Maltby and Shire

Aside from their success as a songwriting team, they've both achieved some impressive things separately (famously, David Shire wrote much of the dance music for Saturday Night Fever, and the Tick-Tock ballet from Company). One of their failures was a musical of Big, the Tom Hanks movie. Yes, it's been done. - They were also protege's of Sondheim in the 1960's -- the Sound of Broadway Music has more. Pointing out I'm far from the first... though possibly the last. - This is regarding the orchestrations of Anyone Can Whistle (which I'm moderately fond of): 'David Shire was rehearsal pianist. Shire: Don [Walker] was always one of my heroes. You don't get any better than The Most Happy Fella, and hundreds of other things. But I could see that he didn't understand the uniqueness of Steve's music. When the scores came back, everything was doubled, the textures were thickened. Don did what he normally would do with other composers. But they didn't write like Steve Sondhiem, and Don didn't understand this.' - I reckon the doubling works great for Cora's songs and The Miracle Song, but for numbers like With So Little To Be Sure Of and the title song it's slightly overpowering, though the revisions Gemignani and co. made for that 1990's AIDS version aren't any better imo. - And a fascinating insight into why Company sounds like a Bacharach record: This is the background as to how Tunick got the gig for Promises, Promises... 'Sondheim: A good friend, Mike Stewart, had written a script called How Do You Do? I Love You. He asked me to do the score. I turned it down, but I said, "I have a couple of promising and talented young composers. I'm mentoring them slightly, I would recommend them." Mike said, "Great." So Maltby and Shire wrote the score. It was done in one of the tents, Westbury, with Phyllis Newman, who was also a friend. I went to see it. I was completely knocked out that they had such a huge orchestra. At intermisssion, I went and looked in at the pit. Twelve people! I thought, "This guy's great!" Burt Bacharach, who I knew slightly, came to New York to do Promises, Promises. He called me and said, "You're one of the few people I know in the theatre -- who should orchestrate the show?" I said, "this guy named Jonathan Tunick strikes me as terrific." I heard the stuff for Promises, Promises and between that and How Do You Do? I figured I'd ask Jonathan to do the orchestrations for Company."'