The Internship Begins

This is it: 57th Street! I walk under the green awning and through a set of glass doors. A blast of cool air hits me, and I gladly shake off the muggy heat of the street.

"Who are you here to see, ma'am?" The doorman is brisk but friendly. He waits.

"Umm. . .Charles Strouse?" (Why did I phrase it as a question? Confidence, girl! Confidence!)

"Your name?"

"Erica!" (A little too confident. Dial down the enthusiasm. . .)

"Just a moment." The doorman picks up the phone. "There's an Erica here for Mr. Strouse." He looks over and nods. "You can go up now. It's room 19c."

As the elevator ascends, I run my fingers through my bangs and adjust my backpack, hoping I don't look as nervous or as sweaty as I feel. Will the elevator open directly into Mr. Strouse's office? Who should I ask for: His secretary? His business manager? Will they know who I am, or should I have my internship contract in hand?

Ding! The doors slide open, and I step out into a residential hallway. I suddenly realize that I'm not walking into a business office; I've actually been directed to the home of Mr. Charles Strouse. I'm paying a personal call on the man who wrote Annie and Bye, Bye Birdie--the man who studied with the legendary Nadia Boulanger and Aaron Copland and who was a close friend of Leonard Bernstein! Feeling as Mr. Strouse must've felt himself when he knocked on Nadia Boulanger's door in Paris for the first time, I ring the bell to 19c.

A maid opens the door. "Come in, please. Can I get you some water? Some coffee?"

"Umm. . .water would be great." (Confidence! Confidence!)

"Hi, Erica! I'm Jewel." A pleasant-looking woman in a sundress walks into the foyer and extends her hand. An elderly gentleman about three inches shorter than me is coming down the hallway towards us. It takes me a few seconds to recognize his face from the cover of my copy of the Charles Strouse autobiography, Put on a Happy Face.

"Hello! You're so glamorous!" he exclaims. (Is he talking to me?) "I thought you were gonna be, like, a teenager or something." (I can hear in his accent that he's a true New York-er, born and bred!) "Now I've got two glamorous women working for me," he says, nodding at Jewel. "Come into my office."

His office consists of little more than a small sofa, a desk, and old upright piano drowning in stray sheets of notation paper (half-written songs, I assume). Posters and Broadway advertisements cover the walls.

"You took me by surprise," he said. "I don't know why. Tell me a bit about yourself."

"Well, I'm attending the Longy School of Music right now," I said. "I grew up in Utah. . ."

"So does that make you a Mormon?"

"Yes, I'm a Mormon."

"I have a son-in-law who's a Mormon!"

"Then you know all about us?"

"Actually, I know nothing about you. I saw the Mormon musical that just opened, and it was okay, but it kind of left a bad taste in my mouth. Didn't feel quite right to treat a religion the way they did, you know? So tell me about your chops. Can you play the piano--pop charts and such?"

"Well, I was trained classically, and I worked as an accompanist for several years. I've taken one jazz piano class."

"Come try this out." He plops a sheet of music on the piano. It's fairly simple, but the meter shifts irregularly between 3/4 and 4/4, and it's syncopated. My nerves kick in and I fumble a bit.

"That's fine. You sightread okay. And on all other counts, you seem overqualified for the position. Really, I feel lucky; I think you'll be very useful, and I'll do my best to make sure you're happy here. Do you want to help accompany at the rehearsal for our musical review tomorrow?"

He shuffles through a file folder and pulls out five handwritten scores (a hodge-podge of traditional notation, jazz chords, symbols, and edits) and hands them to me.

"This isn't homework or anything, you know. Just give them a look-over if you get the chance."

"Mr. Strouse? Mr. So-and-So has been waiting to meet with you for awhile, and he only has an hour." Jewel has just poked her head in the office. I stand and shoulder my backpack.

"It's been so nice meeting you!" I can hardly believe I've just spent the past half-hour in conversation with Charles Strouse.

"Nice meeting you too."

Jewel takes me into her office, and we start hashing out the details of my internship. She is very friendly and helpful; she offers some useful information about the city and tells me that I'm welcome to take advantage of Mr. Strouse's occasional free tickets to Broadway shows. She also tells me a little about his family (his wife and all four of his children are very involved in Strouse IP) and suggests that I'll probably get along well with his daughter.

My work schedule officially starts tomorrow, and Jewel tells me that several Broadway bigwigs will be at the rehearsal then (and that I'm welcome to stick around and "schmooze" afterwards!). The apartment even has a large room with a digital piano and a wall of windows overlooking Manhattan that Jewel plans to set up as my temporary transcription "office." Apparently, Charles has an entire closet full of handwritten scores that eventually need to be transferred into the computer, so it looks like I'll be busy.

"We'll try to introduce you to as many useful contacts as we can while you're here," Jewel says. "Charles has a lot of connections. Oh--and here's my cell number. Call me day or night if you need anything."

Then the door closes behind me, and I'm back in elevator. The whole episode starts feeling a little surreal. Did I really just walk through Charles Strouse's home, past his breakfast table and the piano where he hashed out the tunes for Annie? Am I really going to be working there myself all summer? Will I really be meeting a whole group of successful composers, producers, actors, and singers tomorrow? I open my backback. Yes, the five scores that Charles sent home with me are really there. This is my life for the summer.

I'd better get to work on those pieces!

(Side Note: This morning, I waited in line next to some British tourists for cheap rush tickets to "How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying," starring Daniel Radcliffe. It'll be the official kick-off for my summer in New York! I'll let you know how Harry Potter fares in a singing/dancing/acting role on Broadway. . .)