This transcript was automatically generated and might contain errors.

[0:00] David Armstrong: Welcome to another episode of Broadway Nation, the podcast that tells the remarkable story of how immigrants, Jews, queers, African-Americans, and other outcasts invented the Broadway musical and how they changed America in the process. I'm David Armstrong, and I call this episode Broadway's First Choice — Paul Gemignani. My guest today is Margaret Hall, the remarkable young theater historian who is the author of the celebrated new book, Gemignani, Life and Lessons from Broadway and Beyond. As you will hear, Margaret spent much of the pandemic interviewing Paul Gemignani, who is without a doubt one of the most significant and at the same time most underappreciated figures in the history of the modern musical.

Since 1971, Paul Gemignani has served as the music director for more than 40 Broadway productions, including Follies, A Little Night Music, Sweeney Todd, Evita, Sunday in the Park with George, Into the Woods, and Crazy for You, to name only a few. His incredible talent and theatrical know-how made him the first choice music director and indispensable collaborator of John Kander and Fred Ebb, Stephen Sondheim, Andrew Lloyd Webber, and Hal Prince. Margaret's book not only takes us behind the scenes and into the orchestra pit of many of Broadway's most acclaimed productions, it also illuminates the crucial role that music directors play in the creation, development, and performance of a Broadway musical. Here we go. Welcome, Margaret Hall. Thank you so much for joining me today on Broadway Nation. It's wonderful to have you.

[1:37] Margaret Hall: Thank you so much for having me.

[1:38] David Armstrong: Let's start with how did this all come about? How did you come to write a book about Paul Gemignani?

[1:44] Margaret Hall: So I can primarily thank two people, Jennifer Ashley Tepper and Lonnie Price. Now, Lonnie is a name that's probably more familiar to your listeners. Lonnie's a very dear friend of Paul's. They've known each other for decades, and Lonnie has been trying to get Paul to write a memoir for pretty much as long as they've known each other. And Paul had always been putting it off, saying he was too busy, he didn't have the time. And then the pandemic hit and Lonnie told Paul, well, you officially have nothing but time, and put Paul in contact with a woman named Jennifer Ashley Tepper, who is a very dear friend of mine. She's a musical theater historian and a producer and the creative director for Feinstein's 54 Below.

She does some incredible work and a beautiful writer of her own. She's the Untold Stories of Broadway series, which are fantastic. But something inside Jen inspired her to connect Paul and I before I had even graduated from college with my undergraduate degree. I was still a couple of weeks from my pseudo-graduation in the middle of the pandemic, and she connected the two of us.

[2:40] David Armstrong: And what were you studying?

[2:41] Margaret Hall: I was studying musical theater performance. I have a BFA in performance, actually. It was very interesting finishing a BFA program on Zoom. I do not wish Zoom ballet on anyone.

[2:54] David Armstrong: But why did Jennifer think this performance major would be someone who would write a memoir or write a biography?

[3:02] Margaret Hall: So she knew that I was already teaching musical theater history at this point. I had started teaching musical theater history my junior year of college after a very dear friend of mine who is not stupid. I always worry when I tell this story that people will think he's not smart. He's incredibly smart. He just didn't know. We were in a scene study class, and he knew that I really loved musical theater. I consider it to be my first language as much as English is, and I know a lot about it. So I became sort of the point person to ask questions about things. And in a scene study class, a dear friend asked me to tell him a little bit about Roger Hammerstein, who he thought was one person like Irving Berlin or Stephen Sondheim.

And I realized that this was an incredibly talented person who was bound to and is working very heavily immediately after graduation, who had been completely failed by all of his teachers up to that point in his career that he didn't know that Richard Rogers and Oscar Hammerstein were two different people. I don't anticipate that everyone knows like the release order and year of every single show like I tend to, but I feel like that's a baseline that we should expect is like knowing that they're two different human beings. And so that sort of blindsided me and inspired me to start teaching my peers. And then I started teaching outside of that. And I had just before the pandemic decided to pursue a master's in musical theater history at NYU Gallatin.

And Jen is also an NYU alum, but she got her sort of way in circuitously because there is no musical theater history program. So she trained as a journalist who happened to write about musical theater. And I had been talking to her about trying to make this program that we both would have loved to have taken a reality. And in that she saw something in me. Both she and Paul have this what I call kind of like a second sense where they know who a person is supposed to be before that person knows it. And I like to say that Jen married me, which is that she found someone really at the precipice of a serious change in their life and their career and who they are. And she guided me through it with grace.

When she first connected me with Paul, I thought that she was writing the book and she wanted me to explain to Paul why I, a 22-year-old, would want to read it and that maybe he just didn't know what my generation would want to see. And so I explained to him all of the things I would want to read in the book. Like these are all the stories I want to know. And he basically responded and said, OK, great. Well, you got the job. I'll call you on Monday and we'll start working.

[5:27] Margaret Hall: Amazing. Incredible. And what's wild to me is I'm far from the only person he's done that to. That's one of the biggest hallmarks of Paul Gemignani's career. He gives so many people their first shot and he takes a chance on people and he really sees something in people that is a rare quality, in my opinion.

[5:42] David Armstrong: That happened to him in a way. How he got to Broadway was somebody taking that kind of chance on him, wasn't it?

[5:47] Margaret Hall: Oh, absolutely. So there was a man named Harold Hastings who was the long term music director for Hal Prince. Paul ended up in New York through a lot of circuitous movement to see one of his friends in the original production of Cabaret. And while waiting for his friend Ed at the stage door, Ed brings out Hal Hastings, just sort of being like, hey, my friend's a jazz musician. The two of you are both musicians. Talk. That's fun. And Paul had been trained by his teachers at San Francisco State University to never go anywhere without a copy of his resume in his back pocket, because you never know when you're going to meet somebody. And on the train into New York, he had been updating the resume with a pencil and something just told him to hand that to Hal Hastings.

The two of them talked for a bit about like, what are you doing in New York? Oh, you're a percussionist. And then Hal says, I'll call you in the morning. Paul thinks nothing of this. Hal is a man of his word and calls him in the morning. And about 12 hours after they first meet, Paul has a job on the first national tour of Cabaret as the percussionist and assistant conductor. So within 48 hours of being in New York City on a lark, basically, there's no reason to be there. He was just like, this is the closest I've ever been to New York. I might as well go all the way. He ends up as the percussionist on the national tour of Cabaret, which is insane. And if you know sort of the original orchestrations for Cabaret, that is a workout for the percussionist.

He was working. But not only was he the percussionist, the fact that sight unseen, Hal Hastings trusted him when he said that I'm going to be a conductor. Paul decided he was starting that transition. And so Hal Hastings gave him that assistant conductor position, which really is a big leap of faith from him. He has the resume credits to be like, OK, he can drum. He knows what he's doing on a kit. But he had never seen him conduct. And Paul didn't really have conducting credits yet. And Hal just gave him that shot. Granted, he never conducted on the tour, because especially back in the day, if you're an assistant tour conductor, you're not going on unless the conductor's dead. But that's still a credit that really got his foot in the door.

[7:52] David Armstrong: So before we continue that story, let's go back and catch up. Where did Paul Gemignani start out in life? How does he get to this place?

[7:58] Margaret Hall: So Paul was born to an immigrant family outside of San Francisco in the 1930s.

[8:05] David Armstrong: Italian immigrants?

[8:05] Margaret Hall: Yes, Italian Americans specifically. His father, Ezio Gemignani, was a first generation Italian American. And the family was very much raised Italian, Italian Catholic to be specific. And Paul loved music. His father was a teacher and taught in a number of different schools during Paul's childhood. So they moved around a lot. And Paul's refuge was music. That was his friend group. That was his stability, was his love of music.

[8:30] David Armstrong: His mother was a musician as well?

[8:36] Margaret Hall: Yes, she was. She was a classically trained pianist. She had never thought she'd pursue it in like a serious fashion, because that just wasn't in the cards for her. But she used it as sort of leverage to get higher placement within the music program at their church and things like that. And she used to play a lot of different concertos and things along those lines for her children. So he's immersed in this world of music. And it was actually at a trip to the symphony with his mother, that he sort of fell in love with percussion. He'd known he loved music, but couldn't ever quite find the instrument that was right for him. He tried the trumpet, he tried the cello, neither were right fits. But he saw a player going to town on a timpani and fell in love with it.

And to the credit of his high school band teacher, he immediately put him in the band and set him up with a drum set in the back of the room. And Paul just fell head over heels for rhythm. And from there he was off like a shot.

[9:28] David Armstrong: And what years are these?

[9:28] Margaret Hall: He's in like freshman year of high school, so that's around like 44, 43. So it's really in the war years. And he actually, he creates this little dance band with a bunch of his friends. It's his version of a garage band. And they start playing at USO clubs. And this is the swing era, so they're playing swing music. Ton of big band swing, a lot of sort of side beat stuff. And he became really quite profitable. Like they're doing really good work at these USO clubs and officers clubs. And they continue working through him going to college. And he goes to San Francisco State University because the teachers they had there really spoke to him.

[10:05] David Armstrong: To study music?

[10:10] Margaret Hall: Yes, to study music. And he had a chance to try conducting there. If he had gone to sort of a larger music university, which he probably would have gotten into, chances are the teachers wouldn't have fostered his conducting aspirations in the same way. They would have geared him more towards, no, you're here to be a percussionist. We're training you to be a percussionist. Versus at SFSU, he could get up and conduct the class every once in a while. And they were flexible enough that they let him pursue a serious career as a jazz percussionist in San Francisco. He had a long standing gig at the Purple Onion, which is a really quite legendary venue in the area. And he ended up focusing so much on that he had to eventually drop the dance band because that really became his life. And for

[10:50] David Armstrong: Hall-Hastings being like, "Oh, I might work for you someday." It was more just like, "Oh, you're a musician. I'm a musician. We have something in common. Cool." So he continues this world. He works around the country a bit. And while he's in Minneapolis is when he takes this fateful trip to New York.

[11:20] Margaret Hall: Yes.

[11:22] David Armstrong: What we didn't talk about when we described this meeting after the show is that he had just sat through Cabaret.

[11:29] Margaret Hall: Mm hmm.

[11:30] David Armstrong: Seeing his first show in New York.

[11:33] Margaret Hall: Yeah.

[11:34] David Armstrong: And one of the few Broadway shows he's seen in his life. So what was that experience like for him?

[11:40] Margaret Hall: Life changing. In a word, life changing. It showed him the possibilities of what the musical theater could be. Because before seeing Cabaret, he had a very sort of stolid idea of what it was to do a musical. A lot of it had to do with sort of like the shows that his high school and college would do. But Cabaret was not that. Not to say that anything that came before that was not interesting and exciting. A lot of his favorite shows are from before Cabaret, actually. But Cabaret was so fresh and everyone was so on top of it. And like you could feel the love of what they were doing pouring off of everyone on that stage that it really affected Paul. And it really affected him the way they were able to tell a story with the music.

Whereas even if you take the lyrics out, the way that the underscoring paints a picture and it puts you in this place really affected him. And the ability that music has to transform and transport people really is important to Paul and to how he works.

[12:43] David Armstrong: He probably knew it was directed by Hal Prince, but the name meant nothing to him, I suspect.

[12:48] Margaret Hall: The name meant nothing.

[12:49] David Armstrong: Of course, he had no idea that he would then be so closely associated with Hal Prince from then on for most of his career.

[12:56] Margaret Hall: We've come full circle. He's now on tour with Cabaret.

[12:59] David Armstrong: Yes.

[13:00] Margaret Hall: And they tour across the country. He is the percussionist. He is also, at least on paper, the associate conductor of the show.

[13:06] David Armstrong: But he doesn't get to conduct during this run.

[13:09] Margaret Hall: No, he gets to do like a couple of rehearsals and things like that. But there's no like, "Oh, he went on in Poughkeepsie" story.

[13:15] David Armstrong: Right. But this starts this relationship with the Hal Prince office. Of course, in addition to Hal Prince being the director, he's also the producer of the show. What happens after this tour runs its course?

[13:26] Margaret Hall: Hal Hastings really decided somewhere along the Cabaret tour that Paul was his guy. Because what Paul thought was going to happen was that he was going to do the Cabaret tour. And then when the tour was done, he'd go back to San Francisco. And that would have just been, "Oh, this crazy thing I did one time." But while he's on tour with Cabaret at the San Francisco stop, so he's almost home, he gets a call from Hal Hastings asking him to come back to New York to be the percussionist for Zorba, another show by Kander and Ebb. And in exchange for him agreeing to come back out and sort of being like, "I know that this is like taking more time out of you. I will guarantee that when the show goes out on the road, you're the conductor. You're not the assistant. You're the one who takes out the road company." And so Paul made that deal to get that full conducting credit.

[14:22] David Armstrong: So clearly, Paul Gemignani is a fantastic percussionist.

[14:25] Margaret Hall: Fantastic.

[14:26] David Armstrong: They wouldn't be making an offer like this that they want him to play Zorba. And who knows who was in on this decision other than Hal Hastings. But obviously, Kander and Ebb had something to do with it. He's being sought after. He's being chased. It's not like, "Oh, this guy's around, we might as well use him." It's like, "No, we're going to actively move him out to New York because we want him that much."

[14:45] David Armstrong: Oh, what should we do now?

[14:48] Margaret Hall: Hey, how about a story? Let's all tell them a story.

[14:51] David Armstrong: What story?

[14:53] Margaret Hall: It's our boss story.

[14:55] David Armstrong: What's it about?

[14:56] Margaret Hall: What's it about? What's any story about?

[14:58] David Armstrong: It's about life. Right? Right.

[15:01] Margaret Hall: Wait. Listen to me. I will tell you. I will tell you. Life is what you do while you're waiting to die. Life is how the time goes by. Life is where you wait while you're waiting to live. Life is where you grin and grieve. Having if you're lucky, wanting if you're not. Looking for the ruby underneath the rat. Hungry for the fill up in someone else's pot. But that's the only choice. You'll die.

[17:03] David Armstrong: I wish that we had more footage of Paul playing.

[17:19] Margaret Hall: Wait. Because everything I've heard on a personal level and everyone I've talked to, like a once-in-a-generation level of percussion and sort of singing through the instrument. Those are very rare and far between. I'm happy to say that here in Seattle we have one of those who was sought after and taken to Broadway on several occasions because he's just so damn good. But it's a rare thing to have that kind of ability because a percussionist is actually really tied into the storytelling of the show. They have to be a great musician and they also have to participate in the storytelling more than some other instruments in the pit do.

[18:00] David Armstrong: More than most.

[18:01] Margaret Hall: Very much so.

[18:02] David Armstrong: This is how the dime goes.

[18:05] Margaret Hall: Boy, don't go away. Broadway Nation will be back right after this quick break.

[18:36] David Armstrong: So Zorba, what's so interesting about your book because you basically go chronologically through Paul's hits on Broadway and you put the flops all together in one chapter toward the end of the book, which I thought was really smart because we wanted to hear a little bit about those. And that's all you basically do, which is terrific. But he eventually is involved in a lot of television and all kinds of other things, film, which you also separate from this central story of your book, which is Paul on Broadway in partnership with these amazing artists.

[19:02] Margaret Hall: Yeah.

[19:03] David Armstrong: What led you to do that?

[19:05] Margaret Hall: So to me, there are three stories that are being told in Gemignani. One is the life story of Mr. Paul Gemignani. That's the most obvious one. Two is the story of what it is and what it takes to be a great music director. Because it's a lot harder than people realize. There's a lot of people who straight up are doing the job who don't completely understand what the job is. And so this is sort of giving people a chance to really engage with like the reason Paul is where he is, yes he's fantastic, but other people can be just as fantastic if they apply themselves. And so it's trying to sort of lay out all of the different lessons Paul picked up along the way. And then the third is really trying to make people fall in love with this corner of the industry.

The people in the pit are mostly in the dark. People don't really look at them. The spotlight is on the actors and the big names. Paul, as arguably the biggest name music director alive today, is one of the only people that can really sort of pull people into paying attention to the little person in the dark hole with a stick.

[20:14] David Armstrong: And the reason why I made the choice to separate things out the way I did, first off, you learn more lessons long term on a show that runs for a long time just because you can't learn how do you keep up your energy three years into the run of a show in a show that closes in 30 performances. That just doesn't work out time wise. And also because these are the shows that became touchstones for Paul. Something like Sweeney Todd and what he learned on Sweeney Todd and what he went through while doing Sweeney Todd, the birth of his first child, all of that in the middle of opening Sweeney. He learned a lot more from that than he learned from something like, say, Smile. He had a great time on Smile, but he also left immediately after opening night of Smile to go work on Into the Woods.

And so there are some shows that ran less than 100 performances that aren't in the chapter called The Under 100 Club. The things where he really learned on his feet, those have their own chapters. Merrily We Roll Along has its own chapter. And we really talk about what does it mean to pour your soul into something that isn't working. But for something like Mail or Music Is, the lesson basically is if you can tell something isn't going to work before you sign on, maybe don't sign on because it's probably not going to get better than it is at first glance. That's the main lesson with those two specifically. And I can explain that in a paragraph. I can't explain what went wrong with Merrily We Roll Along in one paragraph.

[21:36] David Armstrong: Great. Really smart way to approach that. So let me pick up on what you were just saying a moment ago.

[21:41] Margaret Hall: Which is what is a music director. Yes. That's one of the places you had to start, obviously. That was a huge learning curve for me as well because I am not a musician. I'm a performer. I'm a singer. I have very small hands that can't quite do an octave on a piano and not enough calluses for a guitar. So I've never been an instrumentalist. And for a lot of people who perform in the musical theater, we only really interact in like a serious way with the musicians other than the music director at the Sitzprobe and the Wandelprobe. I'm not really hanging out in the pit in the middle of the show. And you only really get to know the music director in rehearsals because once you're separate there's a lot of places where it's like an iron curtain goes down.

And so I was learning as I was writing and really trying to communicate everything he was teaching to me because Paul's a fantastic teacher. He inherited his father's ability to explain things in a concise yet clear manner. I'll read to you the opening of a chapter called What is a Music Director? Which is indeed the first chapter in the book, isn't it? That's where you start. Because you've got to start with an understanding of what you're getting in for. Great, yes, please. In the musical theater there are few positions more elusive than that of the music director. A critical piece of the creative team, they oversee the music in musical to both carry out the composer's vision and collaborate with the performers on stage and in the pit to create a cohesive production.

Many of the decisions regarding the score of a show are made by a music director, and they are often the member of the creative team who stays with the show furthest into its run, with composers, directors, and choreographers moving on to new projects after opening night. They regularly act as conductors for the shows on which they work, clocking in and out eight times a week alongside the performers, stagehands, and pit musicians, and they participate in the initial casting. They're basically the glue that holds everything together. They have one foot in the creative team, one foot in the company. That's how I think of it. Music direction specifically is a creative team position. A conductor is a performer and is as much a part of the daily mishigas as anyone on stage.

And they wear both those hats simultaneously. Typically, yes. Most often, or at least for a while. Yeah, until if the show, like the original conductor Phantom of the Opera is not still at Phantom, so currently the person who is there wears just the conductor hat. But for basically every show Paul did, he only left when he had to to go do another project. He would stick with things as long as he could. And so he's in both worlds for a very long amount of time in a lot of cases. Which is a very old school way of doing it, I think. And it's because he loves it. Shows become families in a very real way. And he doesn't want to sort of run from that. He wants to savor getting to be with these people he cares about.

How long did you spend talking to Paul? What was the process? Because the book feels it's somewhere between a biography, a memoir, but it's focused on the art and the work much more than it is on his personal life. You delve into the personal life at times, but mostly this is a professional assessment of his life and work. And that was a very conscious decision. Because there's a difference between Paul Gimignani, the human being person, and Paul Gimignani, the music director, the performer, the public entity. And he deserves his privacy as much as anybody else. And there's some stuff where it's like, you don't need to know the details of his first dog. That's just not important to knowing the details of what made him the artist he is today.

I bring up the personal life stuff when it factors heavily into his work. And there's several sections where we have to really get into how this affects things. But the fact that he really likes riding bicycles does not really factor in. It's a fun fact, but I kind of doubt most of us will be going on a tandem bike ride with him anytime soon. So what was this process? It was wild. So we first were connected on May 5th, 2020. We started writing in August, and we turned in the first draft of the book on January 15th, 2021. So it was a wild and crazy six months where Paul and I talked pretty much every single day. And for the first two months, that was that. We would talk for about three hours or so every day.

And then I'd note take synthesize research outside of those three hours. And then after those first two months, once we had sort of the groundwork down, I continued interviewing Paul while also interviewing hundreds of his collaborators. And just hours upon hours of talking with people who've worked with him to sort of get their perspective of someone auxiliary to the process, but not inside his own head. This is all happening on Zoom? This is all happening on the phone for the most part, because a lot of the people I was talking to are older and don't have sort of the most technological capabilities. And so it's very interesting now in sort of, we are not post-COVID, but in the hopefully winding end of COVID times, it's been interesting finally getting to meet a lot of people in person.

Because for a lot of us, we've shared these deeply personal memories. I have cried with a lot of people on the phone. And then I see them in person and it's like, hi, you know my voice and not my face. And they've all been incredibly lovely, but it's a very interesting thing. Paul and I, in fact, have never actually met in person still till this time, because Paul does not live in New York anymore, and I wasn't going to be the one bringing COVID to him where he and his wife live. But I'm going to finally next week be flying down to see him ahead of the release. And we've been talking about how sort of wild it is that this thing, it really sort of snowballed, where we could have taken more than six months.

We could have taken all the time that we needed. But once it started flowing, it just poured out of both of us. And it almost poured out fully formed. That sort of structure of how things were separated came to me very naturally. It almost felt like we were sort of being told by some other thing what this project needed to be. It wasn't something like he said, like, oh, I've always wanted to do this thing. And it wasn't me being like, oh, I've decided I must write this book thing. We both just came together. And in the frision of our collision, this was the creativity that was produced.

[27:37] David Armstrong: Fantastic. I love the frision of our collision. That's great. I like words. Now let's pick up the story. Paul is now part of the Broadway world. He's officially...

[27:47] Margaret Hall: Sort of kicking and screaming, but yes.

[27:49] David Armstrong: And Zorba is the first show that he plays on Broadway and then conducts on the tour, again with Hal Prince.

[27:56] Margaret Hall: Yes.

[27:57] David Armstrong: And with Kander and Ebb, of course, who we will also continue to work with over the year. So it seems like once Paul works with anybody, they continue to want to work with him.

[28:06] Margaret Hall: Yes. And he also is a deeply loyal person. That's one of his sort of defining traits, if I were to name five characteristics of Paul Gimignani. If you're good to him, he is going to be good to you. He doesn't take it lightly when someone appreciates his work, specifically with John Kander and Fred Ebb. He had so much respect for them as musicians and composers and artists, and they had an equal respect for him. And so if they called him, he was there.

[28:32] David Armstrong: And Hal Prince, obviously.

[28:33] Margaret Hall: Oh, he almost goes without saying. Hal became like his partner in production for like 20 years.

[28:41] David Armstrong: And that starts here with Zorba, I'm assuming.

[28:43] Margaret Hall: Zorba is when it starts in earnest. Paul first met him during Cabaret, but Zorba was when they really sort of started circling each other, and it clicked into place after the death of Hal Hastings.

[28:54] David Armstrong: So talk about that, because Paul quickly moves up the ladder.

[28:58] Margaret Hall: Very quickly. Hal Hastings, after the Zorba tour, then brings Paul back again to do rehearsals and percussion in the Pit of Follies, and then sends him out as the tour conductor of Follies. While Paul is out doing the tour of Follies, Hal Hastings opens a little night music and very suddenly passes away at a very young age of a heart attack. And everyone's just sort of dumbfounded by this. Hal Hastings was not a smoker. He was not a drinker. He was a fairly healthy person. He's not someone that you think like, oh, he's going to die young in any way, shape, or form. If you've ever watched the Making of Company documentary, he's the guy in a yellow sweater vest. Like, you're not worried about Hal Hastings, but he just has this sudden heart attack.

They're called widowmakers, or it's just caused by a weakened wall in the heart. Nothing you can do about it. And the Prince office is really sort of hands in the air. What do we do? Since A Little Night Music had opened while Paul was out of town, Paul hadn't been a part of the show's evolution at all. The closest he'd come was when he conducted the first Sondheim tribute concert in New York. Sondheim, a musical tribute, which happened to be done on the A Little Night Music set. But that wasn't really doing the show other than they did do Send in the Clowns. And this is that famous, really the first album, if you're my age, you remember that very... Scrabble Tiles.

[30:14] David Armstrong: The Scrabble Tiles, a double fold album that came out and didn't introduce me to Sondheim, but expanded my world of Sondheim so immeasurably. And of course, the performances on there are just sensational. And Paul is the conductor, the organizer, the music leader of that tribute concert.

[30:34] Margaret Hall: Yeah, he is the musical glue for what Kurt Peterson puts together as sort of the event planner.

[30:40] David Armstrong: And in some ways, that concert sets a style for this kind of thing. And all the concerts that have come afterwards, all these sort of tributes really stem from that one to a great extent.

[30:49] Margaret Hall: It creates the blueprint. It creates the idea of not only is this a person worth doing this kind of concert, this is what a Sondheim concert looks like. That concert really put Paul on the map for people outside of Hal Hastings' bubble. And so he was actually in the middle of getting ready to go into the musical sugar when he gets called into the Hal Prince office and is told that Hal Hastings has passed away. And they ask him to sort of, hey, you got two days, we need you to learn the entire score of Little Night Music and take it over because we know that you are the person that if Hal Hastings had to pick his successor, it's you.

[31:24] David Armstrong: Margaret Hall and I will be back on the next episode of Broadway Nation with more on the amazing life and career of Paul Gemignani. Broadway Nation is written and produced by me, David Armstrong. Special thanks to Pals Mox for his help with editing this episode. To KVSH 101.9, the voice of beautiful Vashon Island, Washington, and to the entire team at the Broadway Podcast Network.