Matt Johnson & The New Jet Set will perform their jazz versions of many classic Disney songs at the Sierra Madre Playhouse beginning Friday, March 22nd and continuing through Sunday, March 24th. Johnson has created a multi-media show that includes stories, anecdotes from his many years as being a Cast Member at Disneyland and many of the classic songs we all know and love.

Last week I spoke with Johnson (who drums for multiple artists including Jane Lynch) about his lengthy relationship with all things Disney and the songwriters and songs that make us all light up when we hear them. What follows are excerpts from our conversation that have been edited for length and clarity. To see the full interview with Johnson, please go to our YouTube channel (where you can also see an interview with Alan Menken).

Q: Duke Ellington famously sings in one of his compositions, “It don’t mean a thing if it ain’t got that swing.” What does the Disney songbook mean with and without swing? [The lyrics were by Irving Mills]

Listen, the Disney songbook doesn’t need my interpretation to stand alone in the annals of memorable music. We just happen to interpret it in our chosen vehicle. We take those memorable melodies and just put them in the jazz machine and crank them up and what comes out is usually very swinging. A lot of the music lends itself to swing. There’s lots of lullabies and happy children’s songs and some marches and some of them naturally lend themselves to swing. Then others we choose to have a little more fun with them. In one instance the beautiful ballad A Dream is a Wish Your Heart Makes from Cinderella. We’ll do it as a samba and play almost a double time rhythm underneath it. So sometimes the swing just happens. And other times we consciously choose to put it in a style that makes us even more happy.

Some of those films had great opportunities for swing. They did have Louis Prima as a voice in The Jungle Book, and they had Peggy Lee write songs and perform them for Lady and the Tramp. But those were exceptions. Do you think that there was a conscious decision in the history of Disney songs not to go into a swing mode? Or do you think that the films didn’t necessarily lend themselves to that style?

I know from being a long time Disney cast member that story is the most important thing. So whoever was in charge whenever a production was in the making, they thought about what would be the best way to convey the story. So conscious decision – definitely. But just crowbar in swing music? No.

By the time you get to Toy Story with someone like Randy Newman, you have a composer who has jazz in his bloodstream.

He does. You’ve Got a Friend in Me has very much a swingy bounce to it. I think it’s definitely a conscious decision to play jazz and or any other style. I’m thinking now Ratatouille – all Parisian. Michael Giacchino’s orchestration with lots of accordion and clarinet. Very Parisian, almost a gypsy jazz appropriate for the setting in the story it tells.

How do you see the Disney songbook having evolved over the years? What do you like most about the way it was, and what do you like most about the way it is today? 

I have had the wonderful experience of seeing it in the audience’s faces as we’ve performed the show a few times now. You can’t separate the music from the time when you experienced it in the movie theater. For those of us of a certain age, that means a really grand occasion. Back before you could stream a movie on your watch, it was a really big deal to go to a theater. We always looked forward to the Disney movies. Growing up in Southern California we had the opportunity to go to Disneyland. So we saw all the the tie-ins with the attractions and all the visuals. And, of course, we saw the characters. We also had the Wonderful World of Color and the Wonderful World of Disney. The music is just one of many, many emotional touchstones that are layered in us.

If there was any one team of composers or songwriters for whom the Disney catalog is best represented, it’s going to be the Sherman Brothers: Richard and Robert Sherman. What do you think makes their songs more beloved, or given them the ability to stand the test of time above perhaps any other songwriter’s songs who have appeared in Disney movies? 

First of all, we have to agree to the premise of your question are they, in fact, the greatest? And I think the reason both of us initially say yes, without a doubt, is because of the volume of work that they did when the studio was young or in their heyday. There was a period of time when Disney wasn’t making great movies, but everything before 1975 rocked. Maybe even earlier than that. Aristocats came out in 1970 and certainly everything that preceded it was just fantastic.

Walt referred to them as the boys. He’d storyboard with some of his artists and he said, let me get the boys in here, and then we’ll figure out where we’re going from here. The stories that I know, and even the documentary footage that I’ve seen, there was such a collaboration [with] the brothers. To see one at the piano and the other one scratching down something and changing and getting stuck on a word and seeing that collaboration was personally very inspiring. 

Doesn’t it feel like Alan Menken is the heir to what the Sherman Brothers were able to accomplish?

In and through the collaboration with his lyricists…Yes. All of those contemporary things from Beauty and the Beast and The Little Mermaid. I’m no different than most. I’m really affected emotionally performing this music and having the responsibility of giving a little insight through my narration. Instead of saying, “Now we’re going to play I Just Can’t Wait to Be King,” I give a little background on the music and the production or something that I’ve read that’s interesting that maybe we don’t know. I have to be careful that I don’t trigger an emotional little thing in me that becomes distracting or, even worse, makes me emotional. 

Don’t you feel like this music allows us to revisit our childhood in some way, shape or form?

Every single time. My friend Charles Phoenix put it so perfectly, “Every time I go there, I feel all the ages I’ve ever been.” Because he remembers encountering the Disney magic at all these different points in his life. And also remembering the people in your life that are no longer with us. When you think about going there with your grandparents, I mean, that’s a powerful memory, you know? It’s just part of who I am. 

You can’t walk through the park without hearing music everywhere. A lot of it’s piped in now, but walk Main Street. You know better than anyone, that’s where you often hear live music.

Right. Straw Hatters are still out there. From season to season, sometimes they bring back a couple of what we call the break down groups: The Firehouse Hook and Ladder Gang. It’s been a while. The sax quintet who dressed in that Keystone Cops? We say Keystone Cops, but, the police uniforms from the previous century. The pre-recorded music there is all early, sort of parlor music. It’s not exactly ragtime yet. It predates ragtime. It’s happy family music from the turn of the century.

A lot of the music that that you and I know and that people probably have at least half a generation below us embrace as well, is stuff that kids today don’t necessarily have any relationship to unless their parents held on to old DVDs or they would catch the films on Disney Plus. What do you see in in terms of young people who come to these concerts and their response to these songs that they didn’t grow up with the same way you and I did?

There’s one thing that happens in general. I’m reminded of my friend Tony Guerrero, who says, “Even if you don’t think you’re familiar with jazz, if you witness a live performance, you can’t help but like it.” There’s just something about live musical performance that’s very powerful. Something you and I would take for granted because we sat through innumerable concerts, but young people wouldn’t necessarily. We try to have a couple of the contemporary Disney songs in there.

My indoctrination into the world of Disney took place when my aunt took me at three years old to go see Mary Poppins. That was the first time I became aware of movies. It was the first time I became aware of musicals in any way, shape or form. Obviously, the first time that I became aware of Disney in any in any measurable way. It is my understanding that you have worked with Dame Julie Andrews.

I was performing with a group called the Palm Springs Yacht Club in the early 90s. It was a musical comedy group, but we worked for maybe 3 or 4 years as a warm-up act for a handful of touring celebrities at the time, including Julie Andrews, but also the Smothers Brothers and comedian Rich Little.

We traveled one whole summer with Julie Andrews. It was my personal experience that she was wonderful and had a wonderful sense of humor. She was appreciative of the small supporting role that we played in her show. She traveled with an ensemble as well. We were traveling separately. Her band was on a standard tour bus at the time. She drove in a limousine and had a driver. This was the caravan. It wasn’t uncommon that the band, while on the road, their wives would come out sometimes and join the tour for the weekend and fly home. I overheard a conversation where she offered one of the guys the limo so he and his wife could travel from one venue to the next together to have some time together. She road on the bus. That said a lot about who she was. She was always very, very good humored and always made us feel as though our role was valued.

In Richard Sherman’s book, Pursuing Happiness, he tells a story about giving a lecture at USC. As he described it, some smartalec shouted out, “How much money did you make from Winnie the Pooh?” He goes on to tell this story about a girl in Texas who had fallen down a well. As they were trying to rescue her the girl apparently told her mother that she wanted her to sing Winnie the Pooh, because “Winnie the Pooh was in great tightness and he got out and I’m going to get out.” Richard Sherman said, “That moment made me the richest man in the world.” How does music in general, and these Disney songs in particular, make you the richest man in the world?

We just performed our show a couple nights ago. After the show a gentleman came up to me and said, “My dad has Alzheimer’s.” Out of the blue. I never met this guy before. I said I’m very sorry, not knowing where he was going with this. And he said, “He’s been living with us. When I was leaving the house, I said, I’m going to see a Disney show tonight. They’re playing Disney music.” His father, with Alzheimer’s, brightened up and said, “Do you remember when we took you to see The Aristocats?” Now, The Aristocats is not one of the most memorable movies, but it’s a fabulous movie released in 1970, and it happened to be the very last animated feature that Walt Disney would be able to approve for production in 1965. 

He went on to say that his little brother was born and stayed in the ICU for six weeks. [He continued] “When my little brother was able to finally come home my dad took my sister and I out to see The Aristocats.” This person who was suffering from Alzheimer’s was able to tap into that because of his connection to the Disney music. You can’t put a price on that; that I was part of a performance that reminded both those individuals of that story and that he chose to relate it to me.

Knowing how it affects people, how deeply connected people are to this music, it’s a great responsibility. Whether I’m playing at the park or whether I’m playing on the outside with my own band and present this music at the highest level, because I know how people relate to it. It is a gift that I cherish and I don’t take it for granted.

To watch the full interview with Matt Johnson, please go here.

Main Photo: Matt Johnson (Courtesy Matt Johnson)

The post Matt Johnson Swings Disney with The New Jet Set appeared first on Cultural Attaché.

THIS IS THE THIRD OF OUR BEST OF 23 REVIEW OF INTERVIEWS: On April 19th of this year I spoke with Tony Award-winner Stephanie J. Block about her upcoming show with Seth Rudetsky at The Wallis. She was on tour at that time with Into the Woods. But the show with Rudetsky was postponed. It has since been rescheduled for this Sunday at The Wallis. Instead of just one show there are now two.

I held the interview you are about to read until closer to the rescheduled shows. Which means some of the conversation we had is less timely now that it was in April. Discussions of Into the Woods, Funny Girl and her performance as Norman Desmond in Sunset Boulevard at the Kennedy Center aren’t as topical today as they were then.

But Block is not just a great performer – as her roles in Falsettos, The Boy From Oz and The Cher Show (for which she won her Tony Award) can attest – she’s also a great interview. So though slightly dated, this is one thoroughly entertaining conversation. What follows are excerpts from that interview that have been edited for length and clarity. I strongly encourage you to go to our YouTube channel to see the full interview.

You’ve sung on stage with Cher, you sung with Dolly Parton, and of course, you have your Tony Award. When you were tackling the very intense roles of Fifer, Belle, Ariel and Mary Poppins at Disneyland, is this what you imagined your career would be?

First of all, damn you! Secondly, as the story has it and it is true, my mother forged my birth certificate so that I could audition for the Disneyland Summer Parade. I wasn’t yet 16, so she had to forge my birth certificate. So that already tells you enough of what you need to know about the loving show mother that embraced me and encouraged me. But I was serious even back then.

I went to the Orange County, which was the High School of Performing Arts back then, and everything had that high level of stakes and intensity and discipline. So whether I was Fifer the Pig dancing down the parade route at Disneyland, I took as much pride in that as I did with doing Stephen Sondheim’s Into the Woods.

You were referred to at your church as the little Ethel Merman when you were seven years old. You have since had the opportunity to play Reno Sweeney in Anything Goes, which is a role that Ethel Merman originated. Are there other Ethel Merman roles that you would like to do?

I think with a lot of the classic musical theater pieces there might have to be some reworking. Would I love to play Annie Get Your Gun? Absolutely. I’d love to play Annie. But I think someone like Larissa FastHorse might have to go in there and change a lot of the lines in the material. But does the music still hold up? Yes. Does the sort of crackle in her performance and the indelible performance that she’s left for us still hold true in my heart? Yes. Because in my heart, I’m an old MGM girl. You put on one of those old movies – anything with Judy Garland, anything with Ann Miller – and it just changes the whole course of my day.

I saw you in Falsettos, and frankly, I think you were robbed for the Tony Award because that performance, that whole show, was one I will never forget. I saw 9 to 5 in Los Angeles. I saw The Boy from Oz and I recently saw Into the Woods before it closed in New York. And the first time I saw you was in Crazy for You at La Mirada. 

Oh, my gosh.

Those shows, absent Crazy for You, are a mix of huge successes and less successful shows. Something Hal Prince said that I thought was really interesting was how much he learned more from the shows that weren’t successful than the ones that were. Is there a difference between the lessons you’ve learned on shows that were successful versus the ones that were not?

I think we just have to say that 75% of most Broadway endeavors would be defined as quote unquote, failures. So right off the bat, three quarters of every show that gets mounted is not going to last [long enough to] get their money back. I can’t speak to the producer end of it. I can only speak to the actor end of it. Yeah, I do learn a lot about myself when things don’t go as I hoped, prayed or wished. I will say I always enter a piece 150% because I think you have to love the project with that much in order to dive in.

When it starts falling apart, I’m also very much aware of that. I like to drink the Kool-Aid, but, all of the flags start going up. Or you go, Oh, this may not be going to Radio City to collect all the Tonys. But somehow I look at these artists that always start from scratch, begin again, are willing to put their vulnerable selves on the line for show after show after show. That, to me, is the biggest statement of most artists I know. That we really are willing to accept three quarters of it as failure and a small one quarter as success, and we keep jumping in headfirst.

Your performance in Falsettos of I’m Breaking Down, strikes me as a three-act play in 4 minutes and 48 seconds. What was the process of creating the ever increasingly intense breakdown over the course of that song?

You’re exactly right. You’ve got to have a beginning, a middle and an end. I find it so interesting that [composer/bookwriter] William Finn wrote essentially an 11:00 number in the first half hour of the play. That, in and of itself, is so out of form that it’s kind of wild. [Director/bookwriter] James Lapine said, I’m going to give you your space. I’m going to give you a couple days by yourself with our choreographer. I’m going to give you a whole host of props that you would find in your kitchen. I’m going to let you play and then I’m going to come in to see what you have created. For James, it’s very much simplicity defines mastery. Believe it or not, that epic song had more crap and props and movement to it than what you saw in its final version on Broadway. But I approached him and he said, How do you see this song? And I said, I think I see this song is like Carol Burnett having her own culinary show. And he goes, okay, well show me what you got.

This is Carol Burnett-slash-Trina trying to put on a very composed culinary show. Little by little, her inner voice, all of her demons, just start taking over. I actually went too far and he had to bring me back. Now we’ve got to find the balance between humor, angst and a conversation with the audience. So that was the balancing act.

Carol Burnett has to be a huge influence for you. While you were doing Sunset Boulevard you posted on your Instagram account a picture of Gloria Swanson side by side with Carol Burnett and said that your performance was going to be a combination of the two. How important is Carol Burnett in your life?

She’s wildly important to me. She, to me, being able to stand up as her and have a conversation with her audience to break that fourth wall and to be secure enough to say this is who I am as Carol, let’s banter and talk, then to embody a character in some of the most dramatic things I’ve ever seen. Then to embody humor and to not be so serious about herself that she could absolutely make fun of herself in the middle of a full skit. She’s a genius. I knew that if I could even do a fraction, if I could do one quarter of what Carol Burnett was doing, then there was a place for me in this world. 

Regarding Into the Woods, you said that was a dream role, 30 years in the making. What inspires you most about this show in general and more specifically about the role of the Baker’s wife?

In the beginning of my career I wanted to wear characters as like a costume and take on their shape, their form, their sound. Now as I get older, the goal is to bring myself to a character. To bring my story, my shape, my sound to these characters. The Baker’s wife is very much that. I am playing opposite my husband [Sebastian Arcelus]. So the baker and the baker’s wife couldn’t be more true than I feel is being portrayed now. My husband and I had quite a journey to get a child. It took us well over five years. As you can imagine, from Chinese herbs to shots to geriatric pregnancies, all of the above. When we tell that story, we are them and they are us.

The themes that are interwoven in this piece: it doesn’t matter if you’re in high school or you’re 80 years old or you’re a middle-aged woman, or you have a child, don’t have a child. Everybody’s journey personifies a different stage in someone’s life, and that’s what you’re going to hear. That’s what the audience is going to be attuned to. So right now, my journey as the baker’s wife and having a child is far different than me wanting to play the baker’s wife, like you said, 30 years ago.

You met Sebastian when you were in Wicked together. You got married before a performance, I think it was six years ago, and then you just went on stage. What do you remember most about that performance, particularly when you were singing As Long As You’re Mine?

Any time a couple, regardless of what stage it is in your relationship, when there’s a secret that just two of you hold, there is that sort of butterflies in the belly. There is sort of the giggle and the unspoken. We know something that nobody else knows. So that excitement certainly carried through. I’m sure we had smiles. [Elphaba] isn’t supposed to smile through the whole show, but internally I’m sure I had an extra sparkle in my eye and a smile that was underneath that green make-up when we did As Long As You’re Mine. It was a defining moment, certainly in my career, because all of those words took on a completely different meaning as husband and wife.

I saw one of the interviews that you did around The Boy From Oz and you said you weren’t doing the Liza Minnelli that we all know and love. This is Liza who was 18. It was before her fame had come to her. If 30 or 40 years from now, somebody wants to do a musical about somebody with whom you collaborated and an actor was going to take on the role of the young Stephanie J. Block, how would you like that character to be portrayed?

I would like her to be hopeful. I would like her to be silly. I would like her to be brassy because I was big and brassy. And I think always kind. Always kind, but ready to play. Those would be the words that I would infuse into the actress. It would be, I think, much like Liza, very difficult to watch that portrayal. Especially if somebody was to play young me but span 35 years of me in 45 minutes. I would feel like there’s a lump in my throat going, Oh, but there’s more. Oh, but you forgot to add that. But I think I would also have an open heart and the grace to accept it and receive it and hopefully lovingly support it.

In a 2006 interview you did with BroadwayWorld, you called the role of Fanny Brice in Funny Girl your “favorite regional theater role.” You went on to say, “It’s time to bring her back to Broadway. What a powerhouse role for any actresses. Producers interested can call 555-Stef!” which I thought was terrific. Fanny is back on Broadway now in a production that has had more rollercoasters than Disneyland. What does this production tell you about the challenges of producing contemporary musical theater and the pitfalls that have to be avoided? 

If I’m going to answer this, my disclaimer is I am taking great liberties because I have no horse in the race as a producer. But what I would like to see happen is that we cast a part based on the merit and the truth and the marriage of an actor and a piece not based on what could possibly sell tickets because of the pedigree of one particular person or one particular thing. It is a collaboration and a marriage and they all have to meet up.

I think we also have to entertain the idea of thinking outside the box. Then step into rehearsal. And then if it doesn’t go as planned, that there is the open-heartedness and the grace that I just spoke about to say, okay, great. You are monstrously talented. Perhaps this is not the vehicle that we all thought it was going to be for you, and that’s not going to service you or the piece. Let’s rethink. How do you feel about that? Let’s re-engage the conversation.

Much like art, live theater, is a living, breathing thing that I wish the creation of a piece can continue to be that without looking at the bottom line. That something is being created for artistry’s sake, and that within that landscape or ecosystem, things change or mistakes were made or gosh, this isn’t working out the way we hoped, or my God, this is working out even better than we hoped, right? But that the conversation can still happen and that grace can surround that. That’s what I feel.

Reviews and audience response to the Kennedy Center production of Sunset Boulevard means you’re giving us all optimism that there might be a Broadway revival. Do you have any new ways to dream, shall we say, about a Broadway production in which you play Norma Desmond?

I have 25% chance, maybe 50% chance, that there will be new ways to dream. The timing is not the timing I would like. There is a project that is in the works for cinema for Sunset Boulevard. That is ALW’s [Andrew Lloyd Webber] focus. That’s The Really Useful Group’s focus. And I can understand that as a business woman. As the artist, I would have loved to have seen a momentum and a transfer.

When I was asked by [Broadway Center Stage] Artistic Director, Jeffrey Finn of the Kennedy Center, what would you like to do in the next year, and I came out with this, I had no idea that this part and I would embrace each other in such a way that it affected me. It affected the audience. It affected the whole piece to be looked at in a completely different way. That was not my goal. But that was one of those times where we were all jumping in headfirst with no expectations, just wanting to create something different. Timely. I am of the school now that if you are going to revive, there needs to be a why. So we shall see what the next couple of years might bring. I’d like to hope that there’s space for it back on Broadway. We’ll see.

There was a Tony Monday last year or the year prior where you posted a video saying to your friends who were or were not nominated, that regardless of that the story continues to be told. What’s the story that’s most important for you to tell through your work today and through these evenings you have with Seth Rudetsky?

For me, right now, the word that is screaming in my head is connection. Absolute connection. If you are putting something out there and it is not being received and then digested and something is being thrown back at you, that’s my ultimate goal. Whether I am playing a part, whether I’m myself, whether I’m beside ridiculous, monstrously talented and smart Seth Rudetsky, for me, the evening was not a win if I did not connect and communicate with my audience. So that’s always the goal.

I certainly think we’ll do that at The Wallis. These intimate nights and spaces, they’re a joy to me. They really fill up my artistic bank. And much like Carol Burnett, it does feel like I’m standing there in my own skin wanting to meet them and wanting them to meet the real me. 

To see the full interview with Stephanie J. Block, please go here.

Main Photo: Stephanie J. Block (Courtesy The Wallis)

The post Bo23: Stephanie J. Block: From Disneyland To The Tonys appeared first on Cultural Attaché.

Overseeing the production is producer Dana Harrel, Creative Entertainment Executive with Walt Disney Imagineering. She comes to Disney after having worked at the La Jolla Playhouse, where she helped develop Xanadu – The Musical and The 25^th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee. “We are missing some of the things from the film,” Harrell says, “but at the same time, we wanted to make sure we had all the excitement. When we brought in the director (Liesl Tommy), she described this as a theatrical ride.”

A live show of the beloved classic Aladdin ran for 13 years in the same theatre, but Harrell believes Frozen will keep the same magic alive (despite some controversy that Disney is doing away with its vintage history to make way for newer properties). “The safest decision is to keep Aladdin running,” she says. “The more exciting decision is to keep bringing new and exciting things to our audiences. We wanted to make sure Aladdin went out on a high and that what we brought in was equally enchanting and amazing and be a family piece. Frozen did that.”

And while the Broadway run and the in-park run are sure to overlap, Harrell points out that the two are suited to their mediums. “These shows have to run 3-5 times a day, 7 days a week,” she says of the California Adventure production. “We have 126 actors with 24 on stage. We are putting everything into six Elsas and six Annas. For the Broadway production, they are going the theatrical route: blood, sweat, and tears with one cast.”

Some shows at the parks are set up as sing-along events, but Frozen isn’t one of them. Even so, the cast has been told to expect more audience participation than usual. “They are all ready for it,” Harrel says. “There’s nothing like 1,800 people singing with you at once. We’ve tried to prep them. They’ll have to live through it; especially with little girls and ‘Let It Go.’ It’s a unique experience and unlike anything we’ve done. Come with open eyes and a full heart. It’s going to be fun.”

All photos courtesy of Disney

The post Get a Behind the Scenes Look at California Adventure’s New Frozen Live Show appeared first on Cultural Attaché.