MARK SCHOENFELD & BARRI McPHERSON

[Tiny-Toon]

Posted: 8/30/04 at 5:24pm

I just read the bios of MARK SCHOENFELD & BARRI McPHERSON at the Brooklyn the musical website.. and it couldn't belive the story:

MARK SCHOENFELD & BARRI McPHERSON (Book, Music & Lyrics). This production marks the Broadway debut for the writing collaboration of Mark Schoenfeld and Barri McPherson. Mark first met Barri in 1982 upon hearing her sing at a cabaret and hired her to record some of his music. Shortly thereafter, Barri moved to Massachusetts to raise a family. Years later, in 1991, Barri returned to New York to perform at a private-party gig. She involuntarily stopped at a remote street corner in Brooklyn Heights after hearing the sound of a voice she vaguely recognized. She discovered that Mark had become a homeless street performer, getting by on $40 a day. Barri invited Mark back to Massachusetts to stay with her husband and two children. Mark repaid Barri by developing music with and for her and soon, the street poet and cabaret singer had the skeleton of a most unusual new musical.

3 Words: I CANT WAIT

[Tiny-Toon]

Posted: 8/30/04 at 5:29pm

While only a small portion of the story is auto-biographical, Mark and Barri's back story will provide insight into the spirit and emotion of Brooklyn The Musical .

Mark Schoenfeld was born in the Red Hook projects in South Brooklyn, and soon after made the move with his family to another of the urban city's more undesirable living facilities, the Bronx projects, where he was affectionately nicknamed, “Matzoh Boy”. He eventually made it out of New York, settling in a rural area of New Hampshire into a house that was more of a ‘shack'. He survived on various musical gigs, studio work and recordings.

Meanwhile, Barri McPherson, daughter of dancer and a Big Band singer who made her debut on stage at 11, was in a band and playing gigs around the bars and clubs of New England. One night Mark Schoenfeld was in the audience and heard this girl sing, and asked her to record one of his songs. After spending a wonderful day in the small studio recording, she was off with her band to the next town and another gig. He promised he would get in touch and they would continue to work together. She never heard from him.

A few years later, Mark lost his ‘shack.' At that point he came back to New York and lived through the kindness and generosity of friends and family. And when he didn't have a couch or a spare bed to lie down and close his eyes, he would live on the street. He always had his music and he kept himself together. Barri married and had children and continued to perform around the Northeast. One night she was down in Brooklyn Heights, near the bridge, on her way to a friend's house where she was to sing at a private soiree. It was 9 years later, but as she was walking down the street and heard a familiar voice singing on a street corner, she found Mark.

Shocked that he was living on the streets, she invited him to her home, to stay with her family, and to work on his music. Mark lived with Barri and her family for over a year. Initially, they were developing songs for Barri to perform, but what was born from that collaboration between a hardened street performer and a soft spirit was ‘ Brooklyn.' It was what Mark was singing on that street corner. It was what was in his head. It was what he was living. They both realized that the venue for these songs, sung by a troupe of homeless street performers, was the stage. The stage; where the soul of these modern day apostles can be fully experienced; and where the joy and passion of the music can soften the hearts of a world inured to the lives around them.

It has been more than thirteen years since Barri McPherson heard that man singing his tale on a street corner in Brooklyn. It will be eighty or eight-hundred that the words and music of “Brooklyn” will resonate through our humanity.

Updated On: 8/30/04 at 05:29 PM