(b New York, 19 April 1938). American orchestrator, conductor and composer. His education included degrees from Bard College (1958) and the Juilliard School of Music (1960), and compositional study with Nordoff, Giannini and Bernstein. Work in New York as an instrumentalist, conductor and arranger led to the first commercially successful musical with which Tunick was associated, Promises, Promises (1968). Company, two years later, cemented his position at the forefront of theatre orchestrators and led to a long-lasting association with the work of Stephen Sondheim. His pre-eminence in this area has caused notable theatre composers to seek his services, inluding David Shire, Charles Strouse and Maury Yeston, and has fittingly led to his receiving the first Tony award given for orchestration, for Titanic (1997). His film work includes scores for Fort Apache, the Bronx (1981), Endless Love (1981) and I am the Cheese (1983), and he received an Academy Award for A Little Night Music (1977). On television his work has been heard in ‘Blinded by the Light’, ‘Concealed Enemies’, ‘Brotherly Love’, a series of adaptations from John Cheever and the themes for the series ‘Tattinger’s’ and ‘Love and War’. For recordings he has arranged and conducted for Cleo Laine, Kiri Te Kanawa, Plácido Domingo and Barbra Streisand, with Emmy and Grammy awards to his credit.
Tunick’s position as a master of orchestration is closely allied to his compositional insight, his ability to absorb the point of a musical work and write it as if conceived for orchestra from the beginning. Any initial supposition from his early successes – Promises, Promises and Company – that he was solely attuned to those current popular sounds was immediately disproven by his flawless evocation of variously glamourized aspects of the past in Follies and his invention of a Ravelian operetta texture (completely eschewing the modern rhythm section) for A Little Night Music, and with each subsequent score. At a time when amplification is ubiquitous in the theatre, his work remains acoustically conceived and balanced, revealing a fine-tuned ear not just for music but also for its dramatic import. In his hands, nuances of timbre assume the same import as in fine operatic composition.
(selective list)
composers in parentheses
|
Promises, Promises (B. Bacharach, 1968); Company (S. Sondheim, 1970); Follies (Sondheim, 1971); A Little Night Music (Sondheim, 1973); Goodtime Charley (L. Grossman, 1975); A Chorus Line (M. Hamlisch 1975, collab.); Pacific Overtures (Sondheim, 1976); Ballroom (B. Goldenberg, 1978); Sweeney Todd (Sondheim, 1979); Merrily We Roll Along (Sondheim, 1981); Nine (M. Yeston, 1982); Dance a Little Closer (C. Strouse, 1983); Baby (D. Shire, 1983); Into the Woods (Sondheim, 1987); Nick & Nora (Strouse, 1990); Phantom (Yeston, 1992); A Grand Night for Singing (R. Rodgers, 1993, collab.); Passion (Sondheim, 1994); The Petrified Prince (M.J. LaChiusa, 1994); Martin Guerre (C.-M. Schönberg, 1996); Titanic (Yeston, 1997) |
C. Zadan: ‘Orchestration’, Sondheim & Co. (New York, 1974, 3/1990), 154–9
P. O’Haire: ‘As a Composer, he’s become a Big Cheese’, New York Daily News (16 Nov 1983)
J. Tunick: ‘Broadway in the Concert Hall: by Special Arrangement Only’, Symphony Magazine, xxxviii/1 (1987), 6
J. Tunick: introduction in S. Sondheim and H. Wheeler: A Little Night Music (New York, 1991), 1–11 [libretto]
R. Dahlin: ‘Jonathan Tunick: Master Orchestrator’, Show Music, ix/4 (1993–4), 21–4
S.P. Flahaven: ‘Tunick: an Artist and a Craftsman’, The Sondheim Review, iii/1 (1996), 22–6
JON ALAN CONRAD