“ yes,” and I was lucky. The music editor taught me the technicalities. I wrote a rather nice score and got a beautiful singer, Judy Kaye— who went on to win two Tony Awards ®, to sing the title song. Judy was an old college pal. They later replaced her vocal with Emmylou Harris, who was completely unknown then. That experience started my composing career. My acting agent subsequently suggested me to Sydney Pollack, who was directing Jeremiah Johnson. For some reason, Sydney agreed to meet me. Initially, he only wanted five songs, but Warner Brothers wanted a bigger orchestral score. I had never written for a large orchestra, but Sydney asked me to audition by scoring the first ten minutes. I did, and he liked it, so I scored the whole film. Shortly thereafter, Robert Redford himself called and asked me to score his next movie, The Candidate, a great political film. Then I got Pippin on Broadway, which took me away from film scoring temporarily. Later, I returned to LA, scoring many other movies and television shows. That was my second career.
Sherman: That ' s amazing! Jeremiah Johnson and The Candidate were big films.
Rubinstein: One of the great thrills of my life was when The Candidate won the Oscar for Best Original Screenplay. It was nominated for other categories, but it won for the screenplay. I was sitting at home in New York watching TV, and they played my main theme from the film as the writers went up to get their Oscar. It was surreal; an incredible thrill. I had scored those movies mostly by intuition. So, while doing Pippin, I took two extension courses at Juilliard with Stanley Wolfe, a great composer and teacher. One course covered contemporary music— I knew my father ' s repertoire and loved Brahms and Mahler but was unfamiliar with composers like Persichetti and John Cage. The other course was a composition class, where I wrote music that Stanley critiqued. I did that for two years.
Sherman: Do you still play, and do you still write music?
Rubinstein: I still play. The last movie or television show I scored was a long time ago, because I started working more in the theater. In theater, you do eight shows a week. I scored a couple of TV shows while I was doing a stage show, and it was exhausting. So, I stopped. But if somebody called me tonight and said, " Score my next big movie," I would do it.
Sherman: You mentioned Pippin, which debuted over 50 years ago. I ' m sure every interviewer since then has asked you about that show. What ' s your relationship to Pippin after 50 years?
Rubinstein: When you ' re in your 20s, 30s, 40s, you ' re living life, having children, or whatever you ' re doing. You ' re on this sort of treadmill, moving forward and enjoying it, hopefully. I certainly did. I ' ve had a wonderful life and enjoyed most of it, despite some horrible bits we all experience. When you pass your 60s, your life begins to feel like it ' s going to have an ending. Suddenly, your life has a beginning, middle, and end. It becomes one piece, a thing. That is my life, and it has this shape. My childhood, my college years, my composing career— all that is early.
I grew up in New York City, and all I ever wanted was to maybe someday get a small part in a Broadway show and walk onto one of those stages I ' d visited so often. Instead, I got the title role in a big Bob Fosse musical. It was crazy, ridiculous, and I loved every second. Pippin was a project Bob made brilliant, and he allowed me to be part of it. I did my absolute best. So, if Pippin is always the first thing people mention— and certainly it will be in my obituary— that’ s great. So, yes, I’ m proud and happy people want to talk about Pippin or anything else.
Sherman: You have quite a history with the Berkshires. You last performed at Williamstown Theatre
Festival in 2010, and, of course, your father performed at Tanglewood. Tell me about your time in the Berkshires.
Rubinstein: My oldest sister, Eva, married William Sloane Coffin Jr., a famous Presbyterian minister in the 1960s and’ 70s— wonderful, interesting guy. When they married, he was chaplain at Andover, where many of my eighth-grade classmates from New York went. Later, he became chaplain at Williams College, and they had a house in Williamstown, raising their children there. I often visited my sister, niece, and nephews, and I ' d go hear Bill preach each Sunday. He was a huge figure in Williamstown, so I spent plenty of time there. Many years later, I performed Arms and the Man by George Bernard Shaw in Pasadena, directed by Nikos Psacharopoulos, founder of Williamstown Theatre Festival. Afterward, Nikos invited me to Williamstown to perform in The Rover, a restoration comedy by Aphra Behn. Eventually, I ended up directing it, which launched my directing career. Later, I directed Les Liaisons Dangereuses there and acted in Our Town, along with others.
Sherman: Let ' s talk about your newest adventure in the Berkshires. You ' re playing President Eisenhower in the show Eisenhower: This Piece of Ground at Barrington Stage. What ' s something surprising that you learned about Eisenhower in your research, either personally or historically?
Rubinstein: I actually met Eisenhower when I was seven or eight years old at the White House because my dad was performing a concert there. We were invited, so I was just a little boy, and Eisenhower said, " Hello, young fella." That was about it, but I ' ll never forget it. Of course, I lived through all of his eight years as president. But, something striking from both my schooling and my five children ' s schooling is that Eisenhower is generally skipped over almost completely. We talk about him as a great general in World War II, but most history teachers seem to jump
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