Closer than Ever

Joshua Rosenblum teaches Composing for Musical Theater at Yale University and Conducting at New York University. As a composer/lyricist, he wrote the scores to the off-Broadway musicals Fermat's Last Tango, Bush is Bad, and Einstein's Dreams (four Drama Desk Nominations). He has conducted fourteen Broadway and off-Broadway shows and has performed as pianist with the New York Pops at Carnegie Hall, the City Center Encores! Orchestra, and the American Symphony. A longtime contributor of reviews and features to Opera News, Rosenblum is a summa cum laude graduate of Yale College and holds a master's degree in Piano from the Yale School of Music.

• Preface1. Origins2. The Fair-Haired Boys: The Sap of Life3. Barbra4. Dealing with Steve5. I Have a Rich Wife: Love Match6. How Bad Could I Be?7. The First Thing They Give You is Writing the Obits8. Lynne9. Starting Here, Starting Now10. "I Don't Remember Christmas"11. He's the Arbiter, Really12. Remember That Fats Waller Idea?: Ain't Misbehavin'13. At the End of the Song, Everyone's Pregnant!14. Baby15. "The Story Goes On"16. French is a Language That Doesn't Scan: Miss Saigon17. One of the Finest Scores of the Year18. Closer Than Ever19. "The Bear, the Tiger, the Hamster and the Mole"20. It Should Have Been Called "Small"21. Big22. "Little Susan Lawrence"23. Bob Fosse's Wife, his Mistress, and his Daughter: Fosse24. Next Thing I Knew I Was Writing the Show: Take Flight25. Working with Other People26. Produced by a Convicted Felon: Sousatzka27. America Will Break Your Heart: Dancers at a Waterfall28. Post-Partum: Baby Revival29. Oh, That's What Those Songs Were About!30. The Songwriters' SongwritersAppendix A: Starting Here, Starting Now - Musical Numbers and SourcesAppendix B: Closer Than Ever - Musical Numbers and SourcesAcknowledgementsBibliographyIndex

When a biographer digs deep enough to find that a theme song from a TV show in the 1970s actually came from a 1960s musical that closed before braving Broadway, you know he's done his research. Joshua Rosenblum, a respected musical director of many Broadway musicals, took a break from the podium to write this astonishing study of Richard Maltby, Jr. and David Shire's works. In unstinting detail, he has chronicled their great successes and bad-luck failures, all the while reminding us how great a songwriting team can be without becoming household names. And speaking of households, this book belongs in every one where a musical theater fan lives.