Charles and Barbara Strouse

From Philosopedia

Charles Strouse (7 June 1928) and Barbara Siman Strouse (in her 60s in 2012)

Composer Strouse is the son of Ira and Ethel (Newman) Strouse. The show business winner of three Emmys and two Tonys Strouse is married to director-choreographer Barbara Siman.

A graduate of the Eastman School of Music, Strouse studied under David Diamond, Aaron Copland, and Nadia Boulanger.

Contents 1 Broadway 2 Film 3 Songs 4 Other Compositions and Musical Connections 5 On Atheism 6 Personal

Broadway

His first hit was Bye Bye Birdie (1960, with lyrics by Lee Adams, who became his longtime collaborator). Strouse won his first Tony Award for best score for this musical, which is the precursor of the rock musical.

In 1962, his next show was All American (book by Mel Brooks and lyrics by Adams), in which was the hit "Once Upon a Time” (recorded by Frank Sinatra, Tony Bennett, and Bobby Darin, among others). Following this were Golden Boy (1964, also with Adams), starring Sammy Davis Jr. and "It's a Bird, It's a Plane, It's Superman (1966, based on the popular comic strip) which introduced the song "You've Got Possibilities" sung by Linda Lavin.

In 1970, Applause (starring Lauren Bacall, with book by Betty Comden and Adolph Green, and lyrics by Adams) won Strouse his second Tony Award.

In 1977, Strouse adapted another comic strip for the stage, creating the hit Annie, which garnered him his third Tony Award and two Grammy Awards.

Other Strouse musicals include Charlie and Algernon (1979), Dance a Little Closer (1983, with lyrics by Alan Jay Lerner), Rags (1986) and Nick & Nora (1993).

Film

His film scores include the classics Bonnie and Clyde (1967), There Was a Crooked Man... (1970, with Henry Fonda and Kirk Douglas), The Night They Raided Minsky's (1968, with Adams), and the animated movie All Dogs Go to Heaven (1989). He and Adams also wrote the theme song “Those Were the Days” for the television show All in the Family.

Songs

In 1958, his song “Born Too Late” was number one on the Billboard charts, and in 1999 the quadruple platinum Hard Knock Life (Ghetto Anthem) by artist Jay-Z (which sampled "It's The Hard Knock Life" from Annie) was the winner of a Grammy for Best Rap Album of the year & the Billboard R&B Album of the Year.

Other Compositions and Musical Connections

His writing also extends into orchestral works, chamber music, piano concertos, and opera. His Concerto America, composed in 2002 to commemorate 9/11 and the spirit of New York City, premiered at The Boston Pops in 2004, and his opera Nightingale (1982), starring Sarah Brightman, had a successful run in London, followed by subsequent productions.

Strouse has won Emmy Awards for music in television adaptions of Bye Bye Birdie and Annie. He is the recipient of the ASCAP Foundation Richard Rodgers Award and the Oscar Hammerstein Award and is a member of the Theater Hall of Fame and the Songwriters Hall of Fame. In 1977, Strouse founded the ASCAP Musical Theatre Workshop in New York.

On Atheism

Michael Elkin in a 2008 interview suggested that there was a "cultural pull of his Jewish heritage." "I am an atheist," brought on by "the death of my sister from cancer at age 42." Not that he doesn't believe in how much Judaism has influenced his life: "It all seeps into the psyche." In Rags, Elkin commented, the use of klemzer "flavored the show."

Strouse received an Emperor Has No Clothes Award at the Freedom From Religion Foundation's 34th annual national convention on October 8, 2011. The award is "reserved for public figures who make known their dissent from religion."

At the ceremony Strouse joked that he never thought that atheists made speeches and had not known about the FFRF. He had met Irving Berlin and Richard Rodgers but never knew they also were not into religion. He received laughs when he told how Lauren Bacall asked critic Louis Botto what he thought of Applause. To his prosaic answer, "I thought it was very interesting," Bacall shot back, "Go fuck yourself!"

Strouse's acceptance speech: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/21/realestate/21habi.html

Personal

The Strouses have four children: Benjamin, Nicholas, Victoria, and William. They married on 23 September 1962.

Joanne Kaufman in a 19 September 2008 article in The New York Times described their New York City apartment at the Parc Vendome, 340 West 57th Street, which had four pianos:

The first piano Mr. Strouse ever bought, a Steinway grand, the one on which he wrote his first Broadway hit, Bye Bye Birdie,”sits in a corner of the living room.

A Yamaha spinet in Mr. Strouse’s office was used to create assorted jingles, including a tune to help sell Ramblin’ Root Beer, and the score for the blockbuster, Annie. Across the long, elegant front hall and down two steps to the 19-by-24-foot rehearsal studio, which converts to a black box theater, is piano No. 3, a Yamaha electric keyboard. (It’s also where you would have found piano No. 4, another Yamaha spinet, donated to charity a few months ago.)

The keyboard has come in handy when Benjamin Strouse, the eldest of the couple’s four children, has had readings for the musical he is writing; when Ms. Siman Strouse, a dancer turned choreographer and director, works on the musical she is developing; and when the Tony Award-winning Mr. Strouse, 80, has had people in to listen to his own projects in progress, like “Marty,” a musical adaptation of the Paddy Chayefsky classic, and “Minsky’s,” a stage adaptation of the 1968 movie “The Night They Raided Minsky’s.”

Until eight years ago, the couple lived across from Carnegie Hall, where they raised a family, renovating every time Ms. Siman Strouse was pregnant so that each child could have his or her own bedroom. Periodically, they would canvas the Upper East Side, “because that’s where we thought the big apartments were and it was more of a neighborhood,” said Ms. Siman Strouse, who is in her 60s.

There was also some concerted lobbying from the Strouses’ daughter, Victoria, then a student at the all-girls Spence School on East 91st Street.

Even so, the family stayed put right up to the point that their building began a condo conversion. This event also coincided with the landlord’s almost doubling of the rent on Mr. Strouse’s Central Park South office and studio space.

“The children were grown and I wanted to have nicer things,” said Ms. Siman Strouse, who met Mr. Strouse at a Christmas party in 1960 and married him two years later. “I wanted to have a Persian carpet because I no longer had to worry that they were going to spill something on it. I’d always loved the Parc Vendome, so I started looking there.”

The couple were outbid on one apartment, then considered making an offer on the penthouse, but were put off by the upkeep that the large terrace required.

But just below the penthouse, on the 19th floor, was an apartment once owned by Arthur Tracy, a vaudevillian known in his heyday as the Street Singer. This provenance delighted the couple. “It was available but it was a nightmare,” Ms. Siman Strouse said. “There was a sink and bathtub in the middle of the floor, and there was no kitchen.”

Drawn to the expansive space (2,600 square feet) and to the glorious views of the city, but still a bit skittish, she and Mr. Strouse made one last foray to the Upper East Side. “There I was in my sweats,” Ms. Siman Strouse said, “and everybody was so dressed up going in and out of the buildings on Park Avenue. We ran into our youngest son, William, who said, ‘Mom, I don’t know about this.’ ”

It was a moment of clarity. The couple headed back west and bought the Parc Vendome unit. Ms. Siman Strouse began interviewing architects, settling on one, she said, “who was not going to dissuade me from what I wanted.”

What she wanted, among other things, was to raise the ceilings and add a few archways. She also wanted a working fireplace in the living room, his-and-hers bathrooms for the master bedroom, and interconnected rooms that could easily be closed off. The master bedroom, for example, has one door opening into the hall, while another opens into Mr. Strouse’s dressing room/bathroom, which opens into his office, which connects to the hall.

And now at last, after years of fabrics and fibers that could withstand sticky fingers and muddy footprints, how lovely to be a woman with adult décor — in this case, soft earth tones with red and coral accents in the living room, where an Augustus John drawing hangs near the piano; beiges and greens in the library/sunroom, Mr. Strouse’s retreat.

In 2003, when the apartment next door became available, the couple bought it, turning its 1,100 square feet into a rehearsal studio, a small second kitchen for serving light refreshments, and a place to wash the paws of Zeke, the family dog, a dead ringer for Sandy, the canine in “Annie.” The space also includes a bathroom/laundry room and an office for Ms. Siman Strouse.

The couple, who have spent their professional lives working for audience approval, knew that what they had bought was a great party space. Their housewarming party included guests like the playwright A. R. Gurney and the producer Gerald Schoenfeld.

“It was like my opening night,” Ms. Siman Strouse said.

Two years ago, their son Benjamin was married in the apartment. “He said there would be 40 people,” Ms. Siman Strouse said. “It ended up being 100.”

They have also had friends over to watch the Oscar and Tony awards. If someone asks Mr. Strouse to sit down at the piano, he’ll oblige. “I’m a modest ham,” he said, “but I’m a ham.”

The composer, whose memoir, Put on a Happy Face,”was published this summer, bowed to his wife in matters of interior design, even allowing her to fill his office with framed gold records and posters from his Broadway and Off Broadway shows and movies.

“I’ve always been a little self-conscious about having these things on the wall,” said Mr. Strouse, who as the composer of Annie is fittingly surrounded by orphaned furniture in his office. There are the paisley easy chairs from the family’s former weekend home in Roxbury, Conn.; the leather chair on casters from their old London flat; the red rug from their old 57th Street apartment; and the glass desk edged in chrome, a cast-off from Benjamin.

“I like walking into my office in the morning and seeing the album that signifies I sold a million records,” Mr. Strouse said. “We have friends who have a very formal apartment on Park Avenue with an oak library, but I enjoy this old building. We’re two minutes from Lincoln Center and five minutes from the expensive restaurants on Columbus Avenue. I’ve just always been a West Sider.”