More than soap operas
The Herald-Palladium, 4/7/2011
More than soap operas
Emmy winner, Stevensville native Brian D. Siewert guests with SMSO
By JEREMY D. BONFIGLIO
H-P Features Writer
BENTON HARBOR — As a child of the 1970s, it’s not hard to imagine how Brian D. Siewert became enamored with the piano.
“You’d turn on the radio and hear Billy Joel or Elton John, and there was just that sound,” Siewert says by telephone from his home in Nashville, Tenn. “It’s that one instrument that is probably most like an orchestra in and of itself. It’s so big, and yet it can be so small sounding. It could sound like a drummer when they were banging on it, and yet it could be like a string section so warm and soft. It could be all things.”
So when the Stevensville native was 7 years old, he asked Santa Claus to bring him a piano for Christmas. Santa complied. He asked his next door neighbor, Kay Nelson, to teach him how to play it, becoming the first in a long line of piano students. And he even found a way to dump the trumpet for the synthesizer in Tom Mitchell’s middle school jazz band. Siewert has since mapped out a career as a musician and television composer that has earned him 24 Emmy Award nominations and four statuettes.
On Saturday, he will showcase some of that work as guest composer for the Southwest Michigan Symphony Orchestra’s “Soap Operas, Symphonies & Sexy Music,” a concert at Lake Michigan College’s Mendel Center that will feature Siewert’s seven-piece Nashville band, singer Jeff Alfiero, singer-producer-songwriter Shannon Sanders (India.Arie, Michael McDonald) and a youth choir that will be assembled at Roosevelt Elementary later today after a music workshop for middle and high school students.
“The coolest part when I look back is that I had no Plan B,” Siewert says. “I just knew music. It was my life. There just was no alternative. Somehow, someway I was going for it. It was just diving in the deep end head first.”
Siewert has long credited his childhood growing up in Stevensville and the opportunities he had in the Lakeshore school system as being the catalyst for his success. He emphasized that appreciation in 2008, when he created the Brian D. Siewert Artist in Motion Scholarship, a $10,000 annual award given to a senior at Lakeshore High School.
“As a kid I was just exposed to so much music, whether it was from the radio or opportunities in school or church, it surrounded and just moved me,” Siewert says. “It was a place that really opened up new opportunities for me. I could act, I could sing crazy, I could dance, I could play in my rock band, I could write the crazy young love songs that only kids can write. That all came from school.”
After graduating from Lakeshore High in 1985, Siewert studied music at the prestigious Berklee College of Music in Boston, then moved to Nashville, where he attended Belmont University and Vanderbilt University. When he was still a student he began working as an unpaid intern at a Nashville studio, where he received a real music education.
“Being exposed to that world made me say, ‘I’m here. I’m in this. This is where I’m supposed to be,’” Siewert says. “It was the opportunity to meet decision makers, record producers, other musicians. I would play in cover bands to pay the rent for years so I could be an unpaid intern at these studios.”
Siewert’s breakthrough came when he met Teddy Irwin, who not only was the principal composer for such CBS daytime dramas as “As The World Turns” and “Guiding Light,” but was known in the studio world for being the original acoustic guitar player on Neil Young’s “Heart of Gold” and playing on Jimmy Buffet’s “Margaritaville.”
“He came to Nashville to have his compositions arranged and recorded by some pros,” Siewert says. “I kept bugging him, asking him lots of questions. He saw the fire in my eyes and the passion for what he did. I definitely needed some molding, but he saw the potential and took me under his wing.”
Siewert himself was later hired as principal composer for “Guiding Light” and “As The World Turns.” He also composed music for NBC’s “Another World” and Aaron Spelling’s “Sunset Beach.”
“There was a time where I was writing for all four shows at the same time,” Siewert says. “It’s a lot of responsibility and a lot of energy, too. You have to generate a voice for all these characters in plotlines that would run for two weeks to six months.”
He says a lot of that work was creating themes for some of the couples that appeared on the shows, and making sure there were enough variations on those themes to fit the ever-changing drama that was unfolding.
“I would generate a library of variations so they could go to any flavor, any color, any mood, at any given time,” Siewert says. “It was my job to arm them with all those colors for their choosing. You know, I’d get a call that we have a crazy evil twin storyline coming, so I knew the mood for me for about a month was going to be a lot of crazy evil twin music.”
The pop power ballad “Where There is Hope,” which was featured on “Guiding Light,” earned him the Emmy for Best Original Song in 2002. He won another Emmy for a Marvel Comics-”Guiding Light” storyline collaboration.
“I just got a comic panel, and that’s all I had to work with,” says Siewert, who will feature both pieces in Saturday’s concert.
“Soap Themes & A Musical Superhero” will give a behind-the-scenes look at how Siewert came up with the music for the Marvel crossover, complete with some video and the before and after pieces.
“It’s kind of looking at the job of a composer,” Siewert says. “It’s a little bit of a peek behind the curtain.”
Siewert also has compiled a “Classic TV Themes Medley,” which opens the concert’s second half; another Emmy winner, “To The Moon”; and “Sexy Music Medley.”
The final two pieces - “The Piano Men Medley” (Joel’s “She’s Always a Woman” and John’s “Your Song”) and “September” by Earth, Wind & Fire - will be backed by Southwest Michigan Volunteer Youth Choir. Siewert and Sanders will conduct a workshop and Q&A for area middle and high school students at 5 p.m. today at Roosevelt Elementary School in Stevensville. At 6:45 p.m., singers interested in performing the two songs with the SMSO on Saturday will be invited to rehearse with Siewert and Sanders, followed by rehearsals at 2 and 3 p.m. Saturday. The workshop is free and open to all area middle and high school students and must be attended to perform Saturday with the orchestra.
“It was opportunities like that, which fed me as a kid,” Siewert says. “If there’s something I can do to give back to the place that gave me that encouragement, to be another voice that says you’re great, you can do this, to find that kid who is like me with no Plan B, it’s just the biggest thrill.”
The first half of the concert will feature the orchestra performing the themes from television’s “Mission Impossible” and “Masterpiece Theater” and John Williams’ theme from the film “Jurassic Park.”
SMSO music director and conductor Robin Fountain, who has already dedicated a summer concert to the music of James Bond, had no trouble selecting TV and movie themes for a program that both contrasts and compliments Siewert’s work.
“‘Mission Impossible’?” Fountain says. “Come on, that’s the coolest music in the world. It not only encapsulates that particular era but the essence of spying. I can’t think of anything better to pair with Brian, who is a genius at finding exactly the right music for a particular screen moment. ”
As for Siewert, he hopes to take this orchestra program on the road, but he still has plenty to keep him busy. He’s not only composed new works for the final season of “Oprah,” but other popular syndicated shows - “Dr. Oz,” “Rachael Ray,” “Dr. Phil” and “The Nate Berkus Show.” His work also is currently underscoring Oprah’s newly established OWN network.
He also has plans to record “Chopin Reimagined” by the end of the year, a project that will put full orchestral arrangements to some of the composer’s most popular piano pieces.
But for now, Siewert doesn’t want to look too far past Saturday’s homecoming performance - a performance he says will be a rare privilege.
“I consider it a gift,” Siewert says, “I think we’re going to have a blast.”