(bright music) (air whooshing) - [Carolyn] I'm Carolyn Currie.

Singer, songwriter, mother and lover of music.

Join me as I listen to and speak with some of Maine's premier musical artists on Sound Waves.

(bright music) - [Announcer] Production of Sound Waves on Maine Public Television is made possible by.

- [Narrator] Highland Green, committed to fostering a resident-driven active lifestyle community for those 55 and better, with a goal of providing low maintenance living and custom-built freestanding homes on a 635 acre campus and nature preserve.

(upbeat music) - [Announcer] Reny's, a Maine shopping adventure for 77 years, now in 19 locations.

(upbeat music) Since 1852, Bangor Savings Bank has been dedicated to keeping New Englanders at the heart of what they do.

That means investing in communities they serve, and supporting families and businesses.

You matter more.

- [Announcer] And by viewers like you.

Thank you.

(bright music) (bright piano music begins) (bright piano music continues) (bright piano music continues) (bright piano music continues) (bright piano music continues) (bright piano music continues) (bright piano music continues) (bright piano music continues) (bright piano music ends) - So that was a really happy song.

- It was a happy song.

- You look happy when you're playing.

- Well, I was pretty happy.

There were a few surprises along the way for me, but yes, it's a song called Headed Home.

And it's on a record I made called Christmas in Maine, and it was about heading home for Christmas, so it is happy.

- So are you from Maine?

- No, I was not lucky enough to be born here, but I did the next best thing and moved here close to my wife and I, almost 40 years ago.

Moved from Brooklyn, New York to Brooklin, Maine.

- Okay.

So you were in New York 40 years ago and you wanted to move to Maine.

That seems like a big change.

What drew you to Maine?

- Yeah, it was kind of a big change more than just a single letter in spelling.

It was really kind of amazing because we were, we had both lived there for 10 years and not together.

And we were, each of us doing really well in our young careers.

I mean, we met in the theater world.

Jill was a theater fundraiser manager, stage manager type backstage.

And I was always in the pits playing shows.

And so we were in that same circle, but we were both doing really well.

I was playing a lot of Broadway shows.

I had a lot of employment and she did too.

But then we took a trip up to Maine and we had never been here before.

We were just taking a little vacation and a year later, all that rest of the year, we got Down East Magazine and I kept saying to Joe, who's much savvier in business and money than I am.

And I said, Jill, for the price that we pay for this rather dicey apartment that we're living in?

It says, here we could.

Is this right that we could have a farm on the coast of Maine and she'd say, let me see that.

And yeah, so anyway, we just did it one time.

- So you have a farm on the coast of Maine?

- No, well, we did, we had 50 acres.

- Did you really?

- Not on the shore, but in Brooklin.

We've moved since then.

- Did you have cows?

- Had sheep, had goats, chickens.

- Okay.

- So I suppose the answer to your question is no.

But we had a lot of other, oh, it was, I was the sort of affectionate laughingstock of the town because I had all these animals.

I had never had an animal, I grew up in Dorchester, Mass in Boston, then New York City and here I am with chickens running around and sheep and goats as if I knew what I was doing.

And the people who around me who did know what they were doing, you know, they were good and kind to me, but with lots of eye rolls and tongue in cheek.

- Excellent.

- Yeah.

- All right, so I'm glad you're Maine, even though people would say you're from away.

- Oh, definitely from away, oh yeah.

- All right, so I wanna hear another song.

What are you gonna play?

- I got some, well, let me see.

What would be the best thing to play for you right now?

I'll play a song called The Rising Moon.

(bright piano music begins) (bright piano music continues) (bright piano music continues) (bright piano music continues) (bright piano music continues) (bright piano music continues) (bright piano music continues) (bright piano music ends) - So that really was gorgeous.

You wrote that, what's a rising moon?

- The Rising Moon.

- Yeah.

- Yeah, I wrote it for a record I may call A Visit to the Rockies.

And yeah, it's based on a, it's actually based on an Irish folk song, the middle of an Irish folk song.

But I won't get too deeply into the weeds of that, but that the initial melody is, the middle part of a very old Irish folk song.

- Yeah, it sounded like, the chord progression felt Celtic to me.

- Definitely.

Definitely.

- Interesting.

All right, so I have a quote that you wrote.

I don't have my reading glasses on, so I'm gonna do my best here.

Your quote is, I've had a long, lovely, lucky career, which shows no sign of stopping.

So I read that and I thought, okay, you've had a long, lovely, lucky career, but you have worked incredibly hard and have played with a lot of people.

It's like the Gary Player quote where he says, yeah, the harder I work and the more I practice, the luckier I get.

- Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Well, you know, there's, all good musicians as well you know, work hard, you know?

It takes doing to get your chops up and to keep them up.

And so, you know, I have worked really hard.

But I don't take extra credit for that.

You know, JS Bach, we don't know all that much about him, his personal life, but one thing he did right, was that he said, I have worked hard.

And for him to say that, yeah, that puts what hard musical work.

It puts it into perspective.

And I haven't worked that hard, but, you know, we all do work hard, but there's also, there is luck involved.

You know, you have to be in the right place at the right time.

But the thing I have learned, and I'm concluding about my whole career is that, like many musicians, I was born to be a musician.

And it never was a choice.

It never was a say, oh, well, maybe I should do insurance, or, you know, a business or whatever, law.

I just that I never thought of a choice because I just knew that this was where I belonged.

And so you work hard, but it's just kind of the way you work hard to stay alive.

It's not as though you're trying to prove anything to anybody.

It becomes essential that you do your work 'cause you get up each day and you want to, you know, I hear Art Tatum play and I just think, oh, I gotta get to work again.

And it's happy.

It's not because of like, all the bosses or this, or I don't have enough of that.

It's just like, oh, oh, there's so much possibility and so much happiness and excitement to be had.

I'm gonna get to work.

(bright piano music begins) (bright piano music continues) (bright piano music continues) (bright piano music continues) (bright piano music continues) (bright piano music continues) (bright piano music continues) (bright piano music continues) (bright piano music continues) (bright piano music ends) - Gorgeous.

- Thank you Carolyn.

Thanks very much.

- Okay.

So I know you are somewhat reticent to talk about some of your accolades, but you've won the biggest prize you can as a composer, performer.

As a musician, you have a Grammy.

- I do have a Grammy.

I do have a Grammy.

And yeah, I've won, well, I've made 18 or 19, 18 CDs.

- You composed for Broadway.

- Composed for Broadway, off Broadway.

Played Broadway shows, conducted Broadway shows, played in Leonard Bernstein's living room.

That was rather glittery, I can tell you.

- I bet.

- Oh God, that was really unbelievable.

- Pinch me moment.

- Oh yeah, it was, it was.

Well, I walked into, he had, I don't know if we have time for a big story, but anyway.

- Do it anyway, - All right.

He had conducted this concert at Lincoln Center that night, and I was at it and fantastic concert, which also was an amazing story about Lenny.

But there was this party afterwards at his home in the Dakota, and I was invited to go and play.

And I walked into the kitchen.

As I arrived, I walked in a different door than the main door.

And there in the kitchen is Isaac Stern, Leonard Bernstein, and Midori all having a little confab.

And I just thought, my god, that's Isaac Stern.

That's Leonard Bernstein, this is Midori.

And it just went up from there.

I went into the living room and there's a quartet from the Metropolitan Opera singing and probably a hundred people and in this huge living room with two great pianos.

And at one point I was playing and I was playing a Stephen Sondheim song and I look over and there's Stephen Sondheim smiling at me.

I'm thinking it was like a dream.

It was like a dream.

And Betty Cond and Adolf Green were there at one point.

It was so fantastic 'cause several musicians played.

And I was standing, a violinist came up to play, not Midori, not Isaac Stern, someone I didn't know.

And he sat down and at the piano bench and I removed myself.

And I happened to end up standing behind Lenny 'cause that's what he liked to be called.

That's not me being, he was Lenny to everybody and wanted it that way.

So Lenny was sitting in a big wing chair.

All the rest of the guests were over there.

And the piano was here, and he was sitting in by himself and this wing chair.

And I went over when the violinist sat down, and I stood behind Lenny's chair, but he didn't know I was even there.

It wasn't as though I was with him.

And this violinist started playing Irish reels.

And they were the mode, he was in the violin.

The pieces were very, very strange and kind of unsettling.

Very beautiful.

But Lenny's sitting there and he didn't know I was there, and no one else was around.

And he's chain smoking.

And it just, like, throughout the violin performance, he'd just go, how mysterious, how mysterious.

And didn't know that anyone had heard him.

And you know, five minutes later, how mysterious, how mysterious that is.

And it turns out the violinist was Joshua Bell, who is another immortal.

And it was an evening like that.

- A mysterious immortal no less.

- Yeah very, man of mystery.

But you know, that word, it was, that was like the perfect insight into these pieces, you know, that it was just right.

But he was in his own world.

Anyway, where were we?

The Grammy Awards.

- You have a Grammy - I do have a Grammy.

- You played with the Boston Pops.

You played with the Philadelphia Orchestra.

- And a lot of other orchestras.

- Did you play in the Half Shell with the Boston Park?

I know with Arthur Feedler.

- At Symphony Hall.

I sang under Arthur Feedler too, when I was a little kid.

I mean, that was-- - Was that St.

Paul's, when you were St.

Paul?

- Yes, someone's been Googling me.

Thank you, Carolyn, no, thank you.

But yes, that was my first training at that choir school.

But yes, I played at Symphony Hall and Carnegie Hall and every hall.

It's been just fantastic.

(bright piano music begins) (bright piano music continues) (bright piano music continues) (bright piano music continues) (bright piano music continues) (bright piano music continues) (bright piano music continues) (bright piano music ends) (air whooshing) (bright music)