Interview :
Dave Grusin (Soundtrack Composer)
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Tinkling the 88s with Dave Grusin By Reese Erlich San Jose Mercury News : Jazz Perspectives Special to Mercury Center Talented and successful, pianist and composer Dave Grusin is perhaps best known for his film scores. He wrote the music for "The Firm," "Six Days of the Condor," "Milagro Bean Field War" and the "Fabulous Baker Boys," among others. In this perspective, based on Grusin's appearance at the 1997 Monterey Jazz Festival, he talks about how his playing was influenced by the Modern Jazz Quartet. Music for this Perspective came from "The Fabulous Baker Boys" CD (a movie worth renting on video, by the way). You might also check out the 1997 CD "Dave Grusin's Westside Story." (Comments from the perspective that are relevant to "The Fabulous Baker Boys" have been transcribed below:) Announcer: Grusin composed the soundtrack for "The Fabulous Baker Boys", a film about two warring piano playing brothers. The two men, played by Jeff and Beau Bridges, decide to hire a singer for their lounge act. The singer is Michelle Pfeiffer, and Grusin admits that, at first, he doubted her musical ability. Dave Grusin: She became a singer, and it was an extraordinary kind of example - graphic example - of what a goood actor can really do, you know. She spent alot of research time, she went around and heard singers and studied what they did. Everything from, of course, all the body language and all of that stuff, but vocally we went in the studio and she sang a version of "My Funny Valentine" that, I mean, it killed me. Announcer: Well, you'll have to be the judge of just how deadly Michelle Pfeiffer's singing really is... Reese Erlich, a Bay Area writer, produces "Perspectives on Jazz," which can be heard on KCSM-FM (91.1). Source: Excerpted from Tinkling the 88s with Dave Grusin By Reese Erlich San Jose Mercury News ©1999 Mercury Center |
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