Skyscraper (musical)
Skyscraper is a musical that ran on Broadway in 1965 and 1966. The book was written by Peter Stone, the music by Jimmy Van Heusen with lyrics by Sammy Cahn. Based on the 1945 Elmer Rice play Dream Girl, the Broadway production starred Julie Harris in her first musical. Skyscraper opened on Broadway at the Lunt-Fontanne Theatre on November 13, 1965 and closed on June 11, 1966 after 248 performances and 22 previews; the previews had begun in October. The musical was choreographed by Michael Kidd; the cast included Julie Harris, Peter Marshall, Charles Nelson Reilly. An original cast album was released by Capitol Records; the story is of Georgina, an antiques dealer, determined to save her midtown Manhattan brownstone from the bulldozer. The girders of a new skyscraper are stalking her, she has been offered $165,000 for her Rutherford B. Hayes-era building; when she can manage to stay on track, Georgina is bright in her staunch in her beliefs. But far too she strays into a Walter Mitty-like dream world full of funny fantasies with her effete shop assistant.
The newspaper columnist Dorothy Kilgallen attended a preview performance—a benefit for charity—on October 21, 1965. Despite a theater critics' tradition of refraining from reviewing preview performances of Broadway shows, Kilgallen expressed her opinion of Skyscraper in her column as it appeared in the New York Journal-American, she wrote,I wish someone would pass a law making it illegal for a columnist to see a Broadway show before its official premiere. We would all be spared the personality-splitting question: to comment, or not to comment, when they still might be "fixing?" Variety, other papers, review shows the minute they rear their heads out of town, in any town, so it seems to me the divertissements are fair game when they come into my town and start playing previews to which people pay $50 a ticket for the privilege of sitting in the balcony. I am referring to "Skyscraper," which I saw -- saw the first act of, to be accurate -- at the Lunt-Fontanne Theatre last night, in homage to a worthy charity, the George Junior Republic, of which I am a patron.
The street outside the theatre was jammed with Rolls-Royces and Cadillacs, the playhouse was crammed with attractive and celebrated and polite people, but the politest could not work up much enthusiasm for this new musical comedy. It contains Julie Harris, quite inexplicably, since she is not a musical comedy performer, Charles Nelson Reilly, who does everything but set fire to his trousers to get laughs where none are written in the libretto, one marvelous construction company ballet in the first act which should open the show, but doesn't, no music to sing of, a lot of costumes that imitate last year's Courreges. I will be delighted -- but astonished --. However, in the case of the George Junior Republic Benefit, the show was followed by the traditional glamorous supper party tossed by Lillian and Hubie Boscowitz at the Four Seasons, where the turkey served is far more enjoyable than that dished up at the Lunt-Fontanne; the cast and crew of Skyscraper were angered by Kilgallen's comments.
So was veteran theatrical producer and director Howard Lindsay, not involved with Skyscraper. Kilgallen wrote a follow-up column in which she acknowledged Lindsay's objections and she maintained that she had done nothing wrong, she died two weeks later. Though her column was syndicated throughout North America, newspaper editors outside of New York City omitted portions of it; such was the case with everything. Only those who bought the New York Journal-American read it. Skyscraper opened, five days after Kilgallen's death, to mixed reviews. Despite stiff competition from Hello, Dolly!, Man of La Mancha, Sweet Charity, the production ran for 248 performances and was nominated for five Tony Awards, including Best Musical and Best Actress in a Musical. The New York Times reviewer wrote that Georgina's daydreams "have become broadly comic cartoons of romance, among the funniest moments in a brash, fast-moving musical.... Not all the songs have wit and melodic grace... book is smart and timely.... Julie Harris moves Georgina as well as herself into a musical with commanding confidence."
Internet Broadway Database listing New York Public Library Blog on Skyscraper
Jerome Kern
Jerome David Kern was an American composer of musical theatre and popular music. One of the most important American theatre composers of the early 20th century, he wrote more than 700 songs, used in over 100 stage works, including such classics as "Ol' Man River", "Can't Help Lovin' Dat Man", "A Fine Romance", "Smoke Gets in Your Eyes", "The Song Is You", "All the Things You Are", "The Way You Look Tonight", "Long Ago" and "Who?". He collaborated with many of the leading librettists and lyricists of his era, including George Grossmith Jr. Guy Bolton, P. G. Wodehouse, Otto Harbach, Oscar Hammerstein II, Dorothy Fields, Johnny Mercer, Ira Gershwin and E. Y. Harburg. A native New Yorker, Kern created dozens of Broadway musicals and Hollywood films in a career that lasted for more than four decades, his musical innovations, such as 4/4 dance rhythms and the employment of syncopation and jazz progressions, built on, rather than rejected, earlier musical theatre tradition. He and his collaborators employed his melodies to further the action or develop characterization to a greater extent than in the other musicals of his day, creating the model for musicals.
Although dozens of Kern's musicals and musical films were hits, only Show Boat is now revived. Songs from his other shows, are still performed and adapted. Many of Kern's songs have been adapted by jazz musicians to become standard tunes. Kern was born in New York City, on Sutton Place, in what was the city's brewery district, his parents were Henry Kern, a Jewish German immigrant, Fannie Kern née Kakeles, an American Jew of Bohemian parentage. At the time of Kern's birth, his father ran a stable. Kern grew up on East 56th Street in Manhattan, he showed an early aptitude for music and was taught to play the piano and organ by his mother, an accomplished player and teacher. In 1897, the family moved to New Jersey, where Kern attended Newark High School, he wrote songs for the school's first musical, a minstrel show, in 1901, for an amateur musical adaptation of Uncle Tom's Cabin put on at the Newark Yacht Club in January 1902. Kern left high school before graduation in the spring of his senior year in 1902.
In response, Kern's father insisted that his son work with him instead of composing. Kern, failed miserably in one of his earliest tasks: he was supposed to purchase two pianos for the store, but instead he ordered 200, his father relented, in 1902, Kern became a student at the New York College of Music, studying the piano under Alexander Lambert and Paolo Gallico, harmony under Dr. Austin Pierce, his first published composition, a piano piece, At the Casino, appeared in the same year. Between 1903 and 1905, he continued his musical training under private tutors in Heidelberg, returning to New York via London. For a time, Kern worked as a rehearsal pianist in Broadway theatres and as a song-plugger for Tin Pan Alley music publishers. While in London, he secured a contract from the American impresario Charles Frohman to provide songs for interpolation in Broadway versions of London shows, he began to provide these additions in 1904 to British scores for An English Daisy, by Seymour Hicks and Walter Slaughter, Mr. Wix of Wickham, for which he wrote most of the songs.
In 1905, Kern contributed the song "How'd you like to spoon with me?" to Ivan Caryll's hit musical The Earl and the Girl when the show transferred to Chicago and New York in 1905. He contributed to the New York production of The Catch of the Season, The Little Cherub and The Orchid, among other shows. From 1905 on, he spent long periods of time in London, contributing songs to West End shows like The Beauty of Bath and making valuable contacts, including George Grossmith Jr. and Seymour Hicks, who were the first to introduce Kern's songs to the London stage. In 1909 during one of his stays in England, Kern took a boat trip on the River Thames with some friends, when the boat stopped at Walton-on-Thames, they went to an inn called the Swan for a drink. Kern was much taken with the proprietor's daughter, Eva Leale, working behind the bar, he wooed her, they were married at the Anglican church of St. Mary's in Walton on October 25, 1910; the couple lived at the Swan when Kern was in England. Kern is believed to have composed music for silent films as early as 1912, but the earliest documented film music which he is known to have written was for a twenty-part serial, Gloria's Romance in 1916.
This was one of the first starring vehicles for Billie Burke, for whom Kern had earlier written the song "Mind the Paint", with lyrics by A. W. Pinero; the film is now considered lost. Another score for the silent movies, followed in 1919. Kern was one of the founding members of ASCAP. Kern's first complete score was Broadway's The Red Petticoat, one of the first musical-comedy Westerns; the libretto was by Rida Johnson Young. By World War I, more than a hundred of Kern's songs had been used in about thirty productions Broadway adaptations of West End and European shows. Kern contributed two songs to To-Night's another Rubens musical, it went on to become a hit in London. The best known of Kern's songs from this period is "They Didn't Believe Me", a hit in the New York version of the Paul Rubens and Sidney Jones musical, The Girl from Utah, for which Kern wrote five songs. Kern's song, with four beats to a bar, departed from the customary waltz-rhythms of E
Sy Oliver
Melvin James "Sy" Oliver was an American jazz arranger, composer and bandleader. Sy Oliver was born in Michigan, his mother was a piano teacher and his father was a multi-instrumentalist who made a name for himself demonstrating saxophones at a time that instrument was little used outside of marching bands. Oliver left home at 17 to play with Zack Whyte and his Chocolate Beau Brummels and with Alphonse Trent, he played trumpet with these bands, becoming known for his "growling" horn playing. Oliver conducted many songs for Ella Fitzgerald from her Decca years; as a composer, one of his most famous songs was "T'ain't What You Do", which he co-wrote with Trummy Young. In 1933, Oliver joined Jimmie Lunceford's band, contributing many hit arrangements for the band, including "My Blue Heaven" and "Ain't She Sweet" as well as his original composition "For Dancers Only" which in time became the band's theme song. In 1939, he became one of the first African Americans with a prominent role in a white band when he joined Tommy Dorsey as an arranger, though he ceased playing trumpet at that time.
He led the transition of the Dorsey band from Dixieland to modern big band. His joining was instrumental in Buddy Rich's decision to join Dorsey, his arrangement of "On the Sunny Side of the Street" was a big hit for Dorsey, as were his own compositions "Yes, Indeed!", "Opus One", "The Minor Is Muggin'", "Well, Git It". After leaving Dorsey, Oliver continued working as a freelance arranger and as music director for Decca Records. One of his more successful efforts as an arranger was the Frank Sinatra album I Remember Tommy, a combined tribute to their former boss. June 26, 1950, Sy Oliver and his Orchestra recorded the first American version of C'est si bon and La Vie en rose for Louis Armstrong. In 1974 he began a nightly gig with a small band at the Rainbow Room in New York, he continued that gig until 1984, with occasion time off to make festival or other dates, including at the Roseland Ballroom in New York. He retired in 1984. Oliver died in New York City at the age of 77. For Jimmie Lunceford: Stomp it Off Swingsation Lunceford Special Rhythm is Our Business For Tommy Dorsey: What Is This Thing Called Love?
Yes, Indeed! The Popular Frank Sinatra, Vol. 1, with the Pied Pipers For Ella Fitzgerald: Ella: The Legendary Decca Recordings For Louis Armstrong: Satchmo Serenades featuring "La Vie en rose", "C'est si bon" & others Caterina Valente and Sy Oliver And His Orchestra – Plenty Valence! Under his own name: Sway It with Flowers Sentimental Sy Backstage I Can Get It for You Wholesale Easy walker Take me back! Yes Indeed! Above All Swing music Sy Oliver Papers, the collection of his personal scores and papers, in the Music Division of The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts; the Sy Oliver Story, Part 1, an interview with Les Tompkins, 1974
Hollywood
Hollywood is a neighborhood in the central region of Los Angeles, notable as the home of the U. S. film industry, including several of its historic studios. Its name has come to be a shorthand reference for the people associated with it. Hollywood was incorporated as a municipality in 1903, it was consolidated with the city of Los Angeles in 1910 and soon thereafter, a prominent film industry emerged becoming the most recognizable film industry in the world. In 1853, one adobe hut stood in Nopalera, named for the Mexican Nopal cactus indigenous to the area. By 1870, an agricultural community flourished; the area was known as the Cahuenga Valley, after the pass in the Santa Monica Mountains to the north. According to the diary of H. J. Whitley known as the "Father of Hollywood", on his honeymoon in 1886 he stood at the top of the hill looking out over the valley. Along came a Chinese man in a wagon carrying wood; the man bowed. The Chinese man was asked what he was doing and replied, "I holly-wood," meaning'hauling wood.'
H. J. Whitley decided to name his new town Hollywood. "Holly" would represent England and "wood" would represent his Scottish heritage. Whitley had started over 100 towns across the western United States. Whitley arranged to buy the 480 acres E. C. Hurd ranch, they shook hands on the deal. Whitley shared his plans for the new town with General Harrison Gray Otis, publisher of the Los Angeles Times, Ivar Weid, a prominent businessman in the area. Daeida Wilcox learned of the name Hollywood from Ivar Weid, her neighbor in Holly Canyon and a prominent investor and friend of Whitley's, she recommended the same name to Harvey. H. Wilcox, who had purchased 120 acres on February 1, 1887, it wasn't until August 1887 Wilcox decided to use that name and filed with the Los Angeles County Recorder's office on a deed and parcel map of the property. The early real-estate boom busted at the end of that year. By 1900, the region had a post office, newspaper and two markets. Los Angeles, with a population of 102,479 lay 10 miles east through the vineyards, barley fields, citrus groves.
A single-track streetcar line ran down the middle of Prospect Avenue from it, but service was infrequent and the trip took two hours. The old citrus fruit-packing house was converted into a livery stable, improving transportation for the inhabitants of Hollywood; the Hollywood Hotel was opened in 1902 by H. J. Whitley, a president of the Los Pacific Boulevard and Development Company. Having acquired the Hurd ranch and subdivided it, Whitley built the hotel to attract land buyers. Flanking the west side of Highland Avenue, the structure fronted on Prospect Avenue, still a dusty, unpaved road, was graded and graveled; the hotel was to become internationally known and was the center of the civic and social life and home of the stars for many years. Whitley's company sold one of the early residential areas, the Ocean View Tract. Whitley did much to promote the area, he paid thousands of dollars for electric lighting, including bringing electricity and building a bank, as well as a road into the Cahuenga Pass.
The lighting ran for several blocks down Prospect Avenue. Whitley's land was centered on Highland Avenue, his 1918 development, Whitley Heights, was named for him. Hollywood was incorporated as a municipality on November 14, 1903, by a vote of 88 for and 77 against. On January 30, 1904, the voters in Hollywood decided, by a vote of 113 to 96, for the banishment of liquor in the city, except when it was being sold for medicinal purposes. Neither hotels nor restaurants were allowed to serve liquor before or after meals. In 1910, the city voted for merger with Los Angeles in order to secure an adequate water supply and to gain access to the L. A. sewer system. With annexation, the name of Prospect Avenue changed to Hollywood Boulevard and all the street numbers were changed. By 1912, major motion-picture companies had set up production in Los Angeles. In the early 1900s, most motion picture patents were held by Thomas Edison's Motion Picture Patents Company in New Jersey, filmmakers were sued to stop their productions.
To escape this, filmmakers began moving out west to Los Angeles, where attempts to enforce Edison's patents were easier to evade. The weather was ideal and there was quick access to various settings. Los Angeles became the capital of the film industry in the United States; the mountains and low land prices made Hollywood a good place to establish film studios. Director D. W. Griffith was the first to make a motion picture in Hollywood, his 17-minute short film In Old California was filmed for the Biograph Company. Although Hollywood banned movie theaters—of which it had none—before annexation that year, Los Angeles had no such restriction; the first film by a Hollywood studio, Nestor Motion Picture Company, was shot on October 26, 1911. The H. J. Whitley home was used as its set, the unnamed movie was filmed in the middle of their groves at the corner of Whitley Avenue and Hollywood Boulevard; the first studio in Hollywood, the Nestor Company, was established by the New Jersey–based Centaur Company in a roadhouse at 6121 Sunset Boulevard, in October 1911.
Four major film companies – Paramount, Warner Bros. RKO, Columbia – had studios in Hollywood, as did several minor companies and rental studios. In the 1920s, Hollywood was the fifth-largest industry in the nation. By the 1930s, Hollywood studios became vertically integrated, as production and exhibition was controlled by these companies, enabling Hollywood to produce 600 films per year. H
Nelson Riddle
Nelson Smock Riddle Jr. was an American arranger, composer and orchestrator whose career stretched from the late 1940s to the mid-1980s. His work for Capitol Records kept such vocalists as Frank Sinatra, Ella Fitzgerald, Nat King Cole, Judy Garland, Dean Martin, Peggy Lee, Johnny Mathis, Rosemary Clooney and Keely Smith household names, he found commercial and critical success again in the 1980s with a trio of Platinum albums with Linda Ronstadt. His orchestrations earned an Academy Award and three Grammy Awards. Riddle was born in Oradell, New Jersey, the only child of Marie Albertine Riddle and Nelson Smock Riddle, moved to nearby Ridgewood, where he attended Ridgewood High School, where he was encouraged to pursue his interest in music. Following his father's interest in music, he began taking piano lessons at age eight and trombone lessons at age fourteen. A formative experience was hearing Serge Koussevitsky and the Boston Symphony Orchestra playing Maurice Ravel's Boléro. Riddle said later: "...
I've never forgotten it. It's as if the orchestra leaped from the stage and smacked you in the face..."By his teenage years he had decided to become a professional musician. I wanted to be a jazz trombone player, but I didn't have the coordination." So his inclinations began to turn to writing — composing and arranging. Riddle and his family had a summer house in New Jersey, he enjoyed Rumson so much that he convinced his parents to allow him to attend high school there for his senior year. In Rumson while playing for trumpeter Charlie Briggs' band, the Briggadiers, he met one of the most important influences on his arranging style: Bill Finegan, with whom he began arranging lessons. Despite being only four years older than Riddle, Finegan was more musically sophisticated, within a few years creating not only some of the most popular arrangements from the swing era, such as Glenn Miller's "Little Brown Jug", but great jazz arrangements such as Tommy Dorsey's "Chloe" and "At Sundown" from the mid-1940s.
After his graduation from Rumson High School, he spent his late teens and early 20s playing trombone in and arranging for various local dance bands, culminating in his association with the Charlie Spivak Orchestra. In 1943, Riddle joined the Merchant Marine, serving at Sheepshead Bay, New York for about two years while continuing to work for the Charlie Spivak Orchestra, he studied orchestration under composer Alan Shulman. After his enlistment term ended, Riddle traveled to Chicago to join Tommy Dorsey's orchestra in 1944, where he remained the orchestra's third trombone for eleven months until drafted by the Army in April 1945, shortly before the end of World War II, he was discharged in June 1946, after fifteen months of active duty. He moved shortly thereafter to Hollywood to pursue his career as an arranger and spent the next several years writing arrangements for multiple radio and record projects. In May 1949, Doris Day had a #2 hit, "Again", backed by Riddle. In 1950, Riddle was hired by composer Les Baxter to write arrangements for a recording session with Nat King Cole.
Although one of the songs Riddle had arranged, "Mona Lisa," soon became the biggest selling single of Cole's career, the work was credited to Baxter. However, once Cole learned the identity of the arrangement's creator, he sought out Riddle's work for other sessions, thus began a fruitful partnership that furthered the careers of both men at Capitol. During the same year, Riddle struck up a conversation with Vern Yocum, a big band jazz musician who would transition into music preparation for Frank Sinatra and other entertainers at Capitol Records. A collaboration followed with Vern becoming Riddle's "right hand" as copyist and librarian for the next thirty years. In 1953, Capitol Records executives viewed the up-and-coming Riddle as a prime choice to arrange for the newly arrived Frank Sinatra. Sinatra was reluctant however, preferring instead to remain with Axel Stordahl, his long-time collaborator from his Columbia Records years; when success of the first few Capitol sides with Stordahl proved disappointing, Sinatra relented and Riddle was called in to arrange his first session for Sinatra, held on April 30, 1953.
The first product of the Riddle-Sinatra partnership, "I've Got the World on a String", became a runaway hit and is credited with relaunching the singer's slumping career. Riddle's personal favorite was a Sinatra ballad album, one of his most successful recordings, Only the Lonely. For the next decade, Riddle continued to arrange for Sinatra and Cole, in addition to such Capitol artists as Kate Smith, Judy Garland, Dean Martin, Keely Smith, Sue Raney, Ed Townsend, he found time to release his own instrumental discs of 45 rpm and albums on the Capitol label. For example, Riddle's most successful tune was "Lisbon Antigua", released in November 1955 and reached and remained at the #1 position for four weeks in 1956. Riddle's most notable LP discs were Hey... Let Yourself Go and C'mon... Get Happy, both of which peaked at a respectable number twenty on the Billboard charts. While at Capitol, Riddle continued his successful career arranging music for film, most notably with MGM's Conrad Salinger on the first onscreen duet between Bing Crosby and Sinatra in High Society, the 1957 film version of Pal Joey directed by George Sidney for Columbia Pictures.
In 1969, he arranged and conducted the music for the film Paint Your Wagon, which starred a trio of non-singers, Lee Marvin, Clint Eastwood, Jean Seberg. In 1957, Riddle and his orchestra were feature
Frank Sinatra filmography
Frank Sinatra was an American singer and producer, one of the most popular and influential musical artists of the 20th century. Over the course of his acting career he created a body of work that one biographer described as being "as varied and rewarding as that of any other Hollywood star". Sinatra began his career as a singer in his native Hoboken, New Jersey, but increasing success led to a contract to perform on stage and radio across the United States. One of his earliest film roles was in the 1935 short film Major Bowes' Amateur Theatre of the Air, a spin off from the Major Bowes Amateur Hour radio show, he appeared in a full-length film in an uncredited cameo singing performance in Las Vegas Nights, singing "I'll Never Smile Again" with Tommy Dorsey's The Pied Pipers. His work with Dorsey's band led to appearances in the full-length films Las Vegas Nights and Ship Ahoy; as Sinatra's singing career grew, he appeared in larger roles in feature films, several of which were musicals, including three alongside Gene Kelly: Anchors Aweigh, On the Town and Take Me Out to the Ball Game.
As his acting career developed further, Sinatra produced several of the film's in which he appeared, directed one—None but the Brave—which he produced and in which he starred. Sinatra's film and singing careers had declined by 1952, when he was out-of-contract with both his record company and film studio. In 1953 he re-kindled his film career by targeting serious roles: he auditioned for—and won—a role in From Here to Eternity for which he won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor and the Golden Globe for Best Supporting Actor – Motion Picture. Other serious roles followed, including a portrayal of an ex-convict and drug addict in The Man with the Golden Arm, for which he was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actor and the British Academy Film Award for the Best Actor in a Leading Role. Sinatra received numerous awards for his film work, he won the Golden Globe for Best Actor – Motion Picture Musical or Comedy for Pal Joey, was nominated in the same category for Come Blow Your Horn.
Three of the films in which Sinatra appears, The House I Live In, The Manchurian Candidate and From Here to Eternity —have been added to the Library of Congress's National Film Registry. The House I Live In—a film that opposes anti-Semitism and racism—was awarded a special Golden Globe and Academy Award. In 1970, at the 43rd Academy Awards, Sinatra was presented with the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award. DeMille Award
Kurt Weill
Kurt Julian Weill was a German Jewish composer, active from the 1920s in his native country, in his years in the United States. He was a leading composer for the stage, best known for his fruitful collaborations with Bertolt Brecht. With Brecht, he developed productions such as his best-known work The Threepenny Opera, which included the ballad "Mack the Knife". Weill held the ideal of writing music that served a useful purpose, he wrote several works for the concert hall. He became a United States citizen on August 27, 1943. Weill was born on the third of four children to Albert Weill and Emma Weill, he grew up in a religious Jewish family in the "Sandvorstadt", the Jewish quarter in Dessau in Saxony, where his father was a cantor. At the age of twelve, Weill started taking piano lessons and made his first attempts at writing music. Jewish Wedding Song. In 1915, Weill started taking private lessons with Albert Bing, Kapellmeister at the "Herzogliches Hoftheater zu Dessau", who taught him piano, music theory, conducting.
Weill performed publicly both as an accompanist and soloist. The following years he composed numerous Lieder to the lyrics of poets such as Joseph von Eichendorff, Arno Holz, Anna Ritter, as well as a cycle of five songs titled Ofrahs Lieder to a German translation of a text by Yehuda Halevi. Weill graduated with an Abitur from the Oberrealschule of Dessau in 1918, enrolled at the Berliner Hochschule für Musik at the age of 18, where he studied composition with Engelbert Humperdinck, conducting with Rudolf Krasselt, counterpoint with Friedrich E. Koch, attended philosophy lectures by Max Dessoir and Ernst Cassirer; the same year, he wrote his first string quartet. Weill's family experienced financial hardship in the aftermath of World War I, in July 1919, Weill abandoned his studies and returned to Dessau, where he was employed as a répétiteur at the Friedrich-Theater under the direction of the new Kapellmeister, Hans Knappertsbusch. During this time, he composed an orchestral suite in E-flat major, a symphonic poem of Rainer Maria Rilke's The Lay of the Love and Death of Cornet Christopher Rilke as well as Schilflieder, a cycle of five songs to poems by Nikolaus Lenau.
In December 1919, through the help of Humperdinck, Weill was appointed as Kapellmeister at the newly founded Stadttheater in Lüdenscheid, where he directed opera and singspiel for five months, composed a cello sonata and Ninon de Lenclos, a now lost one-act operatic adaptation of a play by Ernst Hardt. From May to September 1920, Weill spent a couple of months in Leipzig, where his father had become the new director of a Jewish orphanage. Before he returned to Berlin, in September 1920, he composed Sulamith, a choral fantasy for soprano, female choir, orchestra. Back in Berlin, Weill had an interview with Ferruccio Busoni in December 1920. After examining some of Weill's compositions, Busoni accepted him as one of five master students in composition at the Preußische Akademie der Künste in Berlin. From January 1921 to December 1923, Weill studied music composition with him and counterpoint with Philipp Jarnach in Berlin. During his first year he composed his first symphony, Sinfonie in einem Satz, as well as the lieder Die Bekehrte and two Rilkelieder for voice and piano.
To support his family in Leipzig, he worked as a pianist in a Bierkeller tavern. In 1922, Weill joined the November Group's music faction; that year he composed a psalm, a divertimento for orchestra, Sinfonia Sacra: Fantasia and Hymnus for Orchestra. On November 18, 1922, his children's pantomime Die Zaubernacht premiered at the Theater am Kurfürstendamm. Out of financial need, Weill taught music theory and composition to private students from 1923 to 1925. Among his students were Claudio Arrau, Maurice Abravanel, Heinz Jolles, Nikos Skalkottas. Arrau and Jolles remained members of Weill's circle of friends thereafter, Jolles's sole surviving composition predating the rise of the Nazi regime in 1933 is a fragment of a work for four pianos he and Weill wrote jointly. Weill's compositions during his last year of studies included Quodlibet, an orchestral suite version of Die Zaubernacht, seven medieval poems for soprano, viola, French horn, bassoon, Recordare for choir and children's choir to words from the Book of Lamentations.
Further premieres that year included a performance of his Divertimento for Orchestra by the Berlin Philharmonic under the direction of Heinz Unger on April 10, 1923, the Hindemith-Amar Quartet's rendering of Weill's String Quartet, Op. 8, on June 24, 1923. In December 1923, Weill finished his studies with Busoni. In 1922 he joined the Novembergruppe, a group of leftist Berlin artists that included Hanns Eisler and Stefan Wolpe. In February 1924 the conductor Fritz Busch introduced him to the dramatist Georg Kaiser, with whom Weill would have a long-lasting creative partnership resulting in several one-act operas. At Kaiser's house in Grünheide, Weill first met singer/actress Lotte Lenya in the summer of 1924; the couple were married twice: in 1926 and again in 1937. She took great care to support Weill's work, after his death she took it upon herself to increase awareness of his music, forming the Kurt Weill Foundation. From November 1924 to May 1929, Weill wrote hundreds of reviews for the influential and comprehensive radio program guide Der
