MUSE of FIRE blog!

MUSE of FIRE has generated a great deal of comment from presenters and audience. Here are a few recent samples.

“...a truly memorable evening...”

“a truly memorable evening of theater. The play was both profoundly moving and, at the same time, an intense, gripping and exciting theatrical experience.” —Richard Morrison, Bonim Co-chair, Temple Shalom of Newton (MA)

“...moves quickly and deftly...

“...a fine and compelling evening of theater...the play is a heartwarming, funny and touching tribute. Skillfully directed by Charles Nelson Reilly, the performance moves quickly and deftly through passages of great humor and great compassion. And Mr. Katz definitely has the “chops” for this show...moving through character voices, emotional peaks, punch lines and passions with great expertise.” —Kenneth Stack, Artistic Director, Acadia Repertory Theater, Mt Desert (ME)

"...fit the bill perfectly...”

“I knew right off the bat that this was a show that would appeal to our membership and the community at large. Our goal is to bring in professional programs and productions and yours fit the bill perfectly...Our ticket sales for this event were one of the highest this year.” —Amy Smith, Administrator, JCC in Sherman (CT)

“...spellbinding...”

“...a bravura performance...the audience had nothing but praise for the dramatic and emotional power of this one-man tour-de-force. A spellbinding evening of topnotch theater.” —Eliot Morrison, Director, Active Adults, United Jewish Center (CT)

“...performed with the degree of passion demanded...”

David Katz’s MUSE of FIRE “explores the complex relationship between musical composition and the achievements of the conductor. Mr. Katz’s portrait of Charles Bruck revealed many subtle complexities of personality and of teaching style by dramatizing both Bruck’s harsh methods and his incorruptible dedication. From monologues early in the play, short dialogues are developed that deepen into conversations, ones that extend even beyond the great teacher’s death. The last scene summarizes Bruck’s influence and power, rounding out a tribute performed with the degree of passion demanded in the service of music, and by extension, all art.” —Nina Robison (CT)

“...theater at its best”

“Intimate theater at its best. The story is true—a great one for any aspiring musician, or just ordinary people who love great music. The play offers insight into what fires a real conductor to be truly special. Katz makes us feel as though we were studying conducting under brilliant Maestro Charles Bruck, and he makes us want to hear and learn more...” —Rita Frost and Francis Caro (CT)

“..Katz succeeds, and then some...”

“Maestro Bruck enters fully formed, though later we get glimpses of one possible reason for his depth of passion in a scene built around music from the Holocaust. The Apprentice enters as a student both nervous and confident, who tries desperately to gain Bruck’s approval. The play is about that development—and it happens right before our eyes—as the Apprentice soon questions whether the Maestro’s approval is worth it, even fighting with the Bruck of his imagination about the best way to tell the story, or even to tell it at all. You can’t be totally accurate, Bruck says, your memories will be different. But truth, Katz seems to understand, is more than accuracy, just as music is more than the precise mechanical transfer of marks on a page to their corresponding vibrations in the air. The truth, the feeling, the passion compels the Apprentice, and he pushes Bruck and his objections aside to persist in telling the story...

“At the climax of the play the Apprentice has a conducting epiphany. Through his struggles, the young man has found the feeling, and Katz the actor evokes that feeling in us...

“For Katz the conductor, Charles Bruck was the revered master, the glass ceiling, who illuminated the upper limit of his conducting vision. For Katz the actor and storyteller, Bruck is the catalyst, the aggravating sand in the oyster. For Katz the conductor, the epiphany is a memory in the past, tinged with a certain regret. For Katz the actor and storyteller, the epiphany is sought in the present, in the hoped-for right now of his performance. He succeeds and then some, bringing alive the at-once compelling and repelling experience of being a student under Charles Bruck. The emotions, aesthetics and intellect of the audience are all fully engaged and challenged. I left the theater with the sense of being entertained, yes, but also of being transported to a less comfortable place, a place where I was given much with which to wrestle.”    —Rev. David Henry (ME)

The premiere of MUSE of FIRE in July 2005 (in an earlier version) coincided with the tenth anniversary of the death of Maestro Bruck. The first performances took place at Oceanside Meadows Theater Barn in Prospect Harbor, Maine and at Acadia Repertory Theater in Bar Harbor, both very close to where many of the original events depicted in the play took place.

David Katz was a student of Charles Bruck at the Pierre Monteux School for five summers, 1984-1988. In addition to being a professional conductor, Katz is an award winning composer with works in the catalogues of G. Schirmer and Carl Fischer, among others. His first stage work, the chamber opera, Light of the Eye, (for which he wrote words and music) won special recognition in the Brooklyn College Chamber Opera competition. It was subsequently seen in performances in New York, Connecticut, Maine, Michigan, Illinois and Wisconsin.

Katz is completing a companion volume to MUSE of FIRE, tentatively entitled Maestro Notorious. His book about orchestral programming, 114 Programs that Grow Orchestras and Build Audiences, is in preparation. (For Mr. Katz’s complete biography, please click “bios.”)

Fireworks Music & Sound

The Fireworks Music, with which MUSE of FIRE climaxes, was created by David Katz and realized by Gregory Davis of Audio Engineering Services, LLC, Roxbury, CT, who also engineers surround-sound playback at some performances of the play. The Fireworks Music weaves excerpts from more than a dozen orchestral compositions, including Ravel’s Daphnis & Chloe, the Sibelius Symphony No. 5, Nielsen’s Symphony No. 4 (Inextinguishable) and the Mahler 4th Symphony. Other major works featured in the play include Siegfried’s Funeral Music from Wagner’s Gotterdammerung, portions of Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 6 (Pathetique) and Schumann’s Symphony No. 2, and the text and music to Schoenberg’s A Survivor from Warsaw, used by permission of Belmont Music, copyright holder.

A number of noted musicians and institutions are mentioned in MUSE of FIRE.

Pierre Monteux (1875-1964) was an eminent French conductor who led the world premieres of Stravinsky’s Petrushka and Rite of Spring and Ravel’s Daphnis & Chloe. He founded the Pierre Monteux School for Conductors and Orchestra Musicians at his summer home in Hancock, Maine, in 1943. Charles Bruck took over leadership of the school in 1969, following Monteux’s death.

Vytautas Marijosius (1911-1996), distinguished music director of the Lithuanian State Opera, was for many years Director of Orchestral Activities at the Hartt School of Music in Hartford, CT. David Katz was his conducting assistant while a student at the school. Charles Bruck succeeded Marijosius at Hartt in 1980.

Margaret Hillis (1921-1998), renowned choral conductor, founded the Chicago Symphony Chorus in 1957. David Katz served as her assistant conductor with the Elgin (IL) Symphony from 1983 until her retirement.

A line from The Harmony of Morning, poem by Mark Van Doren. Elliott Carter’s setting of the poem (not used in MUSE of FIRE) was the piece by which David Katz made his conducting debut in 1979.

Paraphrase of a line from the libretto of Death in Venice, opera by Benjamin Britten, text by Myfawnwy Piper.

Paraphrase of the words spoken by Mr. Chris Frosheiser, in memory of his son, Kurt Frosheiser, PV2, U.S. Army.

The playwright offers thanks, in absentia, to Ruth Draper, Spalding Gray, Uta Hagen and Abe Burrows, for their shining example, and always to Julie Harris.

Additional thanks to Stephen Shiembob, webmaster, for his generous assistance with the website for
MUSE of FIRE.