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[0:00] Robert W. Schneider: Hi, I'm Robert W. Schneider.

[0:01] Kevin David Thomas: And I'm Kevin David Thomas.

[0:03] Robert W. Schneider: And this is Behind the Curtain: Broadway's Living Legends.

[0:05] Kevin David Thomas: Don't forget to follow us on Instagram at Broadway Curtain Podcast.

[0:09] Robert W. Schneider: Plus, you can always listen to all of our episodes, old and new on the Broadway Podcast Network, iTunes, and Spotify.

[0:15] Kevin David Thomas: It's hard to think of the greatest music directors working on Broadway without thinking of today's guest. You have heard his incredible work for over 30 years, and you might have even seen him on stage in the original Merrily We Roll Along, Master Class, and Curtains. And you heard his work in such musicals as The Visit, The Scottsboro Boys, one of my favorites, Sondheim on Sondheim, Curtains, The Look of Love, Ragtime, A Class Act, Steel Pier, and And the World Goes 'Round to name just a few. Just a few folks to tell us what it was like to work with such legends as John Kander, Fred Ebb, Stephen Sondheim, Hal Prince, John Doyle, Susan Stroman, and so many others. Here is the Maestro himself and a fantastic author in his own right, the wonderful David Loud.

[1:03] David Loud: Thanks so much for talking with us, and let's just jump right in. As someone who's been such an influential music director and musician, I'd love to know what sort of records were you listening to when you were growing up.

[1:14] David Loud: Well, like every middle-class American family, we had My Fair Lady, we had Guys and Dolls, we had South Pacific, we had Brigadoon, we had Oklahoma, we had Carousel. We even had The Most Happy Fella, which came up three-disc set.

[1:32] Kevin David Thomas: Good choice, good choice.

[1:34] David Loud: Right, yeah. Not the normal single disc. We had some slightly more obscure musicals like Plain and Fancy.

[1:37] Kevin David Thomas: That's an odd one that we had, the Amish musical.

[1:45] David Loud: Yeah. And I remember a recording of Goldilocks. Why we had that, I do not know, but one of my favorite scores, David. Honestly, it's one of my all-time favorite scores. So funny. But I mean, we had Bye Bye Birdie, West Side Story as well, and The Music Man.

[2:04] Kevin David Thomas: Were you listening to any sort of popular music at the same time as well, or were you just immersed into this theatrical world?

[2:11] David Loud: I was not aware of pop music.

[2:14] Kevin David Thomas: Oh, good, you're in the right place.

[2:16] David Loud: My family didn't really enjoy it. I liked The Carpenters. That was about the only pop album I had. And I remember when the cast album of Jesus Christ Superstar came out, that was shocking and transgressive and exciting to see something like a musical theater story being told with this kind of music. That was amazing to me.

[2:42] Kevin David Thomas: And what did your folks do for a living?

[2:44] David Loud: They're both teachers.

[2:45] Kevin David Thomas: Did you think that might be the world you would go into first? Or did you never?

[2:49] David Loud: No, I wanted to do musical theater, not as a teacher. I've ended up as a teacher, and I have to say I love it.

[2:59] Kevin David Thomas: Right.

[2:59] David Loud: And it sort of rescued me. When did you first start playing the piano? Did you have formal lessons, or did you just sit down and want to play by ear?

[3:06] David Loud: I had formal lessons starting when I was six from a wonderful teacher, Miss Korn in Cincinnati, who talked way above my head and gave me lessons that I didn't realize the worth of for years and years and years. But you know, great teachers can do that. They can plant something in your head that long after the fact will suddenly fall into place and make sense. She did that for me.

[3:36] Kevin David Thomas: Were you able to play by ear, or do you need that music right in front of you?

[3:39] David Loud: No, I'm not one of those sit down at the piano and play the song you've just heard once perfectly on the piano. I can work anything out. But I'm a great sight reader. I process music more classically than by ear.

[3:54] Kevin David Thomas: That's a whole fascinating thing that I would love to explore at some point.

[3:58] David Loud: Oh, yeah.

[3:59] Kevin David Thomas: That range of ways that people process music.

[4:04] David Loud: Right. So interesting and different. Now, where did you go to college?

[4:08] David Loud: I went to Yale, undergraduate for music.

[4:10] Kevin David Thomas: And why Yale? Besides it being probably the best school in the United States.

[4:19] David Loud: Oh, perfect. I wanted to have the access to theater. Do you remember the first Broadway show you saw?

[4:25] David Loud: Oh my god, of course. It was The Magic Show.

[4:29] Kevin David Thomas: Oh, wow!

[4:32] David Loud: And I think it is possibly still the greatest thing I've ever seen.

[4:38] Kevin David Thomas: Yes, yes.

[4:40] David Loud: I remember every second of it. It had an amazing score, it had an amazing cast. And what I loved about it was that was when the music and the magic and the story all coalesced into one thing. And I mean, the song from the sexy woman who's always conjured up by music by magicians. And she's in the middle of a shower, she's talking to her friends, and boom, there she is in some lecherous musician's magic act. That was so funny to me. That a woman would just because she was so pretty, would end up, you know, on stage somewhere having been conjured up. I love that score.

[5:23] Kevin David Thomas: Okay, so you saw The Magic Show. Do you remember any other musicals you saw during this time that were also pretty impactful for you?

[5:29] David Loud: There was a review called Rodgers and Hart that I saw.

[5:32] Kevin David Thomas: Oh.

[5:33] David Loud: Which that was new for me. I hadn't experienced something like that before with no plot, yeah. Sort of sexy people coming on stage and standing and singing songs. Remember David Carroll was part of that in the world.

[5:45] Kevin David Thomas: Oh gosh, he's one of my—we love talking about him because he's one of my favorite voices. I mean, just truly sensational.

[5:51] David Loud: Yeah, that was such a loss.

[5:54] Kevin David Thomas: Yeah.

[5:55] David Loud: Shannon Doa.

[5:57] Kevin David Thomas: Oh, yes.

[5:58] David Loud: It was like sort of like an ersatz Rodgers and Hammerstein. Now were you performing at Yale?

[6:05] David Loud: I was thinking of being an actor, but not incredibly seriously. I wasn't majoring in theater, I was majoring in music. But I had worked as a messenger at Variety for two summers, and all the casting notices used to be in Variety.

[6:15] Kevin David Thomas: Oh.

[6:22] David Loud: And because I had worked there, I had a free subscription to it, and it would come to my Yale post office box every week, rolled up in the box, and I would look at it and sort of wonder about professional theater. And then there was a casting notice for looking for 14 to 20 year olds to be in Merrily We Roll Along, a new musical to be directed by Harold Prince, written by Stephen Sondheim and George Furth. And I thought, well, that's why I went to Yale, so that I could be close to New York and take a train in and go to a—you know, there it is. An open call, which has, of course, absolutely no likelihood of resulting in me being in a Broadway show, but how could I not try?

[7:06] Kevin David Thomas: Yes.

[7:06] David Loud: Yeah, yeah. I had read Moss Hart's Act One, and it had sort of clarified for me what I needed to do, which was to go to New York to be in the theater to apprentice myself for what I'm saying.

[7:19] Kevin David Thomas: Yes, yes, yeah, totally I could do. And this play, Merrily We Roll Along, was based on a play by Moss Hart and George Kaufman. I was 18.

[7:30] Kevin David Thomas: Oh my gosh.

[7:32] David Loud: Okay. So you took a sophomore year. You took the train into New York.

[7:37] David Loud: Train into New York. In Grand Central Station, I found a photo booth and snapped a four-inch by four-inch photo of myself, which I paper clipped to the back of the resume I had typed up the night before. I had been in The Crucible playing Giles Corey, who is like an 80-year-old man. And I had been in You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown playing Linus. So of course I was gonna be cast in a Broadway show.

[8:02] Kevin David Thomas: Yes, yes, naturally.

[8:03] David Loud: And well, that day I spent online with hundreds of other people since all of Equity turned out, trying to look between 14 and 20.

[8:16] Kevin David Thomas: Was it at a Broadway theater? Were you out outside?

[8:18] David Loud: Yeah, actually at the Minskoff for Hursel Studios. And the line went out the door and through Schubert Alley.

[8:25] Kevin David Thomas: What did you sing?

[8:26] David Loud: I didn't actually sing that day. I was so far back in the line that I wasn't seen. But this kindly casting assistant came out and collected resumes from those of us who had waited all day. And two weeks later, I got a call in my dorm room from Joanna Merlin, Hal Prince's casting woman, saying, "Would you like to audition for Merrily We Roll Along?" And I said, "Yes, I would very much." And then I had about three months of auditions where I would, every two weeks or so, I would go into New York and sing for Hal and Paul Gemignani and Joanna Merlin and Sondheim. And I would sing "Sondheim" and then I would go to the piano and sing another song, "Opus War." And they would smile and ask me a question, and I would go back to Yale, and two weeks later I'd do it again.

Sometimes we would audition on the set of Evita, which was running at the time, which was nightmarish because there were light boxes set on the floor and the stage was raked, and I thought I was gonna fall into the pit.

[9:27] Kevin David Thomas: A little heady time for you. You're in college and you're commuting for these covers for like it was amazing.

[9:33] David Loud: I felt so special.

[9:35] Kevin David Thomas: Yeah.

[9:35] David Loud: We didn't tell anybody about it either. I just—it was like my private little secret. And because I knew that I knew that the ending was going to be that I wouldn't get it. But I kept getting a little further and a little further, and the fact that I played the piano was very helpful.

[9:49] Kevin David Thomas: Right.

[9:49] David Loud: Because they needed—at least two of the actors had to play the piano. Finally, it came down to a day when there were 90 of us at the beginning of the day, and at the end of the day, there were 23 of us left, and we were in a room with Hal Prince, and he said, "The show has been cast and you were it." And I was a big Sondheim fan already. I had discovered his musical through albums. I had seen Sweeney Todd, you know, the most amazing thing I'd ever seen. I actually saw Sweeney Todd sitting next to Michael Cerveris because we were both at the same high school.

[10:21] Kevin David Thomas: What was it like meeting Mr. Sondheim for the first time?

[10:24] David Loud: Well, you know, it's pretty much like meeting God.

[10:28] Kevin David Thomas: Great.

[10:30] David Loud: So, you know, you really aren't yourself in that situation. It took me so many years till I relaxed. You know, I was so lucky over the years to work with him repeatedly. We did a revival of Company together, we did a revival of Pacific Overtures I worked on with him. I did Sondheim on Sondheim. And he had always loomed so large in my list of mentors and heroes. And it took me—it just took me too long to settle down and realize that he was just a person. And a very kind and thoughtful person. I mean, he was so nice to me always. And at that moment where I was first proposed to him as a music director, and he only knew me as like being one of the Merrily kids, right? I thought, well, he's never gonna go for this. He was thrilled that I was music directing a revival of Company. And every single time I came back to work with him, he was always just so welcoming, and I was just so honored to be his comrade.

[11:38] Kevin David Thomas: Yeah, yeah, working on shows. What lesson do you think he's taught you that you still take with you to this day?

[11:45] David Loud: The more specific your work is, the more universal it can be. I think that is one of the great things about his art. It is so specific. He works so hard to get the right detail, the right turn of phrase that reveals everything about a character. The way his lyrics sit on the music is so crafted yet so easy. He says God is in the details, and I think that's a great lesson for artists.

[12:18] Kevin David Thomas: Now, what was it like getting to work hand in hand with him on Merrily We Roll Along, seeing him day in and day out? What was that experience like?

[12:27] David Loud: I was in a state of terror for most of it. You know, I felt much less talented than most of the other actors. They were better singers, they were better dancers. You know, I could play the piano. That was my one—that was the one thing I had up my sleeve, and that proved to be very useful. And Steve was always very complimentary of my piano playing, and it was a thrill, especially because the show was so flawed and so sort of troubled in previews. We did five weeks of previews where they changed the show every single performance we did. They came in with new lyrics, new staging, new scenes, new thoughts, you know, cuts, changes. And we never said no, we can't do that, Mr. Prince. We always said, of course we can do that.

And yes, we will work on our day off, and yes, we'll learn this new routine. And we were doing the kind of work—I mean, it should be illegal. It was like a sweatshop. We were working so hard because the giants of the industry were grappling with this complicated, messy musical that audiences were hating when we started previews. And it really did get better and better and better and better and better. And the honor of watching those great people grapple with the material every day was, I mean, the most valuable class I've ever had in how to fix the troubled musical.

[13:56] Kevin David Thomas: What are some of the lessons that you learn from that process you still take with you today?

[14:00] David Loud: What they had to do was clarify what the show was about. And a lot of that meant cutting down the smaller parts and focusing on the leads. When Merrily was originally written, the smaller parts all had little verses and songs and there were all sorts of little small characters that really had a life in the way that the original play also has many more characters than just the leads.

[14:30] David Loud: You're constantly meeting interesting people as you go back in time in the original play. And in the musical, they'd sort of done that, but it got confusing. Like who is this really about? So the smaller parts were cut away and it was focused much more clearly on Frank, Mary, and Charlie. When you were in the rehearsal process, did you think it was gonna be a hit, or did you go, something doesn't seem right here? I was so naive and so thrilled to be there. I thought it was fantastic. I didn't know when people were leaving during the first act that we weren't connecting with the audience. But I still thought the show was fantastic. I still thought the music was fantastic. And it got so much better that I thought it got great.

By the time we opened. And it's very artificial, the audience response around opening night. And you know, they were standing and cheering, and the show was playing like it was a masterpiece. On opening night. And then we read those reviews, and it was like, oh my god. We were the scum of the earth. But the day after we closed, we recorded the cast album. And the show has never died since then. You know, the album really was able to prove to the world that it's a great score. I don't think they've ever gotten it quite right. And everybody thinks they know how to fix it. Totally. Yes. And I always say, I'm sure that this production will be the one that fixes it.

[16:04] David Loud: Wait, so you just went right back to school. Did you think for a minute you might stay in New York because you had this your Broadway debut? Oh, I was so sad. Yeah. I did want to, I was so sad when it closed. And you know, I had thought I'd be out of college for two years doing the following God. And I called Yale and said, Can I come home? And I was back in January. Having missed one semester. That was all right too. I mean, Yale was fantastic. And I realized at the end of Merrily that I wasn't an actor, and that the person who I really wanted to be was Paul Gemignani down in the pit. Yes. He was the music director, and he was this powerful force that just took our attention and made us sing as one and made us focus.

And we were kind of terrified of him too, but I could tell that underneath all that gruff exterior there was a warm artistic heart that was a wonderful musician. And I watched him conduct Merrily, and I thought that really is where I belong. That's what I need to be doing. And so I shifted my focus and I started applying to, you know, Summerstock Theaters to work as a music director or assistant music director, and just sort of changed my focus to that.

[17:22] Kevin David Thomas: And did you go to Summerstock? I mean, did what would be a good idea?

[17:24] David Loud: I did. I worked at the Surflight, it was 12 shows in 12 weeks, no days at all. That's all. And I did it for two summers, so I learned 24 scores doing that. And that's 24 scores from the inside out, like really learning how the vocal arrangements work, how the dance arrangements are constructed, how they move from dialogue to song to dance. And that was a great set of lessons as well. Most of the shows were pretty awful at Surflight, but every now and then everything would come together. In that one week of rehearsals. And you know, if the director was right and all of a sudden it was cast right? And those for those shows, you could really feel the audience going, well, this might be good. And they'd get really quiet, and you could feel the kind of willing the actors to be better and step it up.

[18:19] Kevin David Thomas: Now, were you living in New York at this time? So were you commuting from New York to wherever the summer stock gig was?

[18:24] David Loud: I was actually while I was finishing up at Yale. So I did that while I was at Yale, and then I moved to I moved back to New York in 1984.

[18:32] Kevin David Thomas: And was your family supportive of all this?

[18:34] David Loud: They didn't know what hit them really. My parents never stood in the way of what I was doing, and they always were sort of surprised but permissive with me, you know, focusing so heavily on music and theater. And when I called them to say, you know, I'm thinking of dropping out of Yale and joining the circus with Merrily, they were like, okay, whatever you think. Yeah. And I dropped out of Yale and moved to New York without a contract, also.

[19:05] Kevin David Thomas: Oh wow.

[19:06] David Loud: I mean, we didn't get our contracts till like right before it started. But how could I not have done that? No, of course. Trust your gut.

[19:15] Kevin David Thomas: So when you go back to New York, how do you start making a name for yourself within the New York theatrical community?

[19:22] David Loud: Well, that's a hard thing to do. And the way it happened for me is the way it usually happens, which is somebody you work with on some strange show somewhere, bonds with you, and suddenly they need a pianist or they need a music director, or they need you, and they ask for you. And you sort of rise up with the people who you work in at places like Surflight. And you know, the crappy little jobs that you think are dead end are not dead end because of the people who are doing them with you.

[19:58] Yeah.

[19:59] David Loud: Um Scott Ellis and I were cast in a play called Billy Bishop Goes to War that we did up at the Portland Stage Company in Portland, Maine. It's a two-character play for an actor who plays 18 parts, no costume changes, and a pianist who's on stage with him the whole time, accompanying the scenes and singing the occasional duet. And Scott was brilliant in the part. It was the last thing he did as an actor. And we had so much fun together. We had a ball, sort of figuring out how to make this weird play work with only one actor. And you know, through his body language, through his voice, and also through the underscoring, we could tell the audience which character was speaking and which one was entering.

And the audience really believed that there were three or four people on stage having a scene together when it was clear that there was only one actor and somebody playing the piano. Because Scott believed, I mean, Scott just had that childlike belief in what he was doing. And if he said that the chair that he was sitting on was a World War One fighting plane, he believed it. So the audience believed it. Anyway, we were very successful up in Portland, and then it was a time that regional theaters were completely broke, and they would cancel their production of As You Like It and book us in because we were only two people, a chair and a piano.

[21:23] Yeah.

[21:24] David Loud: And we toured for like two years doing that play, very successfully all around the country. And then Scott decided to be a director and he needed a music director, and that was my career. He gave me five Broadway shows.

[21:36] Kevin David Thomas: What is it about your collaboration that works so well?

[21:40] David Loud: We had that thing where I just knew what he wanted all the time. His taste was so clear to me. We had similar taste, we had similar ambitions for the kind of theater we liked, you know, the kind of theater that happens in the audience's imagination. Not necessarily, you know, from big sets and big effects, but what an actor can do is what's really interesting to me. And Scott shared that with me, I think. And just the fact that we've been in every conceivable pub, you know, possible disaster over those two years together.

[22:18] Yeah, that really true colors when you're in that.

[22:21] David Loud: It bonds you to with a show because there's always something horrible going wrong.

[22:29] Totally.

[22:30] Kevin David Thomas: What was the first show that you worked on together as director, music director?

[22:33] David Loud: The revival of She Loves Me at the Roundabout, which is just a heavenly experience from day one. It was it's one of my favorite shows ever. It's beautifully written and so mature and touching and true. The score is just exquisite song after exquisite song. We had a great cast with Judy Kuhn and Boyd Gaines, Sally Mays, Howard McGillen, Lee Wilcoff, Brad Cain, The Voice of Aladdin played, RPA. Gorgeous set designed by Tony Walton, who just passed away. It was the perfect show for Scott. It's not a, it's because it's real. It's reality. There are real people selling perfume and soap and lotions. And he loves digging into the reality of a shop and how it works and what the politics are and what the mechanisms of its work are. It was a very happy run.

[23:31] Kevin David Thomas: How did it come to be? How did how did you guys get picked for this piece?

[23:36] David Loud: You know, I don't know what first attracted it to him, but he brought it to the Roundabout as a proposing it that they do it at their off-Broadway space in Times Square. We did it at, it's called the Criterion Center back then. And they just said yes and supported us, and they were great.

[23:57] Kevin David Thomas: Did you work on And The World Goes Round before this with him?

[24:00] David Loud: Yes, that was the first off-Broadway show we did together.

[24:03] Kevin David Thomas: Okay, and tell us a little bit about that experience, because that cast album is still one of my favorites. It's the arrangements are fabulous.

[24:10] David Loud: Thank you. Scott had done The Rink for Kander and Ebb. He was in the cast of The Rink on Broadway, and he had bonded with them, and he had this idea as sort of a calling card to try to get the industry to see him as a director rather than an actor. He wanted to do a review of Kander and Ebb's songs where each song would reflect in an interesting way off the song that preceded it and the song that followed it. And we wanted to do it without any dialogue, with just trusting the actors and the songs to make each song sort of be a one-act play. That was satisfying beginning, middle, end. So we cast it with extraordinary singer actors. And we started rehearsing, and Kander and Ebb wanted to know what was going on, and they came into rehearsal, and to our surprise, like loved what was happening and wanted to be a part of it.

And they wanted to be, they wanted to cabaret and they wanted to tell the actors little secrets about how they had written these songs. And they were so generous that way and so open to what we were doing with the piece.

[25:33] Kevin David Thomas: Right.

[25:33] David Loud: That they might have had as I ripped apart their numbers and redid the feels and you know, changed little things about the musical qualities of the pieces. And it just was a great experience for all of us.

[25:50] Kevin David Thomas: And one of many collaborations eventually for you and them.

[25:54] David Loud: Yes.

[26:03] David Loud: Oh my god. And I was like, okay, I'm available. And I did Steel Pier for them. I did The Scottsboro Boys. I did Curtains and did The Visit. Yeah. All on Broadway for Kander and Ebb, and what an honor. I mean to work with them. John Kander is the nicest, most sensible, most caring person in the world.

[26:31] Kevin David Thomas: What's it like to collaborate with him as a musician as well? I mean, what's his musicianship like, and how do you how do you collaborate?

[26:37] David Loud: He's the best piano player you ever heard. And he can just sit down at the piano and put his hands on the keys, and out comes music. He says that his brain is a river of music that never stops. Wow. And it just comes out his fingers. He doesn't think about it. He doesn't edit it. Right. It just comes. And it's always been that way for him. He described writing with Fred. He said in the same way that he can improvise freely at the keyboard. He said Fred could do that with language. And they would just get in the room together and riff, find the kernel and then build the song together, just sort of improvising together. They only wrote in the same room. And they never changed their technique. And their songs are so cleverly crafted.

[27:31] Kevin David Thomas: Yeah.

[27:31] David Loud: And so seemingly simple while being just perfect. I'm curious. You did She Loves Me, and it was a huge success. Is that how Company came about eventually? Or were they connected at all?

[27:52] David Loud: Yes, they were absolutely connected because Scott was the director of both of those. Scott Ellis was, and he got more and more involved with the Roundabout as the years went on. Yeah, She Loves Me was a great experience, and it did lead to doing Company there.

[28:08] Kevin David Thomas: What was your relationship like with Bach and Harnick?

[28:10] David Loud: Well, they were delightful. They came to every rehearsal practically, and that was nerve-wracking.

[28:19] Kevin David Thomas: I know.

[28:20] David Loud: No, not at all. Not at all. The two of them are just delightful. Bach and Harnick wrote Fiorello, they wrote Fiddler on the Roof, they wrote She Loves Me, they wrote The Apple Tree, and then on a show called The Rothschilds, they argued bitterly and split and never wrote again. So they were divorced. They were clearly divorced when we were working on She Loves Me.

[28:41] David Loud: And I was always very aware that they were so hyper-aware of each other and never sitting together, but always being very respectful for each other to each other, very polite. And watching poor Joe Masteroff, the librettist, sort of do the little dance between them, reminded me so much of my childhood with my parents. Oh, it was sad to see. But they would give the tiniest little notes. You know, perhaps there could be a smaller retard here so we don't lose the energy there, David. Little things like that. Pronunciation, phrasing for the chorus, and every note they gave made it sparkle more brightly and move more smoothly. The show is so intricately constructed, it's I think it's an almost perfect musical.

[29:30] Kevin David Thomas: Yes.

[29:32] David Loud: So let's talk a little bit then about working with people like Susan Stroman on Steel Pier, which is one of my favorite shows of all time.

[29:42] Kevin David Thomas: Yep.

[29:42] David Loud: Steel Pier, the album is so flavorful.

[29:45] Kevin David Thomas: Yes, orchestrations are just sublime. Tell us what it was like working on crafting the show, specifically conjuring up the era like you just said. You know, Steel Pier is set in the depression in the late 20s, early 30s, and that era of music is so juicy when you think of the sort of the explosion of jazz and ragtime.

[30:10] David Loud: Yes, you know, sort of operetta coming into musical theater and that sense of high melody that you get from shows of that period.

[30:20] Kevin David Thomas: Single patient.

[30:21] David Loud: Absolutely. And the dancing was very period researched and of the time. Uh and strong, it's like a it's like a masterclass on dance styles of the late 20s and early 30s. The choreography for that show. We had the world's best dancers, and they worked so hard. I mean, the show is about a dance marathon. Basically, the whole cast is on stage the whole time dancing, and viruses would go through that company like plague. I mean, they were just constantly sweating on each other and getting sick and coughing on each other, and but none of them would ever dream of missing a performance. You know, so they would just infect everybody all again. The images that spring into my head from that show are so beautiful.

There's this gorgeous opening where this line of dancers came down from the very back of the stage, like through the mist. They walked down to the front, looking out at the audience, and they reached into their pockets, they brought out sand, and they let the sand go onto the stage. And it was then it was a beach, and it was maybe the ashes of the fallen pilot that Rita meets at the beginning of the show. And then they would disappear back up into the mist. It was so beautiful. At the end of the show, they did these spot turns in a circle, almost in the dark. It was like this whirlwind of dancers revolving in like a cyclone. In the dark, they created this passionate sort of wind, and then they would all split to the sides. I've never seen stuff like that before.

[32:00] Kevin David Thomas: Yeah.

[32:00] David Loud: And as the conductor, you're right in the middle of it. You're on the podium, it's happening five feet away from you. And all the little subplots in Steel Pier, the rivalries between the dancers, between the dance teams, the frustrations, the hopes, the sabotage that they would do to each other, it was all being played out by the dancers in a way that was so much more interesting than what the show was actually doing. Down closer to the, you know, projecting out to the audience. But from where I was, I felt like I was inside this other drama, which was all the subtext that the dancers were creating each night.

[32:42] Kevin David Thomas: And why do you think that show was not as successful per se as as I think maybe we all would like to have been?

[32:49] David Loud: Well, the score was great, the design was great, the cast was great, the music was great, but the story was not satisfying. The guy was dead, and when you found that out, never seemed to work. It was originally designed that you would go through the whole story, and then at the end you'd realize he was dead. Then in your mind you'd look back and go, oh, well, now that makes sense, and that makes sense, and that makes sense, and that makes sense. But that didn't seem to work for some reason. And the producers kept saying, you know, we gotta find out earlier, we have to know earlier. Finally, the show started with an airplane crash and poor Danny McDonald like coming on stage with smoke coming off his costume and he was trying to be a ghost or something. I don't know what it was. You know, how do you how do you act invisible? How do you act transparent?

[33:41] Kevin David Thomas: Right.

[33:41] David Loud: So I think when we opened, the audience was supposed to know from the beginning that he was dead, which is just, I guess, a different way to tell the story. Nothing about it worked, nothing about that plot worked, really.

[33:53] Kevin David Thomas: But do you think it would have been more impactful had at the end of the show the audience found out he had been deceased?

[33:58] David Loud: I think that might have made it better. Yeah. I mean, I know I've seen movies like that where you like at the end of the sixth sense, you know, when you find out what's really happening, then you can go back in your mind. I think the movie even does that. It shows you all the little things that you didn't understand as they were happening, and I don't know. It didn't the audiences did not connect with it, unfortunately. Well, folks, if you've never listened to it, please take a listen to it because it's a beautiful score, and your work on it, David, is just so fantastic. Now, when you begin a show like that where it's so steeped in a period, do you go and research recordings of that time and then share that with the cast? How does that world work for you?

[34:37] David Loud: You know, it's interesting. I asked Cander when he was writing Cabaret, if he did a lot of research about Weimar music and what the German music was like at that time, and he said no, he did not. He had an idea of what he felt about that music, and he certainly knew a lot about Kurt Weill and maybe other contemporary composers at that time. But he said, I don't want to be doing a dissertation, I want to make a score. And so he wrote his take on that time without pedantically imitating styles of the time.

[35:18] Kevin David Thomas: Right.

[35:19] David Loud: And of course, what you get is the flavor of the time with the craft of a true John Kander song.

[35:28] Kevin David Thomas: Exactly.

[35:29] David Loud: I feel the same way. I mean, research is great, and I think we should explore and we should know everything about our source material and all that, but you don't want to get out of the theater and into the museum.

[35:42] Kevin David Thomas: That's a great way of putting it. Can you lead us through what a typical rehearsal day is like for you? Or how you begin the process of teaching music to the actors? To me, that's the most important step in the entire process. How you teach the music is everything. Because it's gonna affect the way the actor sings that music for the rest of the run. And I try to work as slowly as possible getting the music into the cast's brains in the way that I want from the beginning, so that we always know we're gonna breathe here. This consonant is important, this one is not important. Trying to just get all the information into them because as soon as they start dancing around, acting, saying their lines and acting, all that's gonna go out the window if you don't really know it.

So I try to teach the scores as precisely as I can, and then I like to do a sing-through of the show before they're on their feet, so that we just have this memory of what the score is trying to be. Because then it all falls apart. It all goes to shit, nobody knows what the cutoffs are, nobody is singing together because they're acting and dancing, and that's the way it should be. But the rest of my rehearsal process is trying to get the score back to the way it was when we sang it around the piano before all the other people started messing it up.

[37:09] Kevin David Thomas: That is so brilliant. And I know it's hard to worry about your cutoffs when you know your pure wedding or sobbing or whatever it is you're doing is getting in the way. But we gotta get it on four, so mess up.

[37:27] David Loud: Hello, this is Betty Davis. Not the young one, the old one. I've been on matches.com looking for a gentleman who might like to date an actress who loves to smoke and who had a black and white career. And I thought, why am I wasting my money on this when I could merely donate it to those boys at Behind the Curtain? Go to Patreon.com and give all you can. God knows they need it. And do it before you're 122 years old. That's Patreon.

[38:14] Kevin David Thomas: Has there ever been a time where you had an idea of what you thought the song should be, and then a performer came into the room and rehearsed it with you, and you realized, oh wow, it could be something totally different?

[38:24] David Loud: Oh, interesting. Isn't that the most thrilling thing that ever happens?

[38:27] Kevin David Thomas: Yes.

[38:28] David Loud: Oh God, yes. Yes. When an actor comes in and shows you new possibilities in a song, that is the best thing ever. I pray for that. You know, I call it actor magic. When you work on a song with somebody, and they're doing exactly the way you want them to do it, they go away, they work on it themselves, they come back, all of a sudden it's theirs. And maybe they're not doing exactly what you said, but they've figured out why it has to be this way. And if the actor magic is strong, you know, it can reveal things in a score that you never thought were there.

[39:04] Kevin David Thomas: Can you think of a performer? And I know you've worked with lots of geniuses, that when they walk into a rehearsal room with you, you get excited, a smile goes on your face because you know it's gonna be a fun collaboration.

[39:15] David Loud: Certainly, Karen Ziemba.

[39:17] Kevin David Thomas: Oh, the best.

[39:18] David Loud: The best Karen can do anything, and has never failed at anything she's attempted to do. She's just the best, and she knows in her bones what it should be. You don't have to tell her what it should be. She knows. She's just one of those instinctive people. Marin Mazzie was like that.

[39:38] Kevin David Thomas: Oh.

[39:39] David Loud: You never had to tell Marin what to do. She just knew. And it was never storm and drawn with her either. She just was always perfect. She could be anything. She could be, you know, Hollywood glamour. She could be the girl next door. She could be Nordic Ice Princess. She could be wacky storyteller.

[39:58] Kevin David Thomas: When did you first meet her?

[40:00] David Loud: Marin replaced Karen Mason in the off-Broadway run of And the World Goes Round. And Karen Mason was great, but Karen Mason has sort of a dark take on the world. And Marin is sunshine and light. And it was so interesting to see those same songs change so much. Like Marin's "Colored Lights" with this triumph at the end, whereas Karen was raging against the world at the end of it. Marin's "Ring Them Bells" was the funniest thing you'd ever heard. And Karen's was just like the weirdest story you've ever encountered.

[40:41] Kevin David Thomas: That must be exciting to you, though, as a conductor.

[40:44] David Loud: Absolutely. Working with Brian Stokes Mitchell was like that in Ragtime. It was just thrilling to see what that man could do with his voice. And of course, Audra, you know who I got the privilege of working with on three shows.

[40:57] Kevin David Thomas: Yes.

[40:58] David Loud: Masterclass, Ragtime, and Porgy and Bess. I mean, she can do anything. Let's do vocally, anything acting-wise. She's just astonishing.

[41:08] Kevin David Thomas: Yeah. As a music director, what note would you say you find yourself giving more than any other note?

[41:16] David Loud: Triple your diction.

[41:18] Kevin David Thomas: I love that.

[41:20] David Loud: The lyric is very important to you, isn't it?

[41:23] David Loud: From the very first moment of the show. If you can't hear it, you can't get it.

[41:29] Kevin David Thomas: In auditions, you've been to and you sat through so many auditions. What do you is that what you look for in an audition as well? What do you what are you looking for from the stuff?

[41:36] David Loud: Yes, I do look for that, but really in an audition, what I look for is can this person tell a story? That's what we're praying for behind the table, is a story that exists in a song. And poor actors are always so nervous in auditions that so often that element of the piece floats away from them, and they're just focused on recreating what they did the last time they sang it in their voice class or whatever. And really, what you want is a story, and when it happens, the whole room lights up and everybody starts writing like the person's name. We must have this person in our show. It's great to see when an actor can actually do that in an audition.

[42:22] Kevin David Thomas: What is your relationship like with a sound designer once a show goes moves into the theater?

[42:29] David Loud: Such a complicated question.

[42:32] Kevin David Thomas: Give us a complicated answer.

[42:33] David Loud: As a music director, I have to balance the show from the way I can hear it on the podium. I'm gonna balance the orchestra in a way that supports the voices without overwhelming them. And in a way, all of my work is in the hands of the sound designer, because it's the sound designer's job to translate what I hear on the podium to the entire theater, which is very difficult.

[43:02] David Loud: The older Broadway theaters, of course, were designed not to need electronic amplification.

[43:08] Kevin David Thomas: Yeah.

[43:09] David Loud: And when I'm in one of those theaters, what I try to do at least an afternoon or an hour or just something where we test the acoustics of the space without any amplification and then build up from that to see what we need.

[43:25] Kevin David Thomas: Oh, interesting.

[43:26] David Loud: But anyway, all of my work is in the sound designer's hands, and that can be really frustrating if the sound designer isn't tasteful and instinctive and a storyteller as well.

[43:40] Kevin David Thomas: Gotta be part of the team and telling the same story as the rest of us.

[43:43] David Loud: Right.

[43:44] Kevin David Thomas: What do you find to be the biggest gap between what you want and what a sound designer wants, if that makes sense?

[43:52] David Loud: You know, where do you find yourself having the most conversation with the sound designer?

[43:56] David Loud: Well, it's very tempting to just make things louder, yeah, and make the voices louder, and then everybody's happy because we can hear everything.

[44:05] David Loud: That's not always the best goal in the world.

[44:09] David Loud: I try to bring out lots of dynamics in a score when I'm working on it. I try to have the actors work softly with clarity and loudly with clarity, so that we have all of that variety.

[44:26] David Loud: If somebody's just loud all night through everything they sing, it's not interesting.

[44:31] David Loud: It can get very weary. You want colors, you want gradations, and the sound designer can erase that just by putting everything at a loud level.

[44:40] Kevin David Thomas: Yeah.

[44:40] David Loud: Yeah, right.

[44:41] David Loud: No color. That's very frustrating.

[44:43] David Loud: And you want the orchestra to be present, but not overwhelming, and finding that exact balance is challenging also.

[44:51] Kevin David Thomas: And then this is because I don't have the knowledge of this. How do you check the balance when you're up at that podium? How do you hear what's going on in the back of the house?

[45:01] David Loud: Well, I try usually to have my assistant conduct a little bit and go out and hang with the sound designer and hear what they're hearing and give my response to it.

[45:10] David Loud: Ultimately, I have to trust that they're gonna be enough of an artist to fulfill my vision.

[45:20] David Loud: I can't do it. I don't know about all the little levers and the chords and the...

[45:24] Kevin David Thomas: Sure.

[45:26] David Loud: Right.

[45:28] David Loud: So it's a real act of trust.

[45:28] Kevin David Thomas: And what do you look for out of an assistant?

[45:32] Kevin David Thomas: Uh-oh.

[45:33] David Loud: Uh-oh.

[45:33] David Loud: Everything in the world. Great. Must play piano like nobody else in the world, must transpose, must always be smiling.

[45:45] David Loud: Must be happy. The work, you know, in the threat mines.

[45:51] Kevin David Thomas: Yes.

[45:52] David Loud: It's funny because it's true. I've had such great assistants, you know, who have gone on to be wonderful music directors themselves.

[46:01] David Loud: People like Sam Davis, um, um, Andy Einhorn, Andy.

[46:08] David Loud: And um, they're all so talented.

[46:11] Kevin David Thomas: Got a good group of protégés there.

[46:13] David Loud: Yes, yes.

[46:15] Kevin David Thomas: Let's talk a little bit more in depth if we can about your relationship with Stephen Sondheim and bringing his work to life.

[46:24] David Loud: Uh, was Company the first one together?

[46:26] David Loud: Besides Merrily, where we know you were an actor.

[46:29] David Loud: We had done Merrily, and then when I first moved to New York, I got a job in the pit of a revival of Pacific Overtures that directed at the York Theatre Company.

[46:41] Kevin David Thomas: Yes.

[46:42] David Loud: And it was a wonderful revival.

[46:45] David Loud: Very small, where the original had been, you know, huge.

[46:50] David Loud: This was a much more intimate look at the story, and it worked perfectly well.

[46:57] David Loud: And Pacific Overtures was just so exotic and strange and funny and profound.

[47:04] David Loud: The lyrics are so simple in places and so fiendishly clever in others.

[47:09] David Loud: There's a haiku-like simplicity, although he was never really writing haikus.

[47:15] David Loud: But he also finds, you know, extraordinary humor, and there's wonderful pastiche in the score, you know, he's imitating other styles.

[47:24] Kevin David Thomas: Right.

[47:24] David Loud: Like the five generals coming, all demanding ports, and the, you know, the British general is a Gilbert and Sullivan.

[47:33] Kevin David Thomas: Yes.

[47:33] David Loud: The American general is this, you know, Susamar.

[47:37] David Loud: The French is this Offenbach.

[47:40] David Loud: The guy from Russia's doing this Chardush.

[47:43] David Loud: Um, and the Dutch guy is doing this ridiculous waltz clog.

[47:48] Kevin David Thomas: Yes.

[47:49] David Loud: So funny.

[47:50] David Loud: I love that number.

[47:51] David Loud: So I worked on that.

[47:53] David Loud: I was the assistant and I played in the orchestra.

[47:56] David Loud: And uh, Eric Stern, who was the music director, went away and did something else at the end, and I conducted, and Steve saw me conduct, and I was nervous and he thought it was great.

[48:06] David Loud: It was all very positive.

[48:09] David Loud: And then, yeah, we did Company together.

[48:11] David Loud: And on Company we had this day where the cast knew the score, and Steve came in and we sang through the score and he coached every single number.

[48:21] Kevin David Thomas: Oh.

[48:21] David Loud: And it was fantastic.

[48:23] David Loud: He's such a good coach of his own material, and he just dives in and does the work, and everybody's shitting themselves, of course, because it's not hard.

[48:32] David Loud: But they were adults and they bucked up and took the notes and asked the questions, and it was a great day.

[48:39] David Loud: I felt like he really just unlocked so many questions that the cast had stored up and I try to pass on whenever I work on the material from Company, I try to pass on those things that he told us that day.

[48:56] Kevin David Thomas: Do you remember some of them?

[48:57] David Loud: A lot of it was finding where the songs climax.

[49:02] Kevin David Thomas: Oh.

[49:02] David Loud: Where is the climax of the song here?

[49:04] David Loud: Why are you building so much when you still have so far to go?

[49:09] David Loud: With a lot of the work that they remember.

[49:12] David Loud: Making sure that Joanne doesn't have to scream until she gets to the big scream in the "Ladies Who Lunch."

[49:19] David Loud: Finding a way to make the build in the opening number exciting.

[49:24] David Loud: So it wasn't just Bobby, Bobby at the same volume for the entire number.

[49:30] David Loud: Finding ways to vary the intention so that the volume could be different.

[49:38] Kevin David Thomas: How much of it as a music director are you also helping with the acting?

[49:41] David Loud: I mean, I know the answer to this, obviously, and I know what your answer is, but I'm just would like because some there are some people that think, oh, I just do the notes on the page, that's it.

[49:48] David Loud: And it ends there.

[49:50] Kevin David Thomas: Can you talk a little bit about how the storytelling is very much a part of what you what you what your job is?

[49:56] David Loud: I take great liberties in that department.

[49:58] David Loud: I believe that my responsibility is not just the singing of the song, it's the acting of the song, and it's the acting of the character in the song.

[50:10] David Loud: And I give more notes, I think, about diction and character and development than most music directors would dare.

[50:41] David Loud: That may not be exactly what she wants to hear, but she's enough of an artist to at least consider my request.

[50:47] David Loud: And often, you know, say, of course, you're absolutely right. Let's do that.

[50:50] David Loud: You know, I think it's very important that dancers, when they're singing, have their heads facing the audience.

[50:57] David Loud: And some composers don't always supply that.

[51:01] David Loud: I mean, some choreography don't always supply that.

[51:05] David Loud: And that's a conversation that I am not afraid to have.

[51:10] David Loud: It's hard enough to understand people's lyrics.

[51:13] David Loud: If there's dancing and the heads are away from the audience, your chances of getting the lyrics are even smaller.

[51:21] David Loud: And that's a, you know, things like that, I feel are well within the purview of the music director.

[51:28] Kevin David Thomas: What happens when a director says, David? Shut up.

[51:31] David Loud: Shut up, you're crossing the line.

[51:33] David Loud: Well, how do I do that?

[51:36] Kevin David Thomas: Okay, great.

[51:36] David Loud: I would get very upset in that case and have to figure out what I want would want to do about it.

[51:41] Kevin David Thomas: So what have you been in a situation like that before?

[51:44] David Loud: Not really in a serious way.

[51:46] David Loud: I mean, it's all about reading the room.

[51:47] Kevin David Thomas: Yes.

[51:48] David Loud: There's certainly times when it would be the worst idea in the world for me to bud in with my opinions.

[51:55] David Loud: But there's always a time that, you know, I can bring it up, hopefully.

[52:00] Kevin David Thomas: Who are some of the directors that you've really enjoyed working with?

[52:03] David Loud: I mean, I know you've talked about Scott Ellis, and I know you've talked about Stroh, but who else is in that list where you go, yes, I'll drop anything to go work with you?

[52:10] David Loud: Frank Galati.

[52:12] Kevin David Thomas: Tell us more.

[52:13] David Loud: Frank did Ragtime.

[52:16] David Loud: And also, uh, the first two incarnations of The Visit that I did.

[52:24] David Loud: Uh, Frank did it at the Goodman and uh, the Signature in DC.

[52:29] David Loud: And working with Frank Alauddy, it's sort of like working with Santa Claus combined with the Pope.

[52:36] David Loud: He is the most brilliant storyteller and articulate inspirer of people.

[52:44] David Loud: Um, note sessions with him are like a graduate school in comparative literature and theatrical tropes.

[52:54] David Loud: He's so smart and he's so giving with his knowledge.

[52:59] David Loud: You just feel like you feel cleaner and smarter after talking with him.

[53:04] David Loud: He had a great visual sense, but on Ragtime, I think what made it work with that collaboration was that he had Graziella Danielle, who knows the mechanics of staging and can make anything happen on stage technically.

[53:20] David Loud: So that Frank could just sort of step back and be the big picture guy.

[53:24] David Loud: And he was the nice one.

[53:27] David Loud: And he could be that way because Garth was the mean one.

[53:31] David Loud: Garth was the one who could say, "This song sucks, and you gotta write a better one for tomorrow," which Frank would never say.

[53:36] David Loud: But Garth could say that.

[53:40] David Loud: Well, so they go away and they'd write a better song.

[53:42] David Loud: And that's not always the case in a show.

[53:45] David Loud: There isn't always somebody who can say that.

[53:47] David Loud: And it's one of the things that made Ragtime so great, I think, is that Garth didn't give a shit about your feelings.

[53:54] Kevin David Thomas: Right.

[53:55] David Loud: He told the truth.

[53:56] David Loud: And Frank could make you feel better, but Garth would say, you know, not in my theater.

[54:02] Kevin David Thomas: Well, good cop, bad cop, okay.

[54:04] David Loud: Right, right.

[54:05] David Loud: Um, David, this we usually ask this as our last question.

[54:08] Kevin David Thomas: And so, what do you know now that you wished you had known back in 1981 when you first were coming to the city and starting your career?

[54:18] David Loud: Be yourself is the lesson that I think we all learn in the business eventually.

[54:25] David Loud: You can't be pretending to be somebody else, you have to do the work to figure out who you are, what you want to say, and then how you're gonna say it.

[54:36] David Loud: You can't be anybody else.

[54:37] David Loud: You can only be you.

[54:38] David Loud: I think that's true of actors, I think that's true of musicians.

[54:41] David Loud: I know it's true of directors.

[54:43] David Loud: Anyone can smell when somebody is pretending or lying, or in some way not being who they really truthfully are.

[54:52] David Loud: And it's so much easier, ultimately, to present your true self in your work.

[54:59] David Loud: It's the hardest thing to do in the world.

[55:02] David Loud: I think we all have things about ourselves that we are embarrassed about and don't like, or ashamed of, or have been taught to be ashamed of.

[55:10] David Loud: And sometimes those are the best things about you.

[55:13] David Loud: The most interesting things, the quirky things.

[55:16] Kevin David Thomas: I love that. What a great way to end.

[55:18] David Loud: That is words to live by.

[55:19] Kevin David Thomas: David, it has been such a joy getting to talk to you today.

[55:19] Kevin David Thomas: And on behalf of ourselves and Kevin and all of our listeners, thank you for providing us with so many beautiful musical moments over the past 30 plus years.

[55:31] David Loud: What a nice thing to say.

[55:33] Kevin David Thomas: Thank you.

[55:34] David Loud: Thank you.

[55:34] Kevin David Thomas: Seriously.

[55:35] Kevin David Thomas: Uh, friends, please make sure to buy a copy of David's fantastic book, Facing the Music.

[55:39] Kevin David Thomas: If you click into our link in our show description today, it'll take you over to Amazon where you can go and purchase it.

[55:44] Kevin David Thomas: It's fantastic.

[55:45] Kevin David Thomas: David, I hope that we get to meet in person someday so we can shake your hand and say thank you for all the beauty you have given us.

[55:51] David Loud: I would love that.

[55:52] David Loud: You guys are so energetic.

[55:55] Kevin David Thomas: Thank you.

[55:57] Kevin David Thomas: All right, friends. Until next time.

[55:59] Kevin David Thomas: Bye bye.

[56:05] Kevin David Thomas: Thank you for listening to today's episode.

[56:07] Kevin David Thomas: And a big thanks to the punchy players, Jeff Marquis, who is bringing back Lucy, Betty, Judy, and Morda shill for us.

[56:13] Kevin David Thomas: And a big thanks to our sound editor, Daniel Schwartzberg, and social media manager Bethany Ann Selecki.

[56:20] Kevin David Thomas: And don't forget, we want more folks to hear these incredible stories, and that's where you come in.

[56:24] Kevin David Thomas: In order for people to find out about us, we need lots of ratings on iTunes.

[56:29] Kevin David Thomas: So head on over to iTunes, search for Behind the Curtain, Broadway's Living Legends, click on our logo, click on ratings and reviews, then write a review and leave us five stars and make us feel as special as Eliza Doolittle on Eliza Doolittle Day.

[56:44] Kevin David Thomas: Or you can leave us just one star and you can make us feel as bad as Annie did in that really weird production in Boston where Annie dreamt that she was being adopted, but then she ended up back in the orphanage, right?

[56:55] David Loud: Back where she started.

[56:56] Kevin David Thomas: Yeah, true story, Rob saw it.

[56:58] Kevin David Thomas: Yes, and I was batting.

[57:00] Kevin David Thomas: It was bizarre.

[57:01] David Loud: I was there.

[57:03] Kevin David Thomas: Oh god.

[57:04] Kevin David Thomas: So head on over to iTunes and make us feel even more special than we already did.