Larry Moore:  

Life Born and raised in Middletown, Ohio, eldest of three boys, I went to Middletown High School, then Miami University, since I was programmed from birth to go into medicine. After my summer freshman orientation I began to doubt the decision made by my parents, and by the start of my freshman year I had changed programs to the Classics Dept. By my junior year I had discovered the theatre dept. I graduated in 1968 with an B.A. in Latin and went to graduate school in Theatre on an assistantship from the Miami U. Theatre Dept. I was in the program for two years, because there were too many electives I liked to take in other areas of interest and because I was terrified of leaving school and facing the job market. I got my M.A. in 1970 and spent a year in Oxford, OH, on the Miami University Library staff before I was pressured into taking a job at a Pennsylvania college as a a speech instructor. After miserably failing in 1971-72 as a college instructor, which I hated, I moved back to Middletown from 1972-1979. I found that, while I enjoyed working with students, the minutiae of academia were not in my scope of interest. Back in Middletown, I worked various jobs including a professional acting job at La Commedia Dinner Theatre, playing percussion in the Middletown Symphony, and working with Arts In Middletown, for whom I was one of the founders and director of Middletown Lyric Theatre. I worked at Office Outfitters for a while, hating most of my time there as much as I loathed the owner, begging Armco Steel and First National Bank for steady employment only to be told I was over educated, whatever that means! Once I realized all this activity, including teaching creative dramatics to children between 5 and 15, would not provide a respectable living in Middletown, I moved to New York to pursue a professional theatre career. I perhaps could have relocated to Cincinnati or another city but, since New York is the center of the American theatrical world, it seemed the logical place to go. I had discovered, too, that local actors at La Commedia Dinner Theatre were paid not nearly so well as actors cast in New York and at that point I wanted to act professionally. I was lucky that my favorite book store in the world, The Drama Book Shop, was hiring at the time I moved to New York and the owners were impressed by my six years of library work for the Miami University Library during my undergraduate and graduate career. I worked on and off for the book store from 1979-1998. I left there over a pay raise dispute in 1981 and came back in 1985, working during that interim for two other performing arts shops and a Canadian chain, Classic Books, on Sixth Avenue and 48th Street. During that period I also worked as an orchestrator for the New Amsterdam Theatre Company, arranged and accompanied a cabaret act Just Good Friends, and nominated Stephen Sondheim for the Pulitzer Prize, which he won in 1985. By the time I decided I was doing well enough as a self-employed person, I had worked for nearly every performing arts shop in Manhattan. I've worked in regional theatre as a musical arranger, spent nearly 20 years as staff arranger for The New York City Gay Men's Chorus, which got me a publisher for my choral work, and a ton of recordings which made me a member of the National Academy of Recording and I'm a Grammy voter. I was the arranger for the Warner Home Video of A TALE OF CINDERELLA from the New York State Theatre Institute, and worked as one of Michael Tilson Thomas' assistants for the Emmy-winning PBS Gershwin Centenary Gala from the Brooklyn Academy of Music in 1988. In 1999, my restoration of Cole Porter's lost 1935 musical JUBILEE was performed in London and broadcast by the BBC Radio-3 as a Christmas holiday event, and I did the orchestration for the Santa's Workshop sequence of the new edition of the Radio City Music Hall Christmas Spectacular. I've worked on recordings for PS Classics, EMI-Angel, Nonesuch Records, Fynsworth Alley, Varese Sarabande, Book-of-the-Month Club, and Sony. In June 2004, I provided orchestrations for Goodspeed Opera House on a new production of WHERE'S CHARLEY?, which I dedicate to the memory of Sam Lato, who played Jack in Valda Wilkerson's Roosevelt Junior High production of WHERE'S CHARLEY? This is the third Frank Loesser show I've worked on for his estate, and I'm currently editing the new edition of THE MOST HAPPY FELLA. I've also worked for the estates of Rodgers & Hammerstein, Kurt Weill, Leonard Bernstein, and George Gershwin. I've just finished editing for the Packard Humanities Institute a new scholastic and performance edition of Victor Herbert's 1903 extravaganza BABES IN TOYLAND. This project began in 2001, ten years after I worked on a Christmas version of the same show for the Houston Grand Opera. I've done two restorations of period musicals for the Chicago Humanities Festival, Eubie Blake's "Tan Manhattan" and their Harold Arlen Centenary concert. I've been working for the Gershwin Trust and the Library of Congress on a restoration of the 1935 Harold Arlen-Ira Gershwin-E.Y. Harburg revue LIFE BEGINS AT 8:40. Last summer, 2009, I worked on two new recordings, one for the fantastic Broadway singer Liz Callaway and a Christmas album for Broadway leading man Brent Barrett. My last work was additional orchestrations for the revival of FINIAN'S RAINBOW that opened on Broadway in October 2009 and closed on Jan 17, 2010. I have two brothers living in Middletown, and that gives me a chance to return there to visit them and the friends I still see there. I've never married, had terrible luck with all my romantic relationships, and it's easier to live alone. I rely on my good friends and my godchildren to keep me sane as possible. I have four godchildren, all of whom have grown up and left me to see movies alone. From 1995-2007, when she left for college, my goddaughter Charlotte was my constant movie-going companion; I am a leading authority on chickflix, thanks to her! Two of my godchildren - Charlotte and Michael - are in college, Sam is working in a New York theatre production office, and Emily is a French teacher, married and living in Chicago. I've been lucky to have worked with some wonderful people, and I like living on the Upper West side in Manhattan. Workplace I came to New York in 1979 to work in professional theatre after starting Middletown Lyric Theatre for Arts in Middletown and acting at La Commedia Dinner Theatre in Springboro. After deciding there were too many unemployed actors more talented than I, I ended up working as a musical arranger after getting involved with The New Amsterdam Theatre Company, which led to work for the Cole Porter Trust, Rodgers & Hammerstein, the Kurt Weill Foundation and the Ira & Leonore Gershwin Trust. I worked as a buyer at Drama Book Shop for 15 years on and off, before realizing I was doing well enough in theatre and recording to become self-employed. While I was working for The Drama Book Shop I made friends with employees of Dustin Hoffman's company Punch Productions and that led me to doing research for him when he played Shylock in THE MERCHANT OF VENICE in London and on Broadway. Dustin had also been very kind to me during the Christmas holiday of 1983 while I was managing for a vacationing friend the Minskoff rehearsal studios where he and Arthur Miller and the rest of the cast were rehearsing DEATH OF A SALESMAN. I was staff arranger for The New York City Gay Men's Chorus from 1981-1999, which I fell into by being ...Expand for more