This season, two of the five Tony Awards nominees for Best Original Score (Music and/or Lyrics) Written for the Theatre are scores of plays — a relatively rare distinction that only 16 other productions of plays have claimed throughout the awards’ history. Steve Bargonetti’s compositions for “Joe Turner’s Come and Gone” and Caroline Shaw’s pieces for “Death of a Salesman” were acknowledged in the category alongside scores for the new musicals “The Lost Boys” (The Rescues), “Schmigadoon!” (Cinco Paul) and “Two Strangers (Carry a Cake Across New York)” (Jim Barne and Kit Buchan).
Both Bargonetti and Shaw are making their Broadway debuts as composers and both for revivals of oft-staged plays. Their scores further distinguish these stagings from any other before them. Broadway News spoke to these two music makers about creating a new sound for a classic text and making whatever changes necessary in time for opening night.
The history of blues in ‘Joe Turner’s Come and Gone’
Henry Sloan, Charlie Patton, Howlin' Wolf — these influential blues musicians immediately came to mind when Steve Bargonetti was asked about composing the score for the revival of “Joe Turner's Come and Gone.” The August Wilson play had its Broadway debut in 1988 and had only been revived once, in 2009. Cedric the Entertainer, Taraji P. Henson, Ruben Santiago-Hudson and Joshua Boone lead this staging as the owners of a Pittsburgh boardinghouse, and the travelers who pass through it. And director Debbie Allen wanted this staging to be sonically steeped in its 1911 setting.
