From the backseat of a cab traversing a Sandy-stricken New York City, Obie Award-winning composer and lyricist J. Michael Friedman ’97 picks up the phone to dial Fifteen Minutes. The cell service is spotty—it’s what disaster-zone reporting must be like, Friedman quips—but that doesn’t stop him from happily chatting about anything from writing music on the subway to his time as a History and Literature concentrator.

A member of the critically acclaimed investigative theater company The Civilians, Friedman made his Broadway debut in 2010 with “Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson,” which opened in Boston on Oct. 19. The complete version of this interview can be found online.

1. Fifteen Minutes: When you first came to Harvard, were you interested in entering musical theater?

J. Michael Friedman: I was a music guy, like a classical music guy…. Honestly, I am the latest bloomer ever. I had never really written a song for theater before I was 25. I am a hope for late bloomers everywhere. When I was at Harvard I think I didn’t write a single thing.

2. FM: Were you going to be a musician?

JMF: No, I think I thought I wanted to go to law school. Or business school. God, I don't know. I had no plan. I was an undergraduate with no plan. No goals, no plan. Terrible!

3. FM: You were a History and Literature concentrator. Does that mode of thinking influence your work?

JMF: I always joke that my entire career is based on books that I didn’t read in college. I took “Jacksonian America” with William Gienapp—History 1620, I think. It was one of the most amazing and transformative courses that had a lot of influence on why I wrote “Bloody Bloody,” and all the books that [collaborator Alex Timber] and I read were the books assigned in History 1620—a few of which I will admit I’d never read. And when I wrote “Paris Commune,” which was performed at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, that was actually based on an article in a book that I had been assigned in my Hist and Lit tutorial sophomore year that I had never actually read. I read it some rainy day because the book was sitting on my shelf like a reproach, so in fact even the books you don’t read in college can have a huge influence on your life.

4. FM: You compose music in a variety of styles—everything from pop to folk to salsa. How do you match subject matter to musical genre?

Tags

Music, In The Meantime, Alumni