Media Matters

Playbill.com said of his Dearest Enemy recording, “Orchestrator Larry Moore (seen here directing the Roberta dialogue) … is mighty good at unearthing, reassembling, and providing the missing pieces of vintage musical comedies. … This new recording, I imagine, couldn’t be bettered.”

A Song in his Heart

Music arranger Larry Moore ’68 MA ’70 infuses new life into old shows

Orchestrator and arranger Larry Moore ’68 MA ’70 would like to transport listeners to another time with his new recording of Jerome Kern’s 1933 romantic comedy Roberta — a time when sophisticated dialogue, song, and dance solved most of life’s problems.

Moore finished recording Roberta’s many songs, including “Smoke Gets in Your Eyes,” in February 2014. It’s his fifth for New World Records as music editor and producer. Considering the five, he says his biggest challenge was casting Victor Herbert’s 1917 Irish comic opera Eileen, which he recorded in Dublin.

“I knew no Irish or British singers in 2012, and I had to cast the recording from MP3 files that the Irish production team sent me or from YouTube clips.”

Living in New York City sine 1979, Moore grew up in Middletown and earned degrees in classics and theatre. Career highlights include working with great musical directors like Michael Tilson Thomas and Rob Berman and reconstructing the 1935 Cole Porter-Moss Hart musical Jubilee and the 1925 Rodgers and Hart show Dearest Enemy.

After Stephen Sondheim helped him get his first published choral arrangement, Moore reciprocated by nominating the Sondheim-James Lapine musical Sunday in the Park With George for a Pulitzer Prize for drama. He was thrilled when it won.

These days he’s editing a new vocal score for a 1963 Jerome Moross musical about the American Civil War, Gentlemen Be Seated!, and working with City Center Encores! on its production of Paint Your Wagon, a 1952 musical by Lerner and Loewe.

“A lot of my career was sheer luck because I never knew what I wanted to do with myself until I was 33.”

As for his next project?

“I have no idea. I’m waiting for the phone to ring. In the meantime, I’ll finish the Moross score.”

The Dark Side of the Mountain
Bonnie Sollars Johnston ’61
Soul Mate Publishing
Bonnie’s debut novel blends fact and fiction as it describes two turbulent decades in the life of Anna Margaretha Mallow. Moved by her husband to the frontier of Virginia at the beginning of the French and Indian War, she and her five children must seek safety at Fort Seybert. Surviving the deadly 1758 massacre, Anna and her children are taken captive and marched to the Ohio River Valley where she endures indescribable losses and change. Many families involved in the real incident still have descendants in Ohio.

Wormwood: Beyond Dead
Robert Van Kirk ’70
CreateSpace
Junior Lament, funeral and retirement home operator, plans to expand his business empire quickly with a crazy scheme to steal and sell organs from his retirement home clients and bodies from his funeral home competitors. Even stranger, he plans to build an Indian casino — without any Indians. Private investigator Ty Svenson is hot on Junior’s trail, but he has his own issues. Mixed messages prevail as he consults on the case with a gorgeous, gun-toting neurosurgeon. The whole, confused cast of characters ends up at the Indian casino while a winter fashion show is underway — in the heat of August. The question is, will anyone make it out alive?

How the Earth Turned Green
Joseph Armstrong MS ’72 PhD ’75
University of Chicago Press
On this blue planet, long before pterodactyls took to the skies and tyrannosaurs prowled the continents, tiny green organisms populated the ancient oceans. Fossil and phylogenetic evidence suggests chlorophyll, the green pigment responsible for coloring these organisms, has been in existence for some 85 percent of Earth’s roughly 3.5 billion years. Joseph traces the history of these verdant organisms, which many would call plants, from their ancient beginnings to the diversity of green life that inhabits the Earth today.

True Love Lasts
James Wegert ’77
Strong Book Publishing
Written by a school counselor who partially messed up his life and who has seen so many teens and young adults mess up theirs by making bad relationship choices, True Love Lasts communicates crucial information about how to have a healthy relationship. James explains in a down-to-earth manner how to use the strong approach to dating in order to maximize the possibility of a lifelong loving marriage.

Naked Feet Leadership:
Real People Leading in Extraordinary Ways
Lisa Shasky ’84
CreateSpace
Following in the footsteps of her first book, Lisa’s second book examines the life skills and qualities that make people effective leaders. Each chapter opens with an inspirational true story of a person who has demonstrated leadership in his or her own capacity. It also includes expert advise and a series of questions that helps readers perfect their skills.

Converts to Civil Society
Lida Nedilsky ’90
Baylor University Press
Lida captures the public ramifications of a personal, Christian faith during Hong Kong’s pivotal political turmoil. From 1997 to 2008, in the much-anticipated reintegration of Hong Kong into Chinese sovereignty, she conducted detailed interviews with more than 50 Hong Kong people and followed their daily lives, documenting their involvement at the intersection of church and state. Citizens of Hong Kong enjoy abundant membership options, social and religious, under Hong Kong’s free market culture. Whether identifying as Catholic or Protestant, or growing up in religious or secular households, the interviewees share a story of choosing faith.