Facing the Music

Musical Director and arranger David Loud, a legendary Broadway talent, recounts his wildly entertaining and deeply poignant trek through the wilderness of his childhood and the edge-of-your-seat drama of a career on, in, under, and around Broadway for decades. He reveals his struggle against the ravages of Parkinsons and triumphs repeatedly. This memoir is also a remarkable love letter to music. Loud is the Ted Lasso of the theater business, ever the optimist!';';Music has consequences,' a wise teacher once told a young David Loud; so does a story well-told and a life fully-lived. I lost count of how many times I laughed, cried, and laugh-cried reading this wonderful, wry, intimate, and inspiring book. David wields a pen like he wields a baton, with perfect timing, exquisite phrasing, and enormous heart.' David Hyde Pierce, actor, Frasier, Spamalot, Curtains ';Beautifully written, filled with vivid details, braided with love and loss and wit and the perspective of someone with an utterly unique story to tell. -- Lynn Ahrens, lyricist, Ragtime, Once on This Island, Anastasia ';Luminous and surprising, an extremely honest memoir of a life lived in the world of Broadway musicals, by one of the theatre's most gifted conductors. I can't think of another book quite like it.' -- John Kander, composer, Cabaret, Chicago, New York, New York Unforgettably entertaining and emotionally revealing, Loud is pitch-perfect as he describes his path to the podium, from a stage-struck kid growing up at a school devoted to organic farming and mountain climbing, to the searing formative challenges he faces during adolescence, to the remarkable behind-the-scenes stories of his Broadway trials and triumphs. Skilled at masking his fears, Loud achieves his dream until one fateful opening night, when in the midst of a merry, dressing room celebration, he can no longer deny reality and must suddenly, truly, face the music.