“Glen Roven, a prodigiously versatile musician who conducted on Broadway when he was 19 and went on to become a prolific composer and an Emmy-winning music director, died on July 25 in New York City,” writes Sam Roberts in Sunday’s (8/12) New York Times. “He was 60. The cause was Legionnaires’ disease, said his sister, Janice Roven. An exuberant virtuoso whose only formal training was the piano lessons he took while growing up in Brooklyn, Mr. Roven … while still a teenager, became musical director of ‘Sugar Babies’ … in 1979. Mr. Roven dropped out of Columbia College and remained with the show for all 1,208 performances…. Mr. Roven … conducted two inaugural concerts for Bill Clinton and two for George W. Bush; the last television performances by Frank Sinatra and Sammy Davis Jr.; and concerts by the Israel Philharmonic, the National Symphony in Washington, the Hollywood Bowl Orchestra, and the Munich Philharmonic…. He wrote the violin concerto ‘The Runaway Bunny’ … based … on a beloved children’s book by Margaret Wise Brown…. For his own label, Roven Records, [he] produced ‘Hopes and Dreams’ for [Carnegie Hall’s] Lullaby Project…. His husband, Robin Addison, died in 2011.”
Posted August 14, 2018
