Of Philly and Lyme and the Great White Way
ESSEX NATIVE TODD ELLISON TAKES THE REINS OF PHILLY POPS
There are very few interviews with Broadway musical luminaries that start with a horror story about flesh-eating rodents. But Todd Ellison, an Essex native and longtime composer/conductor on the Great White Way — and who in May was named music director-designate of the elite Philly POPS Orchestra — indeed kicks off a conversation by relating a fantastic tale about the dark realities of pastoral life.
Though Ellison lives in Soho with his partner, Gavin Lodge, and their children, Ellison and Colton Lodge, they also have a summer place in Lyme. It’s on the Connecticut River near Ellison’s childhood home, where his parents still live — and Ellison attended Essex Elementary and graduated from Valley Regional high school in Deep River before majoring in Piano Performance at the Boston University School for the Arts.
In July, Ellison and family, spending a bit of idyllic time in their country enclave, discovered they had a mouse. Their sensible reaction was to strategically install a humane, catch-and-release trap just off the kitchen.
“It was midnight, and I was watching a British crime show, and all of a sudden the dog starts going crazy. I thought, ‘It must be the mouse!’” On the phone from New York City last month, Ellison’s voice rises slightly in pitch, and it’s easy to tell he’s at once a bit freaked out to relive this story — but also trying not to laugh. “I grabbed a flashlight and saw something run into a corner, and there was all this blood, and then I saw half of a dead mouse and a live mouse! We had a cannibal mouse eating his friend!” He pauses thoughtfully. “I didn’t know they did that.”
The concert halls of the world and the hallowed theaters of Broadway must seem tame by comparison. And so, too, will be The Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts, where the Philly POPS, the nation’s largest standalone pop orchestra, performs as a founding resident company. Ellison makes his official conducting debut there in December when the organization presents its threeweek holiday residency, “A Philly POPS Christmas: Spectacular Sounds of the Season!”
The Philly gig is, by Ellison’s admission, a slight departure from his usual work. His extensive resume, condensed here in representative fashion, covers years of composing and/or arranging and/or supervising musicals on Broadway and on the international stage.
Earlier works include are “Amour,” “Monty Python’s Spamalot,” “La Cage aux Folles,” “Annie,” “An American in Paris,” “A Class Act,” “Once Upon a Mattress” (starring Sarah Jessica Parker) and “How to Succeed in Business
Without Really Trying” (starring Matthew Broderick).
In the recording studio, Ellison has conducted/arranged 25 albums, working with such artists as Meryl Streep, Nicole Kidman, Barry Manilow, Kelsey Grammar, Alan Rickman, Bernadette Peters and
Natalie Portman.
The pages in his current work calendar aren’t exactly blank, either.
“Right now, I’m supervising (a production of) ‘42nd street’ in London,” he says. “I’ll head to England in October for that, and to work on a new musical called ‘Roman Holiday.’ Then they’re flying us to Shanghai for five days to showcase (‘Roman Holiday’) before the London premiere. And of course I’ve been writing my own music.”
All this makes one wonder: Why Philly POPS and why now?
Well, Ellison HAS guest conducted plenty of pops concerts with symphonies in Nashville, San Diego, Long Beach, New Haven, New Jersey and New York — and conducted the Pittsburgh Symphony 22 times, following his friend and mentor, the legendary Marvin Hamlisch, who ran that orchestra for decades. That experience resonated with Ellison in substantive fashion.
“After Marvin died, I guest conducted in Pittsburgh, and his agent reached out to me and said, ‘You’re a natural,’” Ellison remembers. “I said, ‘Well, I don’t know what I’m doing, but all right, this is fun.”
Soon thereafter, he heard from Philly POPS. He began guest conducting in selected spots. Then: “They asked if I’d come and do the big 4th of July concert and Memorial Day and Christmas, and finally it was ‘Well, why don’t you just come ahead and do all our concerts?’”
The offer surprised but pleased Ellison. “The chance to work (with Philly POPS) is a neat challenge,” Ellison says. “I’ve done 17 Broadway shows, and one opportunity led to another and, at a certain point, after I did Pittsburgh with Marvin, it occurred to me that I enjoyed it and it might be fun to dip my toes in the orchestral pool in a more permanent way. I mean, there are 44 string players! You don’t get that anymore on Broadway.”
In addition to the POPS’ elite status and the fuller compliment of musicians, there are plenty of other elements of this specific situation that attracted Ellison. Pops orchestras, of course, are called “pops” for a reason — the integration of classical elements with popular contemporary music. But Ellison is smart and creative enough to realize the parameters need to evolve with the times.
“Philadelphia has such a rich musical heritage across the board,” Ellison says. “There’s R&B and the Philadelphia Sound and Hall & Oates and a historical jazz scene, and we’re going to explore all of that.
“Today, you just can’t rely on stodgy old programming,” he adds. “The old Arthur Fiedler model of light classics and easy listening arrangements of current hit pop songs? For a long time, the Christmas program was every orchestra doing Messiah and ‘Rudolph.’ People don’t want that any more because, between Netflix and casinos and the pace of the world, there’s way too much competition.”
In that spirit, Ellison’s early guest conducting gigs with the POPS featured such themes as contemporary Broadway, modern Hollywood, and music from the ’80s and ’90s.
“We’re trying ideas that bring out younger generations with the hopes that we augment the subscription rolls long term. You want younger listeners to be impressed and, in turn, maybe they get interested in exploring the older aspects of what we do as well. At the end of the day, there’s still classical music and the idea that a concert tranports people to a different place through music,” he says.
There are also elements of the convenient and familial to Ellison’s Philly POPS situation.
“I was looking for something new and challenging to do where I didn’t have to leave the kids for extended periods of time with some of the long-distance opportunities that might present themselves,” he says. “Gavin and I chose not to do that. We want very much to be a part of their lives. We’re head over heels with having children, and I don’t want to be that parent who walks out the door every night, or for days at a time, to go to work.”
Family is clearly important to Ellison, which is also reflected in their Lyme house.
“It’s so amazing to have this place to go to,” Ellison says. “My parents (Carl and Janice Ellison) are down the road, where they always are, and my brother and sister-in-law and their kids have a home in Lyme.”
There’s also an almost mystical connection.
“We bought my first grade teacher’s house,” he says. “My parents were both teachers and they taught with her, and it’s a home her husband built, so that’s pretty incredible. She was 96 when she died, and she had this embroidered pillow that says, ‘A teacher is a delight forever.’”
He pauses, remembering. “You know, my Dad found some old home movies and had them digitized, and there’s a segment where they’re at a holiday party in someone’s living room in 1955. And it’s the living room that’s now OUR house. We take that as an amazing sign.” Life, Ellison says, is good. “We have this beautiful little picturesque place on the Connecticut River,” he says. “I work in Times Square ... and we can (also) come to Lyme. We want our kids to have the best of both worlds. New York, the country, family ... And we found a dead mouse.”