New Lecture presented at New Jersey School

On May 30, 2013 I pre­sented a new lec­ture at Cen­tral School in East Hanover, NJ. For sev­eral years I have gone there and lec­tured on find­ing the hero myth in music, specif­i­cally the music of Beethoven.

This time around, I dis­cussed active lis­ten­ing and used exam­ples of music from dif­fer­ent movies. After prac­tic­ing on a few famous themes (from Star Wars and Jaws) we then lis­tened to some music to decide what “pic­tures” we heard. I used the “Moon­light Sonata” and “Flight of the Bum­ble Bee,” for instance.

I was amazed how sharp these kids were!

Richard Rus­sell lec­tur­ing about a movie score

After the school day, I stuck around to help with a rehearsal of “Win­ner Takes All!”, the new musi­cal I’ve writ­ten with my col­lab­o­ra­tor, Emily Clare Thomp­son. Here’s a pic­ture of her rehears­ing with one of our young leads.

Emily Clare Thom­son rehearses a stu­dent for “Win­ner Takes All!”