The seminal idea for ONE was planted when I was age 16 on Martha’s Vineyard in the Abel’s Hill, Chilmark living room of Broadway legend E.Y. Harburg, famed lyricist of “Over the Rainbow.”
I asked “Yip” what was the greatest song ever written. Without hesitation he began to sing the slave spiritual “Sing Low, Sweet Chariot.” Yip then encouraged me to “take on the subject of slavery” and to use the rich legacy of Negro spirituals as inspiration for my original music. Yip was an atheist and used his enormous talents as a ‘social justice’ voice on Broadway, in songs like “Brother Can You Spare A Dime,” “The Eagle and Me,” etc.
Years later a fortuitous grant offered the opportunity to use Yips’s inspiring artistic challenge. At this juncture, I won a nationally competitive and highly coveted Meet The Composer Residency Award (MTCRA) which directly and fully funds a composer $40K per year for three years to write music of his or her choice. The only caveat: the award requires the partnership of a coalition of major organizations in the
residing city to over see the management of the project and pay for all the performances.
This MTCRA funding, supported me to work with a totally rare and extraordinary team of Boston area organizations that otherwise may have never ever gathered as a “team”:
- Two major Boston Jewish organizations: The New England Anti Defamation League (ADL) and The Jewish Community Relations Council of Great Boston
- The Ten Point Coalition (a group of Boston Black urban churches ) 3. The Springfield Symphony Orchestra
- The Leventhal-Sidman Jewish Community Center in Newton, MA 5. Somerville Community Action Committee
- Concord Baptist Church, South End Boston, a historically Black church noted for its arts programing and venerable Black history.
This rare organization team, bonded my my music, —-after I put in three consecutive years of writing, composition, and workshops,—- produced a two-hour narrated performance piece entitled, MOSES, The Gospel Opera with a cast of 200. This work premiered at Boston’s downtown Cutler Majestic Theater to full houses of almost equal numbers of urban Blacks and Jews, with Rabbis narrating in Hebrew and Black ministers narrating in English. Cast included: a 70-voice children’s choir comprised of urban underserved Black Christian children and mainly suburban Jewish children; hip hop dancers; modern jazz dancers; a classical choir, and a gospel choir. MOSES, The Gospel Opera was tremendously supported by top tier new England funders including but limited to: Robert and the late Myra Kraft, Paul Fireman, Founder and Ex-CEO and Founder of Reebok, Steve and Barbara Grossman, Joel Culter and David Fialkow, who gifted $230K for the premiere, Sid Topol, Seth and Beth Klarman, and Ken And Gerri Sweder. Combined Jewish Philanthropies of Boston played a key facilitating role.
The Fialkows brought David Mamet to the premiere. David was so impressed he wrote me a hand-written letter from Cabot,VT saying MOSES, The Gospel Opera was “an extraordinary event” which should be “repeated all over the country.”
Following the Boston Premiere I received an unsolicited call from Stephen Spielberg’s foundation asking me how could they help further the work. I told them a cast of 200 was unwieldily and would they support the transformation of MOSES, The Gospel Opera into a 25 cast traditional musical theater dance format. That lead to two grants from Speilberg’s Righteous Persons Foundation and one from The Marilyn and Jeffery Katzenberg Foundation. Both unsolicited awards were matched by the Black Boston mega-church Jubilee Christian Church with a grant of $100K and another gift from a Black millionaire patron, the late Ross Love, in Cincinnati of another $100k. The new generation work was entitled ONE.
The Spielberg/Katzenberg Foundation money with matching funds enabled me to do three things over four years:
#1. Collaborate l in creating a new libretto or book with a top Broadway director, Keith Batten, who directs all the international shows of Aida and Beauty and the Beast for Disney Theatrica. Keith was also assistant director to Julie Taymor on Spiderman. Keith mentored the writing of the new book over a two-year period but holds no writing credits.
#2. Stage workshop performances with sold out audiences in: Chicago at the North Shore Center for the Performing Arts in Skokie, IL; at the JCC in Manhattan; The Martha’s Vineyard Performing Arts Center; in Cincinnati at the Performing Arts Center; and at lastly at The Alvin Ailey’s Weill Theater in NYC.
#3. And for all the above developmental workshops I had the creative team and cast of eight Alvin Ailey first company dancers, including Mathew Rushing, Ailey’s lighting designer, Al Crawford; Ailey’s stage manager, Alaric Hahn, and two top Ailey choreographers, Hope Boykin
and Ray Mercer (who is the longest performing artist in the Lion King). Kelly Peters (a pioneer of hip hop dance on Martha’s Vineyard) was part of the New York City performances as a hip hop choreographer,
Inserted in this timeline was a special performance of a 30-minute excerpt from at the International General Assembly of Jewish Federations in Chicago, which was funded by the late Myra Kraft. Myra flew a cast of eight from Boston to Chicago, including a top Boston hip hop crew and two first company Ailey dancers from New York City. Myra also flew in an Ethiopian orphan children’s choir from Israel, called Yemin Orde, to perform at this event in Chicago singing my original songs with a Black urban Chicago Children’s Choir, The Soul Children.
ONE was further influenced by life-changing two week tour of Israel. I traveled to Haifa, Jerusalem, Masada, and Tel Aviv. In Jerusalem at the Western Wall I realized how the Western Wall and the US urban city walls with graffiti had a similar roles, which I could use dramatically via special effects in ONE. Both Walls hold enormous hope for positive
change for the people that engaged them. The Jerusalem Wall via prayers and dreams answered to requests put in the cracks of limestone and the myriad urban walls which provide outlets for artists’ emotional hopes and expressions in graffiti art. Both walls connect people across race, nationality, and social economic level world wide, as hip hop graffiti art is international. At a visit to the Judaic Jerusalem Orthodox middle school a new take on the 4,500-year-old theme of exodus from slavery evolved. When I congratulated the head Rabbi principal on sustaining Jewish traditions thousands of years old, he sadly replied by saying: “Our biggest problem is students accessing porn on the internet. It’s an addiction of enormous challenge.” I realized another type of slavery had even invaded this secluded protected space and that I would spotlight that modern slavery in my work.
At this juncture I met my present Philippine wife resided in that country a decade and I started a family. We lived at 7000 feet above sea level in the remote mountains of the Northern area of the country and enjoyed an idldllic life there, growing our own organic foods, and pretty much living off the grid.
Simultaneously, I completed major development steps on ONE the with the top English speaking professional theater in Manila, Repertory Philippines and an internationally famous hip hop crew, The Philippine Allstars. I connected with Manila’s top actor/director Miguel Faustman, who guided ONE through two major workshops and a preview at the USA Embassy Residence for leaders in the Manila community.
When I returned to America last year, I realized ironically, the world faced similarly daunting challenges as Yip faced in the 1940’s: epidemic levels of anti-semitism, Black racism, white supremacists, international dictatorships that threatened with world war, and the degradation of women and children. In addition, one other sad reality: slavery—both internal via addictions (as at the Jerusalem middle school) and external physical enslavements in trafficking—- still exist 4,500 years after The Exodus, at levels never before seen in World History.
I now look forward to securing the largest possible audience to enjoy ONE, a work which is immensely entertaining and commercial with electrifying hip hop dance and innovative dialogue all in verse, which simultaneously provides hope for our urgent world challenges.
Oskar Eustis who launched Hamilton read ONE. Oskar re-affirmed in an email I am on a path which Yip Harberg would be proud of…
“I was delighted to encounter your voice again.
MB’s story is harrowing and moving, and the music is just fantastic. The struggles and vulnerabilities shine
through the polished momentum of your writing.
Very well done, my friend.”
I look forward to ONE bringing abundant financial returns to all our investors. And in the process building a safer, saner, liberated world of compassion, especially in the treatment of women world-wide.