ASMAC to Present Broadway Overtures — Examples & Discussion with Larry Blank and Jonathan Tunick

American Society of Music Arrangers and Composers will present Broadway Overtures — Examples & Discussion with Larry Blank and Jonathan Tunick.

The event will take place virtually Wednesday, August 9th. 

LA 12pm | NY 3pm | Lima 2pm | London 8pm | Paris 9pm | Sydney 5am (+1 day) 

Larry Blank

Larry Blank is one of the most prolific and sought after composers, conductors, and orchestrators in the entertainment business today. His work has been presented all over the world, including some of Broadway’s most successful musicals, Carnegie Hall, and top television and film projects.

He was the music director/conductor and/or vocal arranger for many shows on Broadway and in Los Angeles including They're Playing Our Song, Evita, Sugar Babies, La cage aux Folles, Phantom of the Opera, Onward Victoria, Copperfield, Colette, A Chorus Line, and A Little Night Music. He has been nominated three times for both the Tony Award and the Drama Desk Award for his orchestrations in The Drowsy Chaperone, Irving Berlin's White Christmas and with Marc Shaiman for Catch Me If You Can. Larry received a Drama Desk Nomination for orchestrations for A Christmas Story and Honeymoon in Las Vegas.

Larry contributed to the orchestrations for both the stage and film production of The Producers and the film of Chicago.

Larry is a regular conductor and arranger for BBC Radio 2 Friday Night is Music Night in the UK.

Jonathan Tunick

A native New Yorker, Jonathan Tunick grew up on Manhattan’s Upper West Side and attended the High School of Music and Art, Bard College (AB 1958) and Juilliard (MS 1960), where he studied composition under Vittorio Giannini.

His first major credit as an orchestrator was Promises, Promises (1968), which led to a long series of other Broadway musicals, notably those of Stephen Sondheim. (He has orchestrated nearly all of Sondheim’s musicals.) Notable shows include Company, Follies, A Little Night Music, A Chorus Line, Sweeney Todd, Nine, Into The Woods, Passion, The Color Purple, Road Show, and A Gentleman’s Guide To Love And Murder, plus the recent revivals of Carousel and West Side Story.

He has composed and conducted film scores for Mike Nichols (The Birdcage), Franco Zeffirelli (Endless Love), and Sidney Lumet (Find Me Guilty), as well as for such TV classics as Murder, She Wrote and Columbo. Other film work includes Blazing Saddles, Young Frankenstein, A Little Night Music, and The Fantasticks.

He has also served as arranger/ conductor of recordings for such artists as Bernadette Peters, Bette Midler, Judy Collins, Itzhak Perlman, Placido Domingo, Neil Diamond, Kate Bush, Barbra Streisand, and Paul McCartney. In 2002 he conducted Company at the Kennedy Center Sondheim Celebration, Washington, D.C.

In recent years he has returned to serious composition, premiering his Trio for Clarinet, Cello and Piano, Cheever Country suite for Orchestra, and Serenade For Strings. He has also composed extensively for voice, both solo and chorus.

Previously holding the Emmy, Grammy and Academy Awards, in 1997 he was awarded the first Tony ever given for orchestration for Titanic, elevating him to “EGOT” status; one of the very few persons to hold all four major awards. He holds 11 Tony and 13 Drama Desk nominations. In 2009 he was inducted into Broadway’s Theatre Hall of Fame.

Photo credit: Henry Grossman

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