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what they were going to do with their musical thesis, The Burnt Part Boys. The songwriting team told their mentor that they were thinking about bringing on someone to rewrite it.“ Bill said,‘ Sing me some of the songs. Let me see what you got.’ So we went to his apartment on the Upper West Side, and his only piano was in the bedroom, and there were no seats anywhere,” says Tysen, laughing.“ He laid on the bed, and he was, like,‘ Show me what you got.’ It was a dog-and-pony show for Bill Finn in his bedroom. We sang a handful of songs, and we told him what we wanted to do for the second act. He said,‘ Let ' s do it. I ' m gonna give you a production this summer!’”
The BSC Theatre Lab was the perfect storm with Finn, Boyd, and the Berkshire audience eager to witness new works.“ It felt like a safe space,” says Tysen.“ A lot of that had to do with Bill and Julie allowing us to create, and to fail, and to try new things. They wanted us to put in new songs during previews. Finn was at the heart of it. He was also always pushing us to make it great. We never half-assed anything, because we wanted to make Bill proud.”
They wrote a second act for The Burnt Part Boys and performed the musical in the basement of the Pittsfield Library. In the pit with a pianist, Miller played the guitar and Tysen played the harmonica. The eight-person show was a big hit and became their first Off Broadway production at Playwrights Horizons.
Since then, Tysen’ s Broadway musical credits include Tuck Everlasting, The Great Gatsby, Paradise Square, and Amélie.
Vadim Feichtner— who was the musical director of The Burnt Part Boys, as well as the pianist for the cast recording— was Finn’ s longtime musical director. His credits include The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee and the revival of Falsettos on Broadway, as well as the off-Broadway production of Little Miss
Sunshine. Finn was Feichtner’ s mentor, collaborator, and great friend.“ He put me in the world far earlier than I should have been,” says Feichtner.“ He made the world so much smaller and made everything seem so attainable.”
Feichtner describes Finn as a sort of mad scientist.“ If you saw his scrawl, his handwriting was a little crazy. He would write the chord symbols on the page,
My Grandma’ s social life would make yours feel boring.
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July 2025 BERKSHIRE MAGAZINE // 51