Andrew Lloyd Webber works with 'Idol' finalists
IDOL TRACKER
The six contestants will sing the British composers works.
God of theater though he may be, a day of rehearsing with the six remaining contestants on "American Idol" left Lord Andrew Lloyd Webber ready for a break. "We have a rather weary composer here," he said by telephone moments after finishing up with the Idols. "It's probably best to define him as de-composer."
An American television singing competition may seem an odd place to find the man who has owned musical theater for three decades, dominating Broadway with a string of sensations, including "Jesus Christ Superstar," "Evita" "Cats" and "Phantom of the Opera," but the grand man of the stage had flown in to serve as "Idol's" guest mentor, guiding the surviving six warriors of song through their Tuesday night performances, which were devoted to his songbook.
Looking back over his day with the contestants, Lloyd Webber was cautiously hopeful that his works would survive their encounter with American reality television, and he enthused about the singers whom the show has fielded. Not having seen the show on air this season, he said after working with the group, "The six kids were really in their own ways all very talented. I think that in their own way they're a pretty diverse bunch, and in their own way they've all got something."
Although Lloyd Webber was barred "under pain of death" from revealing the song choices, he did speak of being struck by one moment in particular. "The girl who I was really quite impressed with was Brooke. She was really -- I got something out of her. I mean, whether or not, you know, that is there at the end, I really couldn't tell you.
"The one thing is working with me, one on one, where I'm on the other side -- I'm sort of actually, in her case, holding her hand to get the performance out of her. It's very different than sitting in a great big television studio with a big audience and you've got a camera in front of you. So, one will have to see."
For the contestants, having to transition from the pop hits of Mariah Carey and Dolly Parton to the character-driven songs of the Lloyd Webber catalog counts as one of the season's major tests. Asked how he trains pop singers for a song such as "Memory" from "Cats," Lloyd Webber said, "With that song in particular, it's very much about understanding the words, because they're very heavily based on T.S. Eliot and the four quartets. And it's a song that is very, very much word-driven as much as it's music-driven, of course. The relationship of the music to the words is important.
