Liza Redfield

Last updated
Liza Redfield
Born
Betty Weisman

1 August 1924
DiedDecember 23, 2018(2018-12-23) (aged 94)
NationalityAmerican
Alma materPhiladelphia High School for Girls
University of Pennsylvania
Occupation(s)conductor
pianist
composer
Parents
  • Issac Weisman (father)
  • Sophie Weisman (mother)

Liza Redfield (born Betty Weisman; 11 August 1924, Philadelphia - 23 December 2018, Manhattan) was an American conductor, pianist, and composer who is chiefly remembered for being the first woman to be the full-time conductor of a Broadway pit orchestra; a feat she achieved in 1960 when she was appointed music director of The Music Man during its initial run. [1]

Contents

Early life and education

Born to Issac Weisman, a tailor, and Sophie (Becker) Weisman, a homemaker, Liza Redfield was a piano prodigy who was performing recitals by age 8. She graduated from the Philadelphia High School for Girls and earned a music degree from the University of Pennsylvania. She planned a career as a classical pianist, but after graduating from university at age 19 she decided that she didn't enjoy the constant practice and performing. By her own account she "ran off and got married and went to live in New York," where she switched to popular jazz. The marriage to Ira Leff was over quickly, but Redfield found work doing orchestrations for recording companies. Her stage name was supposedly inspired by her red hair. [1] [2]

Conducting career

Redfield's first experience as a conductor was in recording sessions of the songs from The Amazing Adele, a forgotten musical of the mid-1950s with Tammy Grimes that never made it to Broadway. Later she studied conducting with Vladimir Brailowsky, who also encouraged her to continue her piano studies. [2] Redfield took a job as a conductor in a Detroit summer theater, on productions including Damn Yankees , The Mikado and South Pacific. [3]

Her work in regional theater eventually led to conducting jobs with two off-Broadway musicals in 1960, Miss Emily Adams and Ernest in Love . [4] Redfield's big break came when she was appointed orchestra director for Music Man. She later recalled: "Women seemed more surprised and pleased than men. Female members of the audience would come up to me after the show and tell me how pleased they were that I was conducting." [2] An amusing sidelight of her conducting career was her appearance on panel game show What's My Line? in 1960. The panel failed to guess her occupation, though Dorothy Kilgallen asked if she was one of the strippers in Gypsy. [5]

After Music Man, Redfield was the conductor for Broadway shows Sophie, Good News, and Charlie and Algernon , none of which lasted more than a few weeks. She worked through the 1980s with touring Broadway shows and pre-Broadway tryouts. [1] She was also a composer and created music for the reopening of Ford's Theater in Washington, D.C. in 1968. [6] [7]

Death

Liza Redfield's death in 2018 at the Amsterdam Nursing Home in Manhattan was announced by Barbara Sandler, her longtime friend and caregiver. She left no immediate survivors. [1]

Related Research Articles

<i>The Music Man</i> 1957 stage musical by Meredith Willson

The Music Man is a musical with book, music, and lyrics by Meredith Willson, based on a story by Willson and Franklin Lacey. The plot concerns con man Harold Hill, who poses as a boys' band organizer and leader and sells band instruments and uniforms to naïve Midwestern townsfolk, promising to train the members of the new band. Harold is no musician, however, and plans to skip town without giving any music lessons. Prim librarian and piano teacher Marian sees through him, but when Harold helps her younger brother overcome his lisp and social awkwardness, Marian begins to fall in love with him. He risks being caught to win her heart.

Events in the year 1895 in music.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">André Previn</span> German-American conductor, pianist, and composer (1929–2019)

André George Previn was a German-American pianist, composer, and conductor. His career had three major genres: Hollywood films, jazz, and classical music. In each he achieved success, and the latter two were part of his life until the end. In movies, he arranged and composed music. In jazz, he was a celebrated trio pianist, a piano-accompanist to singers of standards, and pianist-interpreter of songs from the "Great American Songbook". In classical music, he also performed as a pianist but gained television fame as a conductor, and during his last thirty years created his legacy as a composer of art music.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Marvin Hamlisch</span> American composer and conductor (1944–2012)

Marvin Frederick Hamlisch was an American composer and conductor. He is one of few people to win Emmy, Grammy, Oscar and Tony awards, a feat dubbed the "EGOT". He and composer Richard Rodgers are the only people to have won those prizes and a Pulitzer Prize ("PEGOT").

Joan Tower is a Grammy-winning contemporary American composer, concert pianist and conductor. Lauded by The New Yorker as "one of the most successful woman composers of all time", her bold and energetic compositions have been performed in concert halls around the world. After gaining recognition for her first orchestral composition, Sequoia (1981), a tone poem which structurally depicts a giant tree from trunk to needles, she has gone on to compose a variety of instrumental works including Fanfare for the Uncommon Woman, which is something of a response to Aaron Copland's Fanfare for the Common Man, the Island Prelude, five string quartets, and an assortment of other tone poems. Tower was pianist and founding member of the Naumburg Award-winning Da Capo Chamber Players, which commissioned and premiered many of her early works, including her widely performed Petroushskates.

The Mannes School of Music, originally called the David Mannes Music School and later the Mannes Music School, Mannes College of Music, the Chatham Square Music School, and Mannes College: The New School for Music, is a music conservatory in The New School, a private research university in New York City. In the fall of 2015, Mannes moved from its previous location on Manhattan's Upper West Side to join the rest of the New School campus in Arnhold Hall at 55 W. 13th Street.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ernest Schelling</span> American conductor (1876–1939)

Ernest Henry Schelling was an American pianist, composer, and conductor, and music director. He was the conductor of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra from 1935 to 1937.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">David Shire</span> American songwriter and composer

David Lee Shire is an American songwriter and composer of stage musicals, film and television scores. Among his best known works are the motion picture soundtracks to The Big Bus, The Taking of Pelham One Two Three, The Conversation, All the President's Men, and parts of the Saturday Night Fever soundtrack such as "Manhattan Skyline". His other work includes the score of the 1985 film Return to Oz, and the stage musical scores of Baby, Big, Closer Than Ever, and Starting Here, Starting Now. Shire is married to actress Didi Conn.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Michael Feinstein</span> American musician

Michael Jay Feinstein is an American singer, pianist and music revivalist. He is an archivist and interpreter for the repertoire known as the Great American Songbook. In 1988 he won a Drama Desk Special Award for celebrating American musical theatre songs. Feinstein is also a multi-platinum-selling, five-time Grammy-nominated recording artist. He currently serves as the artistic director for The Center for the Performing Arts in Carmel, Indiana.

Alfred Wallenstein was an American cellist and conductor. A successful solo and orchestral cellist in his early life, Wallenstein took up conducting in the 1930s and served as music director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic from 1943 to 1956.

Nadine Dana Suesse was an American musician, composer and lyricist.

Maceo Pinkard was an American composer, lyricist, and music publisher. Among his compositions is "Sweet Georgia Brown", a popular standard for decades after its composition and famous as the theme of the Harlem Globetrotters basketball team.

Donald John Sebesky was an American composer, arranger, conductor, and jazz trombonist. He was a multi-instrumentalist and could play a number of other instruments: keyboards, electric piano, organ, accordion, and clavinet.

Joshua Rosenblum is an American composer, conductor, pianist, arranger, music journalist, and writer. He has composed extensively for the concert hall as well as for musical theatre, and currently teaches Composing for Musical Theater at Yale University, his alma mater, as well as Conducting at New York University. As a pianist, he has performed frequently in the New York City area as soloist and accompanist, as well as in Broadway pit orchestras, and with the New York City Center Encores! Orchestra. He has conducted numerous Broadway and Off-Broadway shows, including How the Grinch Stole Christmas!, Wonderful Town, Falsettos, Miss Saigon, and Anything Goes. Most recently he served as pianist and associate conductor for the hit 2022 Broadway revival of Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine's Into the Woods.

Peter Matz was an American musician, composer, arranger and conductor. His musical career in film, theater, television and studio recording spanned fifty years, and he worked with a number of prominent artists, including Marlene Dietrich, Noël Coward and Barbra Streisand. Matz won three Emmys and a Grammy Award and is best known for his work on Streisand's early albums as well as for his work as the orchestral conductor and musical director for The Carol Burnett Show.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ethel Leginska</span> British pianist, conductor and composer

Ethel Liggins was a British pianist, conductor and composer. A student of Theodor Leschetizky, she became widely known as the ‘Paderewski of woman pianists’ and established herself as one of the first female conductors.

Lorin Hollander is an American classical concert pianist. He has performed with virtually all of the major symphony orchestras in the United States and many around the world. A New York Times critic called him in 1964 "the leading pianist of his generation."

Margaret Rosezarian Harris was an American musician, conductor, composer, and educator, the first African-American woman to conduct the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, the Detroit Symphony Orchestra, and 13 other cities' orchestras.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Liza Ferschtman</span> Dutch classical violinist

Liza Ferschtman is a Dutch classical violinist who appears internationally, both as a soloist with orchestra and in chamber music. She received the Nederlandse Muziekprijs in 2006 and has directed the Delft Chamber Music Festival since 2007.

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 Neil Genzlinger (December 28, 2018). "Liza Redfield, Who Broke a Broadway Barrier, Is Dead at 94". The New York Times .
  2. 1 2 3 Olivia Skinner (August 11, 1974). "Liza Redfield First Woman Conductor of pit band at Muny". St. Louis Post-Dispatch .
  3. Jean Sharley (June 19, 1958). "Liza Really Knows the Score". Detroit Free Press .
  4. "Ernest in Love". Columbia Records . 1960.
  5. "What's My Line? - Jerry Lewis; Joey Bishop [panel] (Jul 17, 1960)". YouTube. 29 March 2014. Retrieved 11 May 2019.
  6. "Program Plans Begun For Ford's Reopening". The Lincoln Log. November 15, 1967.
  7. Carolyn Day (February 12, 1968). "'John Brown's Body' Opens At Restored Ford's Theater". The Bullet, University of Mary Washington.