge,” according to most sources, was coined and then popularized by astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson (b. 1958), arguably the best-known astronomer in the United States since Carl Sagan (1934-96).  Tyson devised the term as a deliberate invocation of England’s Stonehenge after he visited the 5,000-year-old site on Salisbury Plain as a boy of 15.  That trip was led by Gerald Hawkins (British; 1928-2003), an astronomer who first proposed that Stonehenge's purpose was to predict the movements of the Sun and stars in his 1965 book Stonehenge Decoded. 

Though the actual purpose of Stonehenge is a mystery, despite many theories, when the Sun rises on the morning of the summer solstice, it aligns perfectly with several of the stones of the Druidic monument, signaling the change of season.  Tyson, born in Manhattan and raised in the Bronx, recognized the similarity with the New York phenomenon—though, of course, Stonehenge is presumed to have been intentionally designed to effect the astronomical event, while Manhattanhenge is happenstance.

Tyson’s interest in astronomy began, he’s said, as a child of 9 when he visited the very institution which he now directs, Hayden Planetarium.  The lore is that he invented the name in 1977 (when he’d have been about 19), but in his long and multi-faceted career in science, Tyson wrote the “Universe” column for Natural History magazine (at the time, published by AMNH, the parent institution of the planetarium, where he’d just been appointed director) and in 1996, he described the New York City phenomenon of Manhattanhenge, spreading the name among the column’s readers.

“Cityhenges” happen in other cities around the globe beyond New York.  There are also Chicagohenge, Bostonhenge, Phillyhenge, Baltimorehenge, Torontohenge, Montrealhenge, and even Madridhenge and Strasbourghenge, among others.  If the city’s streets are oriented close to east-west, there’s likely to be a “henge.”  Would-be sunset-watchers only need to find out when the phenomenon happens in their city. 

(There are dozens of sites on the ’Net that carry the times and dates of Manhattanhenge each year as well as the best places to watch the show; “Manhattanhenge,” on the website of the American Museum of Natural History [link noted above], is updated each year, for instance.)

As Tyson points out, by the way, an examination of the situations in other cities around the world reveals that despite the east-west grid, most lack an unobstructed view toward the horizon.  Manhattan, though, has a clear line to New Jersey, afforded by the vista across the Hudson River.  Furthermore, Gotham’s phalanxes of tall buildings lining its streets create a vertical frame for the setting Sun that reflects its crepuscular glow.

Tyson observed that thus, “Manhattanhenge may just be a unique urban phenomenon in the world, if not the universe.”

(Reverse Manhattanhenge has the same advantage for the semiannual sunrise sighting, but that’s countered by the weather and time of the event.  In addition, as Tyson has also said, Manhattan is “a place where evening matters more than morning.”)

Choosing the best location from which to see Manhattanhenge is largely a matter of personal preference.  Some of that’s affected by where one lives or, for visitors to the Big Apple, is staying.  Do you insist on just stepping out of your building and catch the sight, or will you travel—and how far?

Most henge-watchers suggest that the main crosstown streets—57th, 34th, 23rd, and 14th Streets—are best, depending mostly on one’s aesthetic desires for the framing structures.  42nd Street is a popular viewing site not despite the flashing signs, but because of them.

There are other vantage points, including off Manhattan Island, and the various websites as well as the newspaper coverage of the event, include information about them.  Just keep in mind that Manhattanhenge is a popular spectator event, even among Gothamites (yes, even the jaded and blasé New Yorkers get excited over this celestial spectacle).  Popular viewing sites such as 34th Street near the Empire State Building (at 5th Avenue) and 42nd Street near the Chrysler Building (Lexington Avenue) get very crowded.

Manhattanhenge advisers recommend finding a spot along the east-west cross streets as far east as possible (that is, back towards the East River, away from the Hudson) that still affords a view of New Jersey across the Hudson River.

The smaller, quieter cross streets might be more inviting, but spectators and photographers will lose the perspective of the wide vista and the skyscraper frame as the setting Sun is reflected off our urban canyon walls.  They’d also have to get closer to the river in order not to have the sight of the Sun itself obscured as the street opening in the west narrows from the perspective.

On the other hand, being able to stand in the middle of the street, the only way really to see Manhattanhenge fully, is probably easier and safer on a small street than one of the two-way thoroughfares.  Remember, traffic isn’t halted for Manhattanhenge and New York City has a 24-hour rush hour!  Do not expect a New York cabbie or a Manhattan driver to wait while you line up the perfect snapshot of the other Ball Drop.

ROTters may infer from some of my foregoing remarks that photography is a major component of the Manhattanhenge experience.  Particularly with the advent of cell phone cameras, the semiannual event’s become a shutterbug’s dream.  Most of the websites on Manhattanhenge feature lots of photos, most of them taken by ordinary spectators. 

The pros do it, too, of course, but they’ve largely been there, done that years ago, and though the event is always spectacular—not counting the times when bad weather, such as rain, fog, or clouds (or haze such as what we experienced here a few weeks ago because of Canadian forest fires) interferes—one of the characteristics of Manhattanhenge is that it never really changes year to year.

As for the timing, if you follow the published schedule from a newspaper or website, just gauge your arrival for enough time to beat whatever crowds are likely to gather.  The main cross streets, especially in midtown, will attract larger gatherings than the smaller ones.   A good piece of advice is to scope out the viewing site you think you want to use beforehand to be sure it’s the best place to see the horizon in New Jersey, without hills, trees, or structures blocking the sightline.

Allow time to stake out a good vantage spot for viewing, picture-taking, or hopping in and out of the roadway.  Most henge-watchers enjoy seeing the Sun as it descends onto the horizon line, so plan to arrive and take a viewing position between 20 and 30 minutes—some advisers even suggest a full hour—before the time listed, as that’s when the Solar disk has reached its nadir and is sitting on the horizon.

If you’re calculating the start of the phenomenon on your own based on when sunset is scheduled—weather reports on TV and in the paper usually include the times of sunrise and sunset—consider that Manhattanhenge, despite being labeled a “sunset” event, isn’t actually at sunset, which is the time the Sun disappears below the horizon, which is when Manhattanhenge is over. 

Be prepared to arrive at least a half hour before the time designated as “sunset”—earlier, if you want to watch the event unfold.  Beware, however you reckon the event timing, that once the Sun’s disk kisses the horizon, it will remain visible for only a minute or two before disappearing entirely below the horizon line.

(The schedules specifically published for Manhattanhenge have already done this calculation.  The websites I referenced above are probably accurate, and so are the major TV news shows and papers like the New York Times and other major dailies, but with other sources, it wouldn’t hurt to check on a computer or cell phone when sunset is and doing the math.)

Just as there are other cities around North American and on other continents where one can experience a henge event, one can see an approximation of Manhattanhenge at other times right here in the Big Apple.  If you aren’t picky about how close the Solar disk gets to the horizon in the New York City canyons, the Sun will be visible somewhere between the skyscrapers when it’s close to setting every evening between late May and mid-July.

Sol will appear to pass between the Manhattan uprights higher and higher above the horizon each night as the summer solstice approaches from the first Manhattanhenge date to the solstice, and then lower and lower between the solstice and the last henge date.  This is known as the “Manhattanhenge Effect,” and it doesn’t attract the crowds that the true Manhattanhenge does.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson was born in Manhattan on 5 October 1958 to Sunchita Feliciano Tyson (b. 1928), a gerontologist for the U.S. Department of Health, Education and Welfare (precursor of the Department of Health & Human Services), and Cyril deGrasse Tyson (1927-2016), a sociologist, human resource commissioner for Mayor John Lindsay of New York City (in office: 1966-73), and the first Director of Harlem Youth Opportunities Unlimited.  

[Tyson’s passion for astronomy began during his high school years at the Bronx High School of Science (Class of 1976), eventually leading to his giving lectures in the field.  He declined an invitation from Dr. Carl Sagan to participate in undergraduate programs at Cornell University and instead pursued a major in physics at Harvard College, where he received his Bachelor of Arts degree in 1980.

[Tyson continued his education, earning a Master of Arts in astronomy from the University of Texas at Austin in 1983 and a Master of Philosophy in astrophysics from Columbia University in 1989.  He went on to complete his doctorate in astrophysics at UT–Austin and embarked on a career that included positions at Princeton University, the Hayden Planetarium, the American Museum of Natural History, and the University of Maryland.

[In addition to his research and academic endeavors, Tyson has written books, articles, and a column for Natural History magazine called “Universe.”  Tyson has also played active roles in aerospace commissions and received honors, including NASA’s 2004 Distinguished Public Service Medal.  Throughout his career, Tyson has been an advocate for NASA and continues to support its growth and operations.

[Tyson’s involvement in popular science TV programs, such as 2007’s The Universe on The History Channel, has made him a familiar face in science communication.  In 2014, he helped revive Carl Sagan’s 1980 television series, Cosmos: A Personal Voyage, presenting Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey on both Fox Broadcasting and the National Geographic Channel.  In 2020, Tyson returned with a follow-up season entitled Cosmos: Possible Worlds.

[Tyson’s expressed his personal views on spirituality, religion, and science in essays like “The Perimeter of Ignorance” (Natural History, November 2005) and “Holy Wars” (Natural History, October 1999).  He’s appeared in several movies and on numerous television shows such as Nova on PBS and CBS’s The Big Bang Theory, and many talk shows, both daytime and late-night, including 16 appearances on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert (and another 11 on The Colbert Report).]

 

John Kander: "Last of the Golden Age Composers" (Part 2)

 

[In my introduction to the first installment of “John Kander,” I expressed my rationale for compiling this post, and said a little about Kander’s career as a Broadway (and Off-Broadway) composer, I think it’s now appropriate to put together the record on the songwriter.  So, here are some stats.

[The New York Times’ Jesse Green (see Part 1) dubbed Kander “the last of the great Golden Age composers”; CBS’s David Pogue (see below) called him “the longest-working Broadway composer in history”; and on DC Theatre Scene in 2012, Richard Seff, an actor, writer, and talent agent, labeled Kander and Ebb “the longest collaborative team in musical theatre history.”

[John Kander has written the music for the scores of 25 stage musicals, 15 of them in collaboration with lyricist Fred Ebb.  In addition, he’s composed the scores for 10 movies, including the film adaptations of his and Ebb’s stage musicals, and seven television shows.  He’s also contributed songs to another eight films and TV shows.  This doesn’t include the songs he’s composed for non-theatrical or -film performances, notably for Liza Minnelli and Chita Rivera.

[For his work, Kander’s been presented with at least 10 industry awards, including four Tonys, a Drama Desk Award, and a Laurence Olivier.  He and Ebb have also received numerous award nominations, which include five additional Tony Awards, two Academy Awards, and four Golden Globe Awards.

[Other honors the composer’s received include induction, with Ebb, into the American Theater Hall of Fame in 1991; the 1998 Kennedy Center Honors award for Lifetime Achievement (also with his longtime songwriting partner); the 2018 Stephen Sondheim Award from the Virginia-based Signature Theater; and, in 2021, the I. A. L. Diamond Award for Achievement in the Arts from the Columbia University alumni.]

“JOHN KANDER, LIN-MANUEL MIRANDA ON ‘NEW YORK, NEW YORK’ ON BROADWAY”
by David Pogue 

[David Pogue’s interview with composer John Lander for Sunday Morning, a program of CBS News, aired on 23 April 2023, three days before Kander and Ebb’s new musical, New York, New York, opened on Broadway.]

Start spreadin’ the news
I’m leaving today
I want to be a part of it
New York, New York

The music of John Kander and Fred Ebb, including scores they wrote for Broadway shows like “Cabaret,” “Chicago,” and “Curtains,” has won four Tony Awards, two Grammys, two Emmys – and a street named after them in Times Square. Yet Kander, now 96, is utterly uninterested in all the hero worship. “I don’t relate to it,” he told “Sunday Morning.” “I really don’t, just as I don’t relate to the fact that we’re sitting here doing some sort of interview on television.”

David Pogue pointed out, “You are now the longest-working Broadway composer in history.”

“I think that’s weird!” Kander replied. “I don’t really feel much different than the insecure man that met you all those years ago.”

Yes, Pogue worked with Kander back in 1987, when he played piano for Kander & Ebb’s Off-Broadway show, “Flora, the Red Menace.”

[Flora, the Red Menace, John Kander and Fred Ebb’s first collaboration in which a fashion illustrator in the 1930s is persuaded by her boyfriend to join the Communist Party, ran on Broadway for 87 performances in 1965. The cast featured Liza Minnelli in the title role, her Broadway début for which she won a Tony Award for Best Actress in a Musical.  

[The musical was revived at the Vineyard Theatre from November 1987 to January 1988 with a new book and some new Kander and Ebb songs, under the direction of Scott Ellis with choreography by Susan Stroman.  Flora, based on the novel Love is Just Around the Corner by Lester Atwell, became an Off-Broadway hit, having had a limited run of 46 performances and generated a cult following.]

The composer always said that his music writes itself: “Music goes on in my head all the time, even while we’re having this conversation,” he said. “If I put my hands on the keyboard, they will do something.”

Which they did.

Pogue asked, “So, this is you composing right now? This is new stuff?”

“Yeah. It doesn’t mean it’s any good. It’s just there!” he laughed.

For 45 years, Kander wrote the music, and Ebb wrote the lyrics. “Freddy and I were such different people,” Kander said, “and yet, when we went into a room to work, all of that dropped away and we became one thing.”

Fred Ebb died in 2004. And yet, this week a new Kander & Ebb musical opens on Broadway. It’s “New York, New York,” very loosely based on the 1977 movie, for which Kander & Ebb wrote five songs. For this new show, David Thompson co-wrote the script, and Susan Stroman is the director and choreographer. They, like Pogue, all worked together on “Flora, the Red Menace” back in 1987. “We all look the same!” laughed Stroman.

I came here with nothing,
like hundreds before me,
and millions behind me . . . 

The musical is set in 1947, and tells five interwoven stories about aspiring musicians. “We wanted to celebrate artists who come to New York to change their lives, to be the best at what they do,” said Stroman.

“It was right after the war; New York was hopeful,” she said. “People were pulling plywood off the storefronts. There’s something about that particular time that feels like the time now in New York. You know, We are gonna pull this city back up to where it used to be.”

Some of the songs come from the movie (including “Happy Endings” and “But the World Goes ‘Round”); some are Kander & Ebb songs that have never been heard before (including “A Simple Thing Like That” and “I’m What’s Happening Now”); and some new songs feature lyrics or additional lyrics by another famous Broadway talent: Lin-Manuel Miranda, creator of “In the Heights” and “Hamilton.”

[The verse above, with lyrics by Miranda, is from the opening number of New York, New York, “Cheering for Me Now.”]

He saw an early draft of “New York, New York”: “I was just so knocked flat by the show itself, a beautiful love letter to New York,” said Miranda. “I just said, ‘Whatever else you need, like, please let me know.’”

“For which we are not sorry!” laughed Kander.

Miranda described his job as “to be as fast as he is and just, you know, match him beat for beat.”

One new song, “Can You Hear Me?,” is set in Grand Central’s whispering arch, an architectural quirk that lets you hear a whisper from 30 feet away:

When I heard you sing, it changed everything
Can you hear me?
Could you ever be with a wreck like me
Can you hear me?
Could I ever be a part of the song inside your heart? 

As for that song . . . what we all know as “New York, New York” is not the first version Kander & Ebb wrote in 1977. The movie’s star, Robert De Niro, didn’t like their original song, and asked that they try again. “Some actor was gonna tell us how to write a song?!” Kander exclaimed. “Anyway, we went to the piano, and the first thing that happened on the piano, with nothing in my head, was [the vamp]. And inside of that vamp is, Start spreading . . . and so we wrote that song in 45 minutes – I think partly because we were so pissed off!”

Their second attempt became world famous. 

But Kander says he doesn’t get what all the fuss is about. “I listened last night to that audience kind of roar when that song happened,” he said. “I just don’t understand it.

“Here’s what I understand: I understand making stuff, and making stuff with your friends. I understand that every once in a while, you will make something that you love. And the sizzle inside your guts when that happens is something that nobody can take away from you.”

[David Pogue is a technology and science writer and TV presenter. He’s an Emmy-winning correspondent for CBS News Sunday Morning, which he joined as a correspondent in 2002, writing and hosting stories on technology, science, the environment, and show business.]

*  *  *  *
“BROADWAY COMPOSER JOHN KANDER
ON HOW HIS LATEST MUSICAL IS A LOVE LETTER TO NEW YORK”
by Jeffrey Brown and Anne Azzi Davenport 

[This is the transcript of the PBS NewsHour interview of Kander conducted by arts correspondent Jeffrey Brown.  I watched it when it was broadcast on 8 June 2023, as I noted in the introduction to Part 1 of this post, and it started me on the Kander Project, so to speak.]

Geoff Bennett [“PBS NewsHour” Co-Anchor]: Broadway’s big night, the Tony Awards, will be held this Sunday.

The new show “New York, New York” is a top contender, nominated in nine categories, including best musical.

The composer of its music, John Kander, is separately being honored with a special award for lifetime achievement in the theater. Quite a life, extraordinary achievement, which continues.

Jeffrey Brown joined Kander at the piano in his New York, New York, home for our arts and culture series, Canvas.

Jeffrey Brown: The new Broadway musical “New York, New York," set shortly after World War II, opens with a song called “Cheering For Me Now,” in which we meet characters who’ve come to New York with uncertain futures, but big dreams.

The show is a love letter to a city. And for its 96-year-old composer, John Kander, it captures the wonder of working with others to create something new.

John Kander, Composer: I have lived a long time. And one of the good things I can tell you about living a long time is that you keep finding out things and learning things about not just your own life, about life itself, or what really matters.

And I found myself, at the end of the workshop of “New York, New York,” saying to the company, in thanking them, that one of the greatest pleasures in life was making art with your friends.

Jeffrey Brown: Kander, who grew up in Kansas City, was himself one of those people who came to postwar New York to make it. He did big time, and it was through the collaborative process, as half of one of musical theater’s greatest teams, music by John Kander, lyrics by Fred Ebb, creators of such blockbusters as “Chicago,” which premiered in 1975.

A 1996 revival is now the longest-running show on Broadway. Another classic, “Cabaret” from 1966, later a film starring Liza Minnelli and Joel Grey. They wrote 16 Broadway musicals in all and thousands of songs, including a certain anthem that pretty much everyone on the planet must have heard and most can sing along with.

(MUSIC)

Jeffrey Brown: It was originally written for the 1977 film drama “New York, New York” directed by Martin Scorsese. And, as the story goes, when star Robert De Niro didn’t much like the first version Kander and Ebb brought them, the two went off and did what they did best, sat at the piano and got to work.

John Kander: We went home pissed off.

Jeffrey Brown: Yes, about — about what . . .

John Kander: Yes.

(LAUGHTER)

Jeffrey Brown: That De Niro didn’t like your song.

John Kander: It is true. And we went into this little room where we work with Freddy and sat down and said, well, let’s do it again.

And my hands, while — probably what we were talking, went . . .

(MUSIC)

John Kander: And with Fred, immediately inside of that vamp is . . .

Jeffrey Brown: The first . . .

John Kander: And produced then the very first lines.

Jeffrey Brown: In fact, Kander says, music is always playing in his head even as we talked. His job, improvise until he finds the good parts, while Fred Ebb, who died in 2004, was doing the same with an endless string of words.

John Kander: He could — and this is brilliant. Haven’t been a lot of people — I don’t know a lot of people who can do this. He could improvise in rhyme and meter in the same way that I could do . . .

(MUSIC)

John Kander: Without thinking, seemingly without thinking.

Jeffrey Brown: So, you’re writing — you’re improvising at the keyboard and he’s improvising with the rhymes in his head. And, somehow, it comes together.

John Kander: Right. It is mysterious, because it’s — I think it is so deeply unconscious for us.

Jeffrey Brown: The new “New York, New York” musical, directed and choreographed by Susan Stroman, another longtime Kander collaborator, is loosely based on the earlier film, with new characters and storylines.

At its heart, a young musician, played by Colton Ryan who lost his brother in the war, and a singer played by Anna Uzele facing racial discrimination as she struggles for opportunities. Many of the songs are older ones by Kander and Ebb. Seven were written with a new partner and friend, contemporary Broadway giant Lin-Manuel Miranda, who joined the cast and production team in a rousing 96th birthday song for Kander.

John Kander: We have a good time working together, and it reminds me a little bit of Freddy, because he is — Lin is very fast, and I’m very fast.

Jeffrey Brown: Fast as, like, the ideas are coming quickly?

John Kander: Yes, it’s — and, again, the ideas can be terrible.

Jeffrey Brown: Yes.

John Kander: And nobody is a bad person because they have it, but so you write it, and then you change it.

Jeffrey Brown: So, there is a lot of craft to songwriting, right?

John Kander: Yes. That is the word. I think we are all carpenters.

Jeffrey Brown: Knowing how to put it together.

John Kander: Yes, it is one thing to want to make art. It is another to do it, and that is craft. You get better at it, hopefully, as you work, or not.

The rehearsal room is for me the safest place in the world, because you can do anything. You can be so terrible. But it is private.

Jeffrey Brown: Yes.

John Kander: And, eventually, you end up in the rehearsal room with something that’s as close as you can get to what you intended.

Jeffrey Brown: Even with “New York, New York" now on Broadway, Kander, who lives with his husband, Albert Stephenson, was about to leave after our talk to join a workshop session for a potential revival of the Kander and Ebb 1990 musical “Kiss of the Spider Woman.” He is very much still at it.

John Kander: My mother had a great phase, which no — none of us understood until later in life. She said, you do the best you can. A horse can’t do any better.

Jeffrey Brown: A horse can’t do any better.

John Kander: I understand now what that means. In other words, if you’re writing a show, you do the best you can, sometimes without thinking of the ramifications.

Jeffrey Brown: You are 96 and still working. What is the secret?

John Kander: Well, are you supposed to stop doing the things that give you pleasure? Who wrote that rule?

Jeffrey Brown: No one wrote that rule, certainly not for John Kander.

For the “PBS NewsHour,” I’m Jeffrey Brown in New York, New York.

(LAUGHTER)

Geoff Bennett: Wow.

[In his more than 30-year career with the PBS NewsHour, Jeffrey Brown has served as co-anchor, studio moderator, and field reporter on a wide range of national and international issues, with work taking him around the country and to many parts of the globe.

[As arts correspondent, he’s profiled many of the world's leading writers, musicians, actors and other artists. Among his signature works at the NewsHour: a multi-year series, “Culture at Risk,” about threatened cultural heritage in the United States and abroad; the creation of the NewsHour’s online “Art Beat”; and hosting the monthly book club, “Now Read This,” a collaboration with the New York Times.

[Anne Azzi Davenport is the Senior Producer of CANVAS at PBS NewsHour.]

*  *  *  *
“‘NEW YORK, NEW YORK’ REVIEW: NEW KANDER AND EBB MUSICAL
IS A LOVE LETTER TO BIG CITY GUSTO”
by Naveen Kumar 

[I wanted to end the Kander post with a review of New York, New York, and what could be a better gauge of the musical’s reception than Variety, the entertainment industry’s own newspaper out of Los Angeles.  Naveen Turner’s notice was published on the show’s opening day, 26 April 2023.]

If there is a megawatt star in “New York, New York,” the new musical from Broadway titans John Kander and the late Fred Ebb (with additional lyrics by Lin-Manuel Miranda), it’s right there in the title. Aside from the occasional f-bomb and pantomimed scurry of rats, the show that opened at Broadway’s St. James Theatre is a love letter to Manhattan so unabashed that its vibe might be best expressed in cityscape and heart-eye emojis. Cynical? These New Yorkers? Fuhgeddaboudit!

Though inspired by the 1977 film directed by Martin Scorsese and starring Robert De Niro and Liza Minnelli, “New York, New York” is more accurately described as a musical-length rhapsody on the dreams crooned out in its title song, made famous by Frank Sinatra and naturally performed here as a big-band finale turned audience singalong. A crowded cast of characters has come to chase their dreams, and most of them want to be musicians. 

The sensory splendors of director and choreographer Susan Stroman’s production — a tap line across an unfinished skyscraper, nighttime snowfall in Central Park, umbrellas blooming in a rainstorm — conjure boldly romantic and relatively timeless visions of the city. Set at the end of WWII and debuting at another time of tenuous renewal, “New York, New York” radiates an infectious optimism, as if hoping to deliver an antidote to a city and to an industry still in beleaguered recovery.

It has much of what Broadway lovers would want from such a musical, including songs by Kander and Ebb (some written for the film and others from their vault) plus half a dozen more written for the show by Kander in collaboration with Miranda. Jazzy, buoyant and infused at times with Afro-Cuban beats, the score makes a winning play for familiar pleasure centers and delivers a few memorable highlights, especially as its characters find musical success. Less distinctive and far lighter on verve than “Chicago” or “Cabaret,” the score reflects songwriters in a hopeful and affectionate mood.

The book by David Thompson, co-written with Sharon Washington, includes a diverse sprawl of urbanites beyond its leading lovers, a booze-soaked, flailing musician played by Colton Ryan (the film adaptation of “Dear Evan Hansen”) and a self-assured, aspiring Black singer played by Anna Uzele (“Six”). There’s also a Black trumpeter and veteran who laments the hypocrisy of post-war discrimination (John Clay III), a young violinist who escaped Europe and wants to attend Julliard (Oliver Prose), the teacher he begs to help him and whose son hasn’t yet returned from the war (Emily Skinner); and a Cuban mother and her queer, bongo-playing son (Janet Dacal and Angel Sigala) who live under the shadow of an abusive patriarch.

There are still others between scenes, including a maid who gets whisked onto the opera stage to deliver a full-throated aria during a dreams-really-do-come-true sequence in the second act. It’s a lot of striving to pack into a single show, and demands a similar sort of tolerance for too-muchness as New York itself does. But it’s all rendered with spectacular stagecraft, including Beowulf Boritt’s soaring and dynamic interplay of fire escapes, alleyways and iconic landmarks; evocative projections co-designed by Boritt and Christopher Ash; and lighting by Ken Billington that captures certain snapshots in the day that any New Yorker would say defy description. 

That New York upstages any drama on stage in “New York, New York” may be inevitable to its inspiration and design; all of its characters simply want to make it here, though two of them also sometimes want love. Ryan’s bandleader is big-hearted, goofy and a bit sideways, like a wise-cracking Old Hollywood star, an accent he strangely affects when he sings with otherwise suave appeal. And Uzele’s star-on-the-rise is self-assured and tough, knowing she can’t afford to fumble opportunities the way her screw-up white lover does. The “Six” star fares less well as the role’s vocals call for greater sophistication, and chemistry between the pair can hardly be said to propel the story.

But the production’s zealous faith in New York — in its mythology of endless possibility and renewal — is near impossible to resist. Anyone who’s managed to carve out a place for themselves here, after being told they didn’t belong elsewhere, will likely feel a pang watching characters who are social outcasts and immigrants strive and achieve, despite being sketched in loose detail. Their triumphs, and the restless energy of the city, are vividly embodied in the dynamism of Stroman’s production, in the fluidity and grace of its agile choreography and the churn of its stage pictures and interludes.

And there’s a forward-looking nostalgia to “New York, New York” that feels alive to the peculiar and half-dazed mood outside its doors. New York has always run on a mix of blind faith bordering on delusion, and the people who flock here are full of it. Clichés, like stale bodega coffee, exist for a reason. They keep the city going even after it’s crashed and burned.

[After I saw the Late Show episode with John Kander and Lin-Manuel Miranda (posted in Part 1 of “John Kander: ‘Last of the Golden Age Composers’”), I e-mailed my friend Kirk Woodward, whom ROTters will recognize as a great friend of this blog.  I touted him onto Stephen Colbert’s interview because Kander said some things about his approach to songwriting, especially in collaboration with a lyricist—first Ebb then Miranda—that I thought would interest him.  (Kirk, as most ROT readers will know, is, among his other accomplishments, a theater composer and lyricist himself.)

[He watched the video of the segment and afterwards remarked of the 96-year-old composer, “Terrific.  And Kander’s 96, right?  Just amazing.  Wonderful.”  After I told him my plans to blog on Kander, Kirk responded, “He’s remarkable.” 

[I agreed that Kander is definitely remarkable.  For the transcript of the Colbert show, I had to rewatch the segment all the way through.  He’s still sharp, I observed—his memory, his articulateness, his intuition and insight.  To hear Miranda tell it, he has trouble keeping up with Kander when they work together—and he’s only 43, less than half Kander’s age!

[As a kind of coda to this look at the ongoing creative career of John Kander, Kirk recounted this little anecdote:

I’ve never spoken to Kander. but I stood near him a few years ago.  He was at the exit of an off-Broadway theater presenting something he . . . had written—I think it may have been those one-act musicals.  He was friendly and talking pleasantly with everyone.  Just the way you'd hope.

[(The one-act musicals to which Kirk referred were The Landing, presented at the Vineyard Theatre from 23 October to 24 November 2013.  The Landing, written with Greg Pierce, was Kander’s first show with a new collaborator after the death of his partner of 40 years.  It was comprised of three playlets connected by the theme of people who must confront what it means to get what they think they want.)

[From the various interviews and reports of the Broadway musical man, I’d say he lives up to the hope.  He may be a one-off, but he’s proof that one can be a creative genius—I don’t think I’m overstating—without being an egotist or a tyrant.  (Kander’s counterpart in the acting category is surely Tom Hanks, a NewsHour session with whom was posted on ROT on 22 May 2023 [“Tom Hanks, Novelist”].)]

John Kander: "Last of the Golden Age Composers" (Part 1)

 

[There have been a number of articles and TV programs devoted to or featuring coverage of the creative life and career of theater composer John Kander (b. 1927) during the past few months.  On Friday, 24 March, New York City Mayor Eric Adams proclaimed John Kander Day and unveiled a new street sign that renamed the block of 44th Street that runs in front of the St. James Theatre “Kander & Ebb Way” in honor of Kander and his longtime lyricist partner Fred Ebb (1928-2004).

[The renaming ceremony coincided with the first preview of the duo’s newest original musical, New York, New York, playing at the St. James. The event was held just days after Kander’s 96th birthday on 18 March.  As part of the ceremony, Lin-Manuel Miranda (b. 1980), who provides additional lyrics to New York, New York, recited the words to the song “First You Dream” from the 1997 Kander and Ebb musical Steel Pier.  Then, students from the Manhattan School of Music performed the title song from New York, New York.

[When I watched a report by Jeffrey Brown on the PBS NewsHour on 8 June, I decided to go back via the Internet and collect some of those pieces and post them here.  I ended up with five pieces, including a lengthy New York Times profile of the composer by Jesse Green and a transcript of the joint session with Kander and his latest collaborator, Miranda, on Stephen Colbert’s Late Show.  I also added the review of New York, New York’s Broadway opening from Variety, the national entertainment industry publication.

[The resulting draft ended up too long to remain a single post, so I split it in two, arranged the components in chronological order by publication and air dates (except for the Variety review, which appears at the end of the collection as a kind of final word).]

“THE LATE SHOW WITH STEPHEN COLBERT: LIN-MANUEL MIRANDA/JOHN KANDER”

[The first piece in my John Kander assemblage is the double interview of Kander and Miranda by host Stephen Colbert on CBS-TV’s The Late Show.  The episode originally aired on Tuesday, 4 April 2023 (Season 8, Episode 97); when the late-night talk show went into reruns because of the Writers Guild of America’s strike (see “2023 Writers Guild Strike,” 1 June 2023, and “‘AI in the Arts Is the Destruction of the Film Industry. We Can’t Go Quietly’” by Justine Bateman, 4 June 2023), it was repeated on 5 June.

[A few words about the transcription below:  There were actually two posted transcripts, one complete—including the commercials!—and one reproducing only a section of the interview.  The video of The Late Show had captions, which were also “complete,” but not always accurate.  The captions, which were line-by-line—i.e., no paragraphing or other divisions—were in all caps. 

[The other “complete” text was in all lower case, even the names, and also un-paragraphed—one, long passage.  None of the transcripts was accurate—they often contradicted one another—so after typing them up—the “complete” transcription didn’t allow copying—I had to go back and listen to the video in a stop-rewind-and-go method to reconcile them with the recording.

[So, the result you will read below is a combination of three transcribers and my own rendering of the conversation, plus my interpretation of the punctuation, capitalization, paragraphing, and other typographical considerations.  I’ve also added some bracketed explanatory and identifying insertions I thought would be helpful.]

Lin-Manuel Miranda and John Kander talk about their writing process, which unfolds with ease each time they start a new project, despite the significant age gap between them. Kander and Miranda’s new show, “New York, New York,” is playing now at Broadway’s St. James Theater.

Stephen Colbert: Ladies and gentlemen, my guests tonight are Broadway legends, with over 20 musicals under their belts.  One of them wrote the scores for “Cabaret” [1966-68; three Broadway revivals] and “Chicago” [Broadway première, 1975-77; Broadway revival, 1996-Present; longest running American musical in Broadway history].  The other one created “In the Heights” [Off-Broadway (37 Arts/Theatre A in Hell’s Kitchen/Clinton), February-July 2007; Broadway, 2008-11] and “Hamilton” [Off-Broadway (Joseph Papp Public Theater/Newman Theater in the East Village), February-May 2015; Broadway, 2015-Present]  Please welcome to “The Late Show,” Lin-Manuel Miranda and John Kander!

John, thank you for being here.  Lin, always a pleasure.  Welcome back. 

[CHEERS and APPLAUSE.] 

Look at that.  You don’t get that every night.

John Kander, Lin-Manuel Miranda, lovely to see both of you.  You are both giants of the musical theater world.

John, you’ve been at it a little bit longer than Lin over there.  How old are you, Sir?

John Kander: 96.

Stephen Colbert: 96.  Born in 1927, then? 

John Kander: Yes.

Stephen Colbert: This theater was built in 1927.  Yeah, you guys are twins.

John Kander: I feel so much better now,

Stephen Colbert: When did Lin come on your radar?

John Kander: I can remember that exactly.  I went to see an Off-Broadway production of “In the Heights” because a friend of mine was in it.  I didn’t know anything about him [indicating Lin-Manuel Miranda], and I saw this miracle on the stage.  And I stayed behind to – I’m not a very aggressive person, but I did stay behind because I wanted to meet him and find out who was responsible for this.  [LAUGHTER and APPLAUSE.] 

Well, that’s really true.

Lin-Manuel Miranda: That’s really true and he invited me to lunch and I was so scared – ’cause here I am, eating lunch with the guy who wrote some of my favorite musicals, and we sat down around the corner from your house, and the first thing he said to me was, “Do you ever feel when you’re writing a song like you have no idea what you’re doing?” and that immediately, like, leveled the playing field and then we just started talking about songwriting.  We are still talking about it 15 years later.

John Kander: And it’s funny, our series of luncheons were something that just sort of evolved.  I learned a lot from him, and still am.  And we became fast friends.  And so, here we are.

Lin-Manuel Miranda: Here we are, inside the TV.

Stephen Colbert: There it is.  There you go.

Well, so you guys started working together after those lunches and now you’re working on “New York, New York.”  What is that about?

Lin-Manuel Miranda: “New York, New York” is . . . well, it takes its name and the barest slivers of plot from the original [1977] Scorsese film, starring Robert de Niro and Liza Minelli.  But it really is a love letter to New York City.

It takes place just after World War II and it’s about musicians coming to the city – citizens coming from all over the world to become themselves in New York.  That song that John so brilliantly writes, they are looking for their major chord which is music, money, love, not necessarily in that order.

Stephen Colbert: Let’s talk about the title song.  John what do you remember about writing “New York, New York”?  I know that the form of the song that we all know and love now is no longer the original form of the song. 

John Kander: Thank God.  [LAUGHTER.]

Stephen Colbert: I would agree.  I have heard the original. 

John Kander: You have?

Stephen Colbert: I have. 

John Kander: You must be killed.

Stephen Colbert: I heard that Terry Gross interview. 

[Gross is host of an interview-based radio show distributed nationally by National Public Radio.  Her program, Fresh Air, aired a segment with Kander on 17 March 2017; it was broadcast on WNYC, the NPR outlet in New York City.]

I think you did a good job on that rewrite of that song.  How did it come about?

John Kander: Well, Fred and I . . .

Stephen Colbert: Fred Ebb, your writing partner for so many years.

John Kander: We went down . . . .  We were assigned to write a score for what we called “New York, New York.”  Martin Scorsese was directing it and Liza Minelli and Robert de Niro were in it.  And we went down to Marty’s office and we played our score.  I think there were seven, eight songs, something like that.  He and Liza were very complimentary.

And we started to go home.  Over on the couch was somebody we hadn’t met, and that was Robert de Niro.  All we saw of him was an arm that went up.  Scorsese said, “Excuse me just a minute.  Robert de Niro wants to speak with me.” 

He went over and sat on the couch with him and then I saw two arms doing that.  [Demonstrates raising an arm and waving.]  And then Scorsese came back and in the most embarrassed way said that de Niro feels that the title song, which is associated with him, is not as strong as “The World Goes ’Round,” which is associated with Liza’s character,  He really could hardly get the words out.  He said, “Would you guys mind going back and taking another crack at it?”

Stephen Colbert: How did you feel about that?

John Kander: Freddy and I, in our politest stiffness, said, “Of course.”  [LAUGHTER.]

Stephen Colbert: Of course they lied.  [LAUGHTER.]

John Kander: Anyway, we left and we went back to Freddy’s apartment, and we were so pissed off that some actor was going to tell us how to wrote . . . .

Stephen Colbert: Some actor.  “Bobby d” somebody or other.

John Kander: Anyhow, we went into Freddy’s study and in 45 minutes wrote this other song that we know as “New York, New York,” and we took it back, and they got to it and liked the song.

The point of it all is that de Niro was absolutely right.  The original song we wrote was so embarrassing. 

Actually, Sam Davis, our music coordinator, sneaked it into the underscoring.

Stephen Colbert: So it is somewhere in this musical?

John Kander: I’m not telling you where.

Lin-Manuel Miranda: By the way, I think that’s the secret of the song’s success and why it has become a New York anthem.  Because they wrote it while they were a little pissed off and I think every New Yorker is a little pissed off.

Stephen Colbert: Who do you think you are?  I’ll show you greatness.

Lin-Manuel Miranda: That has just a little “[BLEEP] you” in it.  A little “bam, bam, bad-uh-duh” [scats the song’s thematic beat].

Stephen Colbert: The line “If you can make it there” . . . it’s one of the most famous lines in the song and one of the most famous things associated with New York now.  What is the moment you realized you had made it?

Lin, let’s start with you.

Lin-Manuel Miranda: I always say I’ll never make a bigger leap in my life than going from substitute teacher at my old high school to Broadway composer, which was the leap I made when “In the Heights” made it from Off-Broadway to Broadway.  I was still sobbing. 

Stephen Colbert: You weren’t even a permanent teacher.

Lin-Manuel Miranda: I relied on teachers at my old high school to get sick five times a month and then I could pay my rent. 

So that was the biggest leap I’ll ever take in my life.

But I think the moment was kind of . . . I think the moment you realize you’re a New Yorker is when you can walk into your bodega and they just start making the order because you are there every day.

Stephen Colbert: They know.

John, what is your . . . what’s your sense of being a New Yorker, John?  Do you have a thing you associate with really being a New Yorker?

John Kander: Yeah.  Some of it I think is . . . I was saying in the other room, something I didn’t realize until today.  I think I have always been a New Yorker, even when I was growing up in Kansas City.  [LAUGHTER.]

Stephen Colbert: What is that ineffable thing?

John Kander: Okay.  This is the substance of the show, really, and it’s something I believe truly, deeply. 

I think that New York City is the greatest social experiment that the world has ever seen.  [APPLAUSE.] 

Stephen Colbert: What are the elements of the experiment?

John Kander: I think everybody lives in New York and everybody’s natural enemy lives in New York.  Truly.  And the fact is, for the most part, they don’t kill each other.  And if you think of other big cities in the world . . . you think of London and all of the people who live there from all over the world and the English.  Think of all the people in Paris and all of the people from all over the world who live there and the French.  In New York, there is only others.  [APPLAUSE.] 

[COMMERCIAL BREAK.]

Stephen Colbert: We are back with two of the biggest names on Broadway, the composers of the new musical, “New York, New York,” John Kander and Lin-Manuel Miranda.

You say that you you've been writing since you were quite small. I want to get to what your first song was in just a moment.

Lin, do you remember the first song you wrote?

Lin-Manuel Miranda: I think it was into my Fisher-Price tape recorder.  It was called “The Garbage Pail Kids Are In Town.”  It was about all the different Garbage Pail Kids [a series of sticker trading cards produced by the Topps Company, originally released in 1985] because I collected Garbage Pail Kids cards and they were coming to town.

Stephen Colbert: John, what was your first song? Do you remember?

John Kander: Yeah. It was it was a Christmas carol I wrote when I was in second grade.  I didn't find out until many years later that my second-grade teacher, Miss Mathews, had called my folks and said, “I just want to tell you that John wrote a Christmas carol.  Is that all right?  Because I know you're Jewish.”  [LAUGHTER.]

Stephen Colbert: What did your folks say?  Was that okay?

John Kander: That was fine with them. They tried to explain to me that there was more to it than that.  [LAUGHTER.] 

Stephen Colbert: You wrote for so many years. You wrote for over 40 years with your partner, Fred Ebb.  What is it like to continue to compose and create songs without him?  What are the challenges and what are some of the discoveries you made?

John Kander: Well, after Freddy died in 2004, there were some left-over projects which I vowed to finish.  And I began to work with other people, with myself, and I think I found out that I couldn't not write.  And that's really the whole secret.

It's like a habit that you just can't get rid of, and I've been really, really lucky that I get to play in the sandbox with people like him.  [Points to Lin-Manuel Miranda.  APPLAUSE.]

Stephen Colbert: Lin, I know that you have been inspired by John and Fred Ebb and I understand that you wrote “The Room Where It Happens,” extraordinary song from “Hamilton,” as a love letter to them. How so?

Lin-Manuel Miranda: Yeah, that’s my song in “Hamilton” that’s my little hat nod to Kander and Ebb.  It's a very different style from the rest of it because, and again, we've had many conversations about how we don't recognize our own styles.  

I told John this and he said, “What are you talking about?”  The only real tell is at the end of that song.  If you listen, it goes . . . the great Leslie Odom, Jr., sings, “I want to be in the room,” and then he goes, “click, boom, pshhh,” and that’s “All That Jazz” [from Chicago].  That is a straight-up “All That Jazz” steal.  And that’s my little love letter to them.

[COMMERCIAL BREAK.]

Stephen Colbert: We are back with the great John Kander and Lin-Manuel Miranda.

John, who were some of your heroes?  You are a hero of Lin-Manuel Miranda.  Who were some of your heroes when you were coming up and first create your music?

John Kander: George Gershwin, Irving Berlin, Jerome Kern. 

Every generation had its own – not just musical heroes but influences and what really kind of dazzles me, when we work together, that we are separated by not just two generations, by three generations.  And yet the actual process of writing and working is almost absurdly easy.

Lin-Manuel Miranda: Yeah.

Stephen Colbert: Really?  Even though sometimes when you approach a . . . start a song, you think, “I don’t know what I’m doing”?

John Kander: But you never know what you’re doing.

Lin-Manuel Miranda: But we go there together.

Stephen Colbert: That’s a lonely place to be alone.  What is that feeling like when you realize you’ve gone from not knowing to knowing something?  How does that happen?  What is the mysterious moment when the blank page turns into not an accusation but a possibility?

Lin-Manuel Miranda: We talk about that all the time actually.

John Kander: In the first place, you never know much.  You really don’t.

But something begins to happen and if you’re working with another person, you begin to pile idea on idea – and it’s an adventure.  And if you don’t put some god up there telling you that’s no good, you can go ahead and just do it.

Lin-Manuel Miranda: Yeah, and his hands are really fast.  A lot of what writing is to us is us just eating bagels and talking about what’s on TV and then at a certain point, we will turn to the piano and talk about the idea we have.  His hands will start going and I will just start trying to write words to keep up with what’s coming out of his hands and the first song we wrote together, the opening number of “New York, New York,” we wrote in about an hour and 15 minutes.

I filmed us singing through it for the first time and there’s a moment where we are looking at each other.  [BLEEP] this exists now!  [APPLAUSE.]

John Kander: He just said something really important I think a lot of people don’t understand with people who make art, tf you will.  One of the great . . . one of the great things about making stuff is something is there that was not there before.  I can’t tell you what an ego trip that is.

Stephen Colbert: John, thank you so much for being here.  Lovely to talk to you.  Lin, as always, thank you.  “New York, New York” is on Broadway at the St. James Theatre.  Here you go.  Lin-Manuel Miranda and John Kander!

[New York, New York was nominated for Tony Awards, handed out on Sunday, 11 June, in nine categories, including best musical.  The ceremony was held uptown at the United Palace, 175th Street and Wadsworth Avenue in Washington Heights. 

[Of the nine nominations, New York, New York won one award, Best Scenic Design of a Musical to Beowulf Boritt (who also won the Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Scenic Design of a Musical).  

[John Kander was separately honored with a special award for lifetime achievement in the theater, presented by his latest collaborator, Lin-Manuel Miranda.  For the awards show, which substituted performances for spoken speeches, jokes, and introductions, the cast of New York, New York performed the musical's opening number, “Cheering for Me Now,” and the title tune, “New York, New York.”].

*  *  *  *
“A MAJOR CHORD, UNDIMINISHED”
by Jesse Green 

[On 9 April 2023, New York Times review-writer Jesse Green published this lengthy profile of Kander in the “Arts & Leisure” section of the Sunday paper.]

John Kander, composer of ‘Chicago’ and ‘Cabaret,’ is making a brand-new start of it with ‘New York, New York.’

It’s not that John Kander wasn’t touched by John Kander Day. The composer of the song “New York, New York” — played at every Yankees home game and known worldwide from its first five notes — was obviously moved when the city’s mayor handed him a framed proclamation in front of the St. James Theater in Midtown Manhattan. Nor was he jaded, he later said, about having that block of West 44th Street, from Broadway to Eighth Avenue, christened Kander & Ebb Way in recognition of his work and that of Fred Ebb, his longtime lyricist, who died in 2004.

Still, of Kander’s thousands of songs, seven movie scores and 20 major musicals, including “Chicago” and “Cabaret”, not one bar was written with the idea of getting a piece of pavement named for him. If Ebb, with his brasher, needier personality, would have eaten up the honor, Kander seems at best to withstand it, embarrassed by too much attention or praise. He is so militantly unassuming that the highest compliment he will pay himself is the one his mother used to offer: “A horse can’t do any better.”

So on March 24, as a choir sang and a crowd cheered and his friend Lin-Manuel Miranda read Ebb’s beautiful lyric for the song “First You Dream,” Kander, who had turned 96 days earlier, was thinking less about what was going on outside the St. James than what was going on inside it. There, a few hours after the ceremony, his 16th new Broadway musical, “New York, New York” — named for “that song,” which he doesn’t even like — would offer its first public preview. Directed and choreographed by Susan Stroman [b. 1954], it is set to open on April 26.

Though the plot is only tangentially related to that of the 1977 Martin Scorsese film starring Robert De Niro and Liza Minnelli, the stage musical, with a book by David Thompson and Sharon Washington, naturally includes its big numbers. Others are from the Kander and Ebb trunk, some never previously performed onstage. But much of the score is new. Six songs are collaborations with Miranda, who said the problem with writing lyrics for Kander is “just keeping up” as the melodies pour out, sometimes via voice memo at 3 in the morning. The rest, whether swingy or Schuberty or uncategorizable, are by Kander alone.

At an age when most artists are resting on their laurels, or beneath them, Kander, the last of the great Golden Age composers, just keeps going. Other than arthritis in his hands, he is unimpaired physically; he trots up and down the three-story spiral staircase to his studio faster than I dared when I spent a few hours there with him. To the annoyance of his husband, Albert Stephenson, and everyone around him, he eats dessert regularly and generously, with no ill effect. “I do my chores, too,” he said: washing the dishes and making the bed, tight as a drum, as he was taught at Camp Nebagamon when he was 10.

Well, lots of people remain spry seemingly forever. What worries artists, and especially composers, is the possibility of drying up creatively. Even musical theater titans like [Richard] Rodgers and [Irving] Berlin succumbed to harmonic meekness and rhythmic sclerosis as they approached their 70s. Certainly after Ebb’s death, and after fulfilling a promise to shepherd as many of the team’s unfinished musicals to Broadway as he could — “Curtains” in 2007, “The Scottsboro Boys” in 2010 and “The Visit” in 2015 — Kander might have been expected to coast into retirement on tributes and revivals.

But no: Even before that job was finished, he’d jumped back into the water. In 2013 came “The Landing,” in 2017, “Kid Victory,” and in 2018 a dance play based on the Henry James novella “The Beast in the Jungle.” All three pieces, produced Off Broadway at the Vineyard Theater, were experimental in a way you might expect from someone at the start of a career, not seven decades into it. And now, even as “New York, New York” opens, another show is aborning.

So it seems almost Sisyphean that while a music assistant is busy digitizing Kander’s archive and preparing the paper assets for eventual donation to the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, the man himself is sitting nearby at a keyboard, cranking out more every day.

That’s not the right phrase, though. Even if he were in fact profoundly lazy, as Ebb insisted and Kander does not deny, composing is hardly drudgery for him. It’s more of a geological process, water rising from an aquifer, desperate to be tapped. If he doesn’t let the music out through his hands — or block it by listening to somebody else’s — it might drown him.

Which means he is always listening: Music plays in his head, he said, “like a radio you can’t turn off.” It began, he believes, some 35,000 John Kander Days ago, when, as a baby in Kansas City, Mo., he contracted tuberculosis. Isolated on a sleeping porch and able to sense his family only when they approached the screen door, he learned to associate the sound of footsteps coming toward him with the imminence of loved ones. “I think I began to organize sound in my head then, out of necessity.”

Footsteps go both ways though. If, as he said, a “residue of loneliness” remains from that experience, it’s a loneliness for which “the most fortunate antidote” has been companionship and collaboration. Though many people assumed that Kander and Ebb were a couple — their 45-year partnership was more intense and monogamous than many marriages — the men were not socially close. But he and Stephenson, a dancer in Kander and Ebb’s “The Act,” have been together since 1977, married since 2008. Some of Kander’s loveliest songs were written not for any show but for him.

As for collaboration, it’s no accident that Kander surrounds himself with a rotating roster of familiar names. “Next to the greatest sex you can imagine, making art with your friends is as good as it gets,” he said. He’s worked with Stroman six times, Thompson eight times and Washington, a featured performer in “The Scottsboro Boys,” twice. Half the music team are old Kander hands too, making the March 14 sitzprobe [German for ‘seated rehearsal’; first run-through of an opera or musical in which the orchestra and singers rehearse together and the singers sit or stand at microphones, but don’t perform any actions or movements] — the first rehearsal with the cast and the orchestra — a reunion and, as it happened, a party. You haven’t really heard “Happy Birthday” until a Broadway chorus of 37, accompanied by 19 crack musicians, sings it in a crowded, reverberant room.

“There are a lot of really gorgeous places to be on this earth,” Kander told them, “but none as gorgeous as this.”

That a love parade attends him wherever he goes — I’m part of it, having worked for him 40 years ago, sleuthing for a lost score — doesn’t mean he’s a pushover. At the sitzprobe he spoke rarely but made his points. Wanting a song called “A Simple Thing Like That” to be “less waltzy,” he suggested removing the triangle from the downbeats. For “Light,” one of the new Kander-Miranda songs, painting in ethereal music a portrait of Manhattanhenge [see Manhattanhenge 2023: Where & How to See It | AMNH], he asked for a more unpredictable spacing of the dissonant chords that bring it to such a startling close. And “Gold,” a flamboyant conga sequence, needed more schmaltz. “Lower your standards,” he instructed the orchestra.

As that sampling of song types attests, “New York, New York” tells many stories, about people from many backgrounds. The main one is the troubled romance between a Black singer (Anna Uzele) and an Irish musician (Colton Ryan). Secondary ones concern a Polish refugee and his violin teacher; a Cuban drummer and his mother; and a Black trumpet-playing G.I. Most have come to New York after World War II to make art or save their souls — or both at once. As a new song called “Major Chord” puts it, they seek the trifecta of “music, money, love.”

“Maybe you get one, maybe you get two,” Stroman said. “But it’s hard to get three.”

Still, Kander adds, summing up the theme, “New York is where you have the best chance of being who you see yourself as.”

He would know, having come here for just that reason, in 1951, after college and military service. The banners welcoming his transport ship from the Pacific — “Welcome Home! Well Done!” — immediately made sense: This was where he was meant to be.

The “well done” part he does not take as seriously; his service was mostly spent playing piano for officers and at one point running $400,000 [about $6¾ million today] worth of Canadian Club whisky to Manila — along with 11 cows.

Yet “well done” surely applies to him now. “He lives his life correctly,” Stroman observed. Perhaps that’s why no one speaks invidiously of him, even though few major chords are as undiminished as his. Music, he has abundantly; money, in spades — “Chicago” alone, the longest-running American musical ever on Broadway, has grossed more than $1.6 billion worldwide. And love, absolutely, even if it had to wait until his 50s. “Happiness is one of the last things you learn, if you ever do,” he said.

That he is adored by younger colleagues is partly because he serves as a beacon of the possibility of lifelong growth. (Taking them to lunch when they are barely known, as he took Miranda, doesn’t hurt either.) Stroman marvels at the muscle of his musical storytelling, built up by decades of doing it. “If I say to him ‘I imagine a girl walking down the beach and she meets the love of her life,’” she said, “he can leap up to the piano and that is exactly the story you hear in his melody.”

But for Kander, aging as an artist is less about the expansion than the concentration of skill. “By the time [Giuseppe] Verdi [1813-1901] wrote ‘Falstaff’ [1893], when he was almost 80,” he said, “he had learned to do in 16 measures what in ‘Nabucco’” [1842] — 50 years earlier — “would have taken him a big aria and a cabaletta and all that. There’s nothing wasted, no decoration, just the thing itself. I’m not lucky enough to have had that experience a lot, but I recognize it when I see it and it almost makes me laugh.”

There’s that modesty again, reflexive but also pragmatic. Stroman summarizes the two biggest things she’s learned about collaboration from Kander as “no bad ideas” — which actually means plenty of them, freely offered and freely rejected — and “leave egos at the door.” Kander wants his drama onstage only.

“What we do is a craft,” he insisted. “I mean you can have a great inner talent, and a lot of people do, but without craft it’s very hard for the talent to emerge. Also the reverse is true. You may not feel particularly inspired by a commitment you’ve made, or a moment you’re supposed to create, but you still have to write those 12 bars to cover someone crossing the stage.”

Even worse, you might have to write a second version of “New York, New York.” When De Niro complained that the first was too “light,” Kander and Ebb, in a snit, tossed off the famous one in 45 minutes. “Which does the job and audiences like it and De Niro was right and it’s a great piece of luck,” Kander said ruefully. “But I just don’t get it.”

At the sitzprobe, they got it. When the brass and saxes swung in big at the top of the tune, the cast reared back, as if hit by a tornado. Tears of something like joy flew from their eyes, if not from Kander’s. When I later forced him to name some songs he’s actually proud of, he admitted only to ballads, not Ebb’s beloved “screamers.” “I Miss the Music” from “Curtains.” “I Don’t Care Much,” written as a dinner boast between coffee and dessert. And a new one, set in the Whispering Gallery at Grand Central Station, perhaps inevitably called “Can You Hear Me?”

Off the top of my head, I could name 30 others he ought to include.

“I appreciate that, but it’s independent of me. My fingers find something, as if they have little brains of their own. The keyboard is my friend, since I was 4. Being an artist is much more like being a carpenter than like being God: Something will happen. Or you tear it up. And start again.”

A horse can’t do any better.

[Jesse Green worked in musical theater during the 1980s, and in 1983 he helped John Kander find the lost score for “The Happy Time” (Los Angeles, 1967; Broadway, 1968).

[He is the chief theater critic for the New York Times. His latest book is Shy (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2022), with and about the composer Mary Rodgers (see the post “Shy by Mary Rodgers” on Rick On Theater on 1 November 2022, with reports by Kirk Woodward and others). Green is also the author of a novel, O Beautiful (Available Press, 1992), and a memoir, The Velveteen Father (Villard, 1999).]