Grammar School Kids Create Music for Theatre in Tisch Songmaking Program

By Richard Pierce

      Lerner & Loewe, Comden & Green, and Kander & Ebb are all famous musical theatre songwriting teams. Boolbol & Cone, Grob & Gray, and Meckler & Meckler are not famous yet, but keep those names in mind. For now they are grammar school children who, along with 18 other kids, recently attended the 2009 Second Avenue Songmakers, a special community workshop started by the Graduate Musical Theatre Writing program (GMTW) at the Tisch School of the Arts, to find and cultivate musical theatre songwriting talent.
      Songmakers enrolled 24 children ranging in age from 6 to 10. Most were from the East Village, but a few trekked in from Brooklyn or down from the Upper West Side. Despite losing its underwriting this year, Sarah Schlesinger, chair of GMTW, felt it was too important to let the program die, so she trimmed the budget and made other economies—parents took turns providing refreshments, for example. There was no charge to the kids and the only requirement for acceptance was an interest in music.
      “Children instinctively love singing,” says Schlesinger. “Helping them realize that they have the power to express their own feelings and ideas in song is one of the greatest gifts we can give them.”
      The workshop is the brainchild of Julianne Wick Davis, who taught music in elementary and secondary schools for more than 20 years. Following her dream, she moved to New York, enrolled in GMTW, and received her graduate degree in musical theatre writing last year.
      “Children have a real need for this kind of exposure to music that most schools are not providing,” says Davis. “I can’t think of a better way to reenergize and rejuvenate musical theatre than by instilling a love and appreciation for it in the next generation.”
      For eight Saturdays in a row, the kids would split up into two groups of 12, each in their own classroom outfitted with a piano and a whiteboard. Songwriting professionals and GMTW alumni Danny Larson and Daniel Mate were the two team leaders, and instructed the kids in the basics of songwriting. Leah Miles and Joel Waggoner, first year GMTW students, assisted. On the final Saturday, the children rehearsed the songs they wrote and then performed them for the parents in attendance. The kids each also received a CD of the songs, a booklet with the lyrics, and a songwriter’s certificate.