August - September 2001 Edition

From Fair Lawn High School to the Tonys   When long-time Fair Lawn resident Larry Hochman was nominated for a Tony Award for orchestration, his old friends from Fair Lawn High School were not surprised.   Bob Gulack, a Radburn resident who graduated with Hochman, told Fair Lawn News that the Fair Lawn High School music teachers didn’t take long to catch on to the fact that Hochman was a musical prodigy.  Gulack said that even in Thomas Jefferson Junior High School, Hochman’s gifts -- as a musician, composer, conductor, orchestrator and singer -- had already started to emerge.   When he was 14 years old, living on Hillside Terrace, Hochman started a rock band and put on a show at the junior high school.  He also composed and orchestrated a musical show (A Peanut for the Monkey') that he produced with Gulack at the Old Library Theater on River Road.    Gulack explained that orchestrators write music for each instrument in a band or orchestra.  They need to understand the capabilities of each instrument, even ones they can’t play themselves.  And they don’t have much time to do it.   Hochman said it is “unbelievable how little time there is for orchestration in a production schedule.  For A Class Act, I had to work 18 hours a day in order to orchestrate 600 pages of orchestra score in four weeks”.   Hochman told Fair Lawn News that “I have to be able to hear -- in my head -- what the instruments sound like together in every possible combination.  I blend the music together without overpowering the singer.  One of the challenging parts is figuring out how to write down sounds that I hear in my head.”   Gulack said that an orchestrator is the musical equivalent of a costume designer or a set designer.  Successful orchestrators ensure that the music fits the setting (whether it is Eastern Europe in the 1890’s or New York in the 1970’s).  They need to produce a variety of emotions and styles, whether it is rock or jazz, big band or ballad.   Lew Paer, another Fair Lawn resident who graduated with Hochman, told Fair Lawn News that he is proud and happy, but not surprised.   Paer, now the Principal Bass of the New York City Opera Orchestra said that besides his natural musical talent, Hochman is successful for two reasons.  “First, he is a pleasure for musicians to work with.  Second, because Hochman has studied music from all over the world and from every time period, he is able to bring all of those sounds into his work.”   The Fair Lawn News editor recently spotted Hochman at the Fair Lawn library reading sheets of music.  Gulack said that “when Hochman reads music, he can hear the notes in his head, like anyone else can read a novel.  Hochman often goes back to the great works of composers, like chess masters who study old chess matches.”   Recently two Broadway shows he orchestrated (Jane Eyre and A Class Act) were running at the same time.   Hochman was nominated for A Class Act, but like nearly every other Tony award for a musical this year, it was won by The Producers.   Both of Hochman's shows closed a few days after they failed to win any Tony Awards.  He also recently orchestrated an off-Broadway show Suburb that was written by former Fair Lawn resident, Robert Cohen.   Since graduating from Fair Lawn High School (and attending the Eastman School of Music and the Manhattan School of Music), Larry Hochman has composed songs and orchestrated music for dozens of films, Broadway shows and recordings.   For 18 years, Larry worked with another Fair Lawn resident and high school alumni, Larry Gates, arranging and producing hundreds of commercial musical jingles including ‘I Wanna Be A Toys R Us Kid’.   He and his wife, Diane, have three children in Fair Lawn’s schools.    Larry told Fair Lawn News that “I was absolutely thrilled when I heard I was nominated.  I feel like I have now achieved my goal – to be in that small club of orchestrators who get to work on the very best shows”.   For more information about Larry Hochman, read his credits.