Very Unusual Way

Joshua Rosenblum is a composer, conductor, pianist, arranger, music journalist, and professor of music at Yale and New York University. Rosenblum is the author of Closer than Ever: The Unique Six-Decade Songwriting Partnership of Richard Maltby, Jr. and David Shire. He lives in New York City.

"Josh Rosenblum has embarked on an exceptional intellectual project—taking some of the luminaries of American musical theater whose names may not be instantly familiar to those outside it, in the way that Loesser or Sondheim may be, and still treating them with the seriousness and detailed attentiveness they deserve. Having explored the shining work of Shire & Maltby, he now turns to the equally gifted and accomplished Maury Yeston, author of Nine and Titanic and many memorable song cycles, and gives us a scholarly study of his work that is revelatory even for those of us who thought we knew it well. An essential book for students of the great American art form and one of its masters." — Adam Gopnik, lyricist and critic-at-large, The New Yorker"I've known Maury Yeston for years, but feel as if I've just met him. Joshua Rosenblum's extraordinary biography captures the relentless energy, brilliance, and delight of one of our greatest musical theater composers." — Lynn Ahrens, Tony Award-Winning Lyricist for Ragtime"A sensational portrait of an under-appreciated genius! It's time Maury Yeston is mentioned among the pantheon of composers that includes Richard Rodgers and Stephen Sondheim. This biography may have been written by a musicologist but it reads like a novel—absolutely riveting!" — Andrea Marcovicci, Cabaret Singer/Actress"Exhaustively researched, conversationally presented, richly stocked with vivid anecdotes, Rosenblum's fluent tour de force preempts a whole shelf of Yeaton studies that are long overdue: the biography, the critical survey of his hits, the technical analysis of his style, and lots more. For good measure, Rosenblum provides an annotated playlist of top tracks and previews of works in progress. Yeston turned eighty in 2025, but he's still going strong, and there's lots in the pipeline." — Matthew Gurewitsch, Contributing Editor, Air Mail

• List of Illustrations Introduction 1. "I Am Completely Done with Classical Music" 2. Yale 3. Cambridge, Lincoln, and Back to Yale 4. Lehman Engel 5. The Jewish Influence 6. "Nobody Fires Mike Nichols": The Intriguing but Ill-Fated Queen of Basin Street 7. 8½: A Movie About Itself 8. "A Little Extra Music, I'll Call It Nine" 9. "Europe Is in the Music": The Multifaceted Score to Nine 10. Plácido Domingo and Goya 11. "You Can't Make It Worse": Grand Hotel 12. The "Other" Phantom 13. "You Are Music": The Phantom Score 14. "They Decided to Go Slumming": December Songs 15. "The Vultures Had Been Salivating": Titanic the Musical 16. The Unsinkable Score to Titanic 17. "I'm a Classical Composer!": An American Cantata and Tom Sawyer 18. "This Movie Is Not a Remake of 8½!": Nine the Movie (and the Broadway Revival) 19. Off-Broadway: Death Takes a Holiday and Anything Can Happen in the Theater 20. "Not to Put Too Fine a Point on It" Acknowledgments Appendix A: Advice to Young Theater Composers Appendix B: Tom Sawyer—Orchestration Notes Notes Select Bibliography Index