INTERVIEW: Andrew Lippa brings story of Harvey Milk to Princeton
Photo: I Am Harvey Milk, by Andrew Lippa, will play the Princeton Festival, June 23-24. Photo courtesy of Matthew Murphy / Provided by Princeton Symphony Orchestra with permission.
The world-renowned composer and lyricist Andrew Lippa, known for Broadway’s The Addams Family and Big Fish, will soon premiere a revised version of his successful oratorio in honor of Harvey Milk, the first openly gay man to hold office in California. I Am Harvey Milk will play the Princeton Festival, June 23-24, at the Morven Museum & Garden. For the first time in this piece’s history, Lippa will also conduct the piece, which will feature individual performers and the Princeton Symphony Orchestra.
It has been a long journey for Lippa and I Am Harvey Milk. The composer remembers receiving an email in 2011 from Tim Seelig, who was then the artistic director of the San Francisco Gay Men’s Chorus. The email was a pitch to a number of composers to see if they could write a five-minute piece about their observations and feelings of Milk, a legendary member of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors who led a highly influential life and has become an historic icon for the LGBTQIA+ community. Tragically, Milk was assassinated in the 1970s, not too long after his successful election as a supervisor.
The composer liked the pitch from Seelig, but he wanted to go deeper with the story of Milk and his influence.
“I got this email, and it felt like a lightning bolt,” Lippa said in a recent phone interview. “And I called Tim, which surprised him, because in this day and age I think you have to stick with the medium that was used. You know, someone sends you an email, you need to respond in an email. So I called him, and I said I was so inspired by this idea, but I didn’t want to write a five-minute piece. I wanted to write a 60-minute piece, and could I do that? And he said that they had other choruses that were co-commissioning the work and were going to perform it themselves as well. So he spoke to them all, got back to me, and they said, ‘Sure, go for it.’ And I started in early 2012 on what became I Am Harvey Milk, which we premiered in late June of 2013.”
Since that initial production 10 years ago, I Am Harvey Milk has been performed dozens of times (Lippa estimated 40 or 50 productions), including those co-commissions at the start of this journey. Lippa, known for musicals like The Wild Party and writing additional music for You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown, never expected that this musical theater oratorio would have such a life.
“I thought I was going to write something off my usual beaten path of mostly writing songs for the theater, and that I was going to write this piece that would be done 10 times,” he said. “Instead, it got done a lot more. We expanded the idea in 2016, and at the Music Center at Strathmore in North Bethesda, Maryland, we did a double bill called I Am Anne Hutchinson / I Am Harvey Milk, and I wrote that for Kristin Chenoweth to perform as the Puritan Christian feminist from the early 17th century. The first act was about Anne Hutchinson, and the second act was about Harvey Milk. She played Anne Hutchinson in the first act, and she played the soprano in the second act. And I played Gov. John Winthrop in the first act, and I played Harvey Milk in the second act. So we sort of played opposite coins.”
Since that expanded production in 2016, the piece kept growing and changing. A person who has been there every step of the way is Noah Himmelstein, the director of the piece and associate artistic director of Everyman Theatre. He will be back for the Princeton engagement, directing the talented Benjamin Pajak as the young Milk, Adam Kantor as the older Milk, Scarlett Strallen as the soprano and Stacey Stevenson as the speaker.
“Noah said, you know, how could we make I Am Harvey Milk a little longer frankly,” Lippa remembers. “It’s 55 minutes long, and I did some research and found four monologues, or four quotes, from various people [who were far to the right of] Harvey Milk. Graciously Stacey Stevenson from Family Equality is going to be our speaker. She’s an incredibly dynamic and exciting presence, and we are now interpolating these four different monologues — one from Dan White, one from Anita Bryant, etc. — throughout I Am Harvey Milk for this presentation in New Jersey. So it’s like the piece is being reborn, and yet we know it very well. But it’s the first time I’ve ever conducted, so it’s going to be for me a really exciting first-time experience.”
Lippa joined the production as conductor thanks to his connection to Rossen Milanov, the Edward T. Cone music director of the Princeton Symphony Orchestra. Milanov is also the music director of the Columbus Symphony Orchestra, where Lippa and his husband spend a lot of their time when they’re not in New York.
“Rossen said, ‘Send me the materials. I would like to hear it,’ and I sent him the recording and the music for I Am Harvey Milk,” Lippa said. “And he wrote to me and said, ‘We would like to do this at the Princeton Festival, and we would like you to conduct it.’ … So I said, ‘Yes, yes, yes,’ and that’s how it came about.”
And now everything and everyone is in place for the world premiere of the revised I Am Harvey Milk, fittingly performed during Pride Month and carrying on Milk’s legacy for a new generation.
By John Soltes / Publisher / John@HollywoodSoapbox.com
I Am Harvey Milk, written and conducted by Andrew Lippa, will play the Princeton Festival, June 23-24, at the Morven Museum and Garden in Princeton, New Jersey. Two companion events are also planned: The Princeton Public Library will screen the Oscar-winning film Milk on Saturday, June 17 at 2 p.m. Andrew Reynolds, author of Children of Harvey Milk: How LGBTQ Politicians Changed the World, will offer some opening remarks. Then, on Friday, June 23 at 4 p.m. at the Stockton Education Center, Lippa will speak to young musicians about his creation of I Am Harvey Milk and how art can be used for social change. Click here for more information and tickets.
