Stanley Silverman (born July 5, 1938, in New York City) is an American composer, arranger, conductor and guitarist.
Silverman's diverse career covers music theatre, film, television, classical and pop music. His work has featured on stages across the world including on and off-Broadway and his collaborators include Richard Foreman, Anthony Burgess and Arthur Miller. He has also worked with renowned directors Mike Nichols and Arthur Penn. Silverman worked with Paul Simon on his musical The Capeman in 1998 for which his orchestrations were nominated for Tony and Drama Desk Awards. His music has been performed by Pierre Boulez, Michael Tilson Thomas, Tashi, the Kalichstein-Laredo-Robinson Trio and pop icons James Taylor and Sting.
Across a successful career as a conductor, Silverman worked on the Tony, Drama Desk and Grammy Award nominated 1976 Joseph Papp production of The Threepenny Opera which starred in the lead role Raul Julia.
Early life
Stanley Silverman was born in New York City and is the son of Russian Jewish immigrants. Silverman grew up in the Bronx attending public school followed by the High School of Performing Arts before completing his BMus at Boston University and his MA in Music Composition at Mills College.
At Tanglewood Silverman studied with Leon Kirchner and at Mills College with Kirchner and Darius Milhaud. Silverman's Tenso: Afternoon Music For Orchestra, composed for a White House concert premiered in 1962 for President John F. Kennedy.
As a young man Silverman played guitar in a western swing band and developed an interest in jazz music which took him to the Brussels World Fair playing with his college jazz quintet.
Upon graduating Silverman became a regular concert guitarist and worked with the New York Philharmonic, the Boston Symphony Orchestra and The Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center. Silverman also played guitar at the Malboro Festival, the Ojai Festival and during this period worked with Leonard Bernstein, Pierre Boulez, Lukas Foss and Gunther Schuller. As a young guitarist Silverman specialized in new music performing and recording many premieres.
Following work as guitarist, Silverman concentrated on his career as a composer and was part of Charles Wuorinen's New York composer-performer group, The Group for Contemporary Music.
Career
Silverman taught at Tanglewood during the 1960s and in 1965 was appointed music director of The Lincoln Center Repertory Theater before joining Canada's Stratford Festival at the invitation of Glenn Gould. He worked at the Stratford Shakespeare Festival extensively from 1967 when he composed music for John Hirsch's production of Richard III until 1994. His career at the Festival was celebrated in a one-off concert in 2013 called Celebrating Stanley which covered the diverse range of material he had composed over almost three decades for the Festival. In 1971 Silverman, along with Lyn Austin and Oliver Smith, was a founding member of the Lenox Arts Center, later the Music Theatre Group.
Amongst a range of noteworthy collaborations, Silverman composed the incidental music for Arthur Miller's 1972 Broadway production of The Creation of the World and Other Business and worked with the playwright again on his only musical Up from Paradise which premiered at Miller's alma mater, the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor in 1973. A recent production took place under the direction of Patrick Kennedy at the New Wimbledon Theatre, London in 2014.
In 1976, Silverman joined Joseph Papp's production of The Threepenny Opera as musical director. The show premiered at the Vivian Beaumont Theater under the direction of Richard Foreman. Of Silverman's musical direction, Alan Rich of New York Magazine said, "This is strong, intelligent music-making, and it clarifies, more than any version I have heard live or on records, the stature of this dazzling score."Rich, Alan "Theater review: Threepenny Opera", New York Magazine, New York, 17 May 1976. The production received critical acclaim and went on to earn Tony, Drama Desk and Grammy Award nominations.
During the 1980s, Silverman enjoyed a brief and successful directing career including an Obie award winning production of the Virgil Thomson and Gertrude Stein opera, The Mother of Us All in 1983. He also conceived and directed the 1986 music-theater piece Black Sea Follies at Playwrights Horizons
Aside from his involvement with theatre, Silverman has worked with several musicians as an arranger including a Grammy award-winning collaboration with James Taylor on Hourglass.
In recent years, Silverman has been a specialist consultant for Reveille TV, Electus Studios and NBC music Specials.
Silverman was honored by the Lincoln Center Institute for the Arts in Education in 2004, having served for over thirty years as one of its founding board members.
Recent activity
Hotel For Criminals by Richard Foreman and Stanley Silverman had its UK premiere in October 2016 at the New Wimbledon Studio directed by Patrick Kennedy. The show garnered positive reviews from critics, including British Theatre's Critics Choice 2016, in particular for Silverman's score:
"The music is immensely more tuneful and memorable than the great majority of scores currently to be heard in the commercial scene."
"The score is filled with rich vocal harmonies and elegant melodies dappled amongst chromatic recitative and horror film discordance."
"Silverman's score is a rich combination of haunting, discordant phrases and sumptuous melodies that reflect the other-worldliness of the narrative."
"Stanley Silverman's score is beautiful, enigmatic and embraces the show's disjointed narrative with its smooth and impressive melodies."
On 26 February 2017 BBC Radio 3 broadcast Anthony Burgess's Oedipus the King with Silverman's score. It was rebroadcast on 19 May 2019.
On January 12, Sting recorded the vocals for Fear No More composed by Silverman performed by the Kalichstein-Laredo-Robinson trio.
Collaborations with Richard Foreman In 1968 Silverman began collaborating with playwright/director Richard Foreman resulting in several works of music-theatre. Their first collaboration was Elephant Steps which premiered at Tanglewood in 1968 with the New York Magazine calling it "The best piece of new music I've heard in concert all year." and the LA Times saying there had been "Nothing like it before or since." A musical recording of the same name was released on LP by Columbia Records in 1974. "A mere Chuck Berry expert cannot judge the quality of the 'classical' music herein contained, although he can mention that he does not intend to investigate it further", wrote rock critic Robert Christgau in Christgau's Record Guide: Rock Albums of the Seventies (1981). "The 'rock,' however, was apparently concocted by David Clayton-Thomas's heir covert and the pit band from the Oslo production of Hair. And any English major can see through the 'libretto.'"
Other collaborations include Dream Tantras For Western Massachusetts, Hotel For Criminals, Madame Adare, The American Imagination, Africanus Instructus, Love & Science and Dr Selavy's Magic Theatre which led to the New York Times describing Silverman as "the brightest talent in this medium to come along since Leonard Bernstein... he could turn out to be the later day Cole Porter."
Influences Silverman has been influenced by the works of Baroque composers Handel, Henry Purcell, Austrian expressionist Arnold Schoenberg, French guitarist Django Reinhardt, songwriters Rodgers and Hart, and Cuban charanga.
80th birthday celebrations To celebrate Silverman's 80th birthday on July 5, several concerts and productions are being staged around the world in 2018/9.
4–5 July 2018 – Tanglewood Festival, Lenox, Massachusetts Private birthday celebration hosted by James Taylor and Kim Taylor
23 July 2018 – Stratford Shakespeare Festival, Stratford, Ontario, Canada Songs from Up From Paradise, Book & Lyrics by Arthur Miller
20–22 August 2018 – Grimeborn Festival, Arcola Theatre, London, UK Elephant Steps (opera), Libretto by Richard Foreman. 50th anniversary production directed by Patrick Kennedy
10 September 2018 - Belo Horizonte, Brazil Six Saudades do Brasil for String Quartet (Premiere) Guignard Quartet
25 October 2018 - Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts, Los Angeles American Friends of the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra to Honor Stanley Silverman. The Israel Philharmonic will perform a program including works composed by Stanley Silverman.
Late 2019 – ALBUM, In Celebration, Trio No.1 – The Piano Trios of Stanley Silverman The Kalichstein-Laredo-Robinson Trio with Guest Artist Sting
In Celebration, Trio No. 1 is included on Chamber Music America's list of 100 best chamber pieces written by an American.
2018-2019 – Kalichstein-Laredo-Robinson Trio tour Trio No. 2 “Reveille”
Personal life In 1966, Silverman married former VP of BBC America and theatre and television producer and executive Mary Silverman (née Delson); the couple had one child, Ben, chairman and co-CEO of Propagate and former NBC co-chairman. With Mary, Silverman also raised artist and illustrator Sarah Delson. In 1980 Silverman married Martha Caplin, a founding member and 1st Violin, Primavera Quartet and the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra. The couple has one child, Rena, a journalist and photography writer.
Theatre Music theatre Elephant Steps 1968: Tanglewood 1970: Hunter Playhouse, New York & Lake George Opera 2018: Arcola Theatre, London
The Satyricon 1969: Stratford Festival, Canada
Dream Tantras for Western Massachusetts 1971: Commemorating the opening of the Lenox Arts Center, Lenox, Massachusetts
Dr. Selavy's Magic Theatre 1972: Lenox Arts Center 1972-73: Mercer Arts Center, New York 1973: Wisdom Bridge Theatre, Chicago 1978: Oxford Playhouse, England 1985: New York Off-Broadway Revival (Music Theatre Group) 2014: New Wimbledon Theatre, England
Hotel for Criminals 1974: Lenox Arts Center 1975: Westbeth Theatre, New York 1977: Berkeley Repertory Theatre, California 1977: Lyon Opera, FR 2009: Provincetown Playhouse 2016: New Wimbledon Theatre, England
The American Imagination 1978: Music Theatre Group, New York
Madame Adare 1980: New York City Opera, Lincoln Center
The Columbine String Quartet Tonight 1981: Music Theatre Group, Off Broadway 1981: Wolf Trap Theatre
Up from Paradise 1977: Kennedy Center 1981: Whitney Museum 1982: Off-Broadway 1987: Great Lakes Shakespeare Festival 2014: New Wimbledon Theatre, England 2018: Stratford Festival, Canada
Africanus Instructus 1986: Music Theatre Group, New York 1986: Festival d'Automne, Centre Pompidou, Paris 1986: Festival de Otono, Teatro Monumental, Madrid 1986: Festival de Lille, l'Opera
A Good Life 1986: Kennedy Center, Washington DC
Paradise for the Worried 1989: Lenox Arts Center, Massachusetts 1990: Music Theatre Group, New York
Love and Science 1990: Music Theatre Group, Lenox, Mass. 1991: Music Theatre Group, New York 1993: Houston Grand Opera, Houston
Celebrating Stanley (Revue) 2013: Stratford Shakespeare Festival, Ontario, Canada
Celebrating Silverman (Revue) 2014: London Hippodrome, London
Incidental music Broadway 1969: The Watering Place 1972: The Creation of the World and Other Business 1978: Stages 1980: Bent (Nominated - Drama Desk Award) 1981: The Little Foxes 1982: Othello 1983: Private Lives 1992: Saint Joan (National Actors Theatre) 1993: Timon of Athens (Nominated - Drama Desk Award) 1994: The Government Inspector 1995: Uncle Vanya
Off-Broadway 1958: The Golden Six 1962: Ten Nights in a Barroom 1983: The Lady and the Clarinet 2007: Fugue
Repertory Theater of Lincoln Center 1965 The Country Wife 1966 Yerma 1967: The Little Foxes & Galileo 1968: St. Joan & Tiger at the Gates 1970: Beggar on Horseback 1971: Mary Stuart 1972: Narrow Road to the Deep North
Stratford Festival, Canada 1967: Richard III