100 New Yorkers of the 1970s Part 22

WESTSIDER CARLOS MONTOYA Master of the flamenco guitar

10-28-78

Carlos Montoya speaks two languages. The first is music; the other is Spanish. At 74, he is the world's most famous master of flamenco -- the ancient folk music of the Spanish gypsies, which Montoya performs with dazzling speed and dexterity. On October 29 he will give a major concert at Avery Fisher Hall.

With more than 30 alb.u.ms to his credit, Montoya is the most recorded flamenco guitarist in history. He is thoroughly committed to his instrument. It is not merely his living, but his life. He is a pure gypsy -- "on all four sides," as the Spanish say. Maybe that explains why he likes to tour from January to May and from October to December every year, almost nonstop, across the U.S. and Canada, to South America, Europe and the Far East. He has been a Westsider since the 1940s and has rented the same Westside apartment since 1957. Yet when people ask Montoya where he lives, he is likely to reply, "On airplanes."

An American citizen for more than 30 years, he is perhaps the first persons ever to acquire citizens.h.i.+p after answering "no" to the question, "Do you like the American form of government?" Because of his poor English, he had misunderstood the query. He corrected himself, and that night played for President Harry Truman.

Montoya's wife, Sally, is his steady helpmate. Since their marriage in 1940, she has been his manager, interpreter and best friend. He still speaks little English, so interviews with him are often ponderous three way affairs. When I arrived at the Montoyas' residence late one morning, he was very polite, but eager to get the interview over with. "Vamos," he said. His demeanor changed when he discovered that I was able to understand his crisp, precise Spanish when spoken slowly. We quickly dispensed with the interpreter.

Does he consider flamenco to be the highest art attainable on the guitar?

Sitting upright in an overstuffed chair, he smiled benignly and said, "Not all the flamenco guitarists are artists. There are many guitarists, but in the world there are only two or three artists on the flamenco guitar. ... Most musicians are technicians. I think that to play flamenco as it should be played, you have to be an artist. The music is either very bad or very good. People who hear the performance may applaud both the technician and the artist. But afterward, if the performer was not an artist, they forget what they have heard."

The smile remained on his face, and he began to use his hands with much expression as he continued. "I carry the music inside me. I want to touch inside the heart of the public. That's what I always aim for. My music is sincere. It is very human. I believe it should be listened to closely. That is why I play concerts."

He was, in fact, the first prominent flamenco guitarist to go solo. Until Montoya started giving one-man concerts in 1948, flamenco was strictly a music to accompany singers or dancers, who added to the rhythm with castanets, snapping fingers and feverishly clicking heels. When faced with Montoya's guitar alone, the audiences did not catch on immediately. But as soon as they learned to appreciate the full range of his artistry, his career was a.s.sured.

Many of the sound effects produced by a whole flamenco group can be duplicated by Montoya alone. His left hand can play a melody and tap out a rhythm independent of what the right hand is going. To add to the excitement, Montoya never plays a piece the same way twice. One reason is that improvisation is the essence of flamenco. Another is that he has never learned to read music.

"Flamenco guitar is more popular than ever right now," said Montoya.

"Young people like it; I perform at a lot of colleges. I also perform with many symphony orchestras to play my _Flamenco Suite_.

That composition, which Montoya co-wrote and premiered in 1996, is the first flamenco piece ever to be written for a full orchestra. The guitar sections, appropriately, allow for some improvising. Other works by Montoya, mainly his arrangements of age-old gypsy themes, have been transcribed and published for the benefit of fellow guitarists. However, as Montoya pointed out, "the style you can write. But all the notes -- it is impossible. So, my written works are simplified."

Born in Madrid, he took his first guitar lesson at the age of 8, and by his early teens was performing regularly in cafes. He toured extensively until World War II broke out, when he more or less "settled" in New York. In truth, he has never been content to settle anywhere. He spends several months each year in Spain. And when he's on tour, said his wife, "he gets restless staying around the hotel, and likes to visit all the sights in the area."

Sally Montoya, a slender, graceful native New Yorker who met Carlos while her father was working for the Foreign Service, was once a Spanish-style dancer herself, but gave it up because "I obviously didn't dance as well as Carlos plays. I'm a casualty of his success." The couple has two sons.

Except for travel, Carlos Montoya has few interests outside his work.

"Music and family -- that's all," he said quietly. "To be an artist, you must be a slave to the instrument and to the public. To play the guitar is a serious thing -- not a game. To me, it is a complete life."

WESTSIDER MELBA MOORE Broadway star releases ninth alb.u.m

10-14-78

When Melba Moore recently dropped out of her co-starring role in the Broadway hit musical _Timbuktu_, there was a lot of speculation as to the reason why. Some observers suggested that Eartha Kitt, the biggest box office draw, did not like to share the billing with a performer of Melba's caliber.

Melba herself has a simpler explanation: seven months of one show is enough, and she had too many other things to do -- promoting her new alb.u.m, preparing for another Broadway musical, doing her first lead role in a movie, going on a concert tour, making guest appearances on television, and taking care of her 16-month-old daughter Charli.

"Honey, I could join the Olympics with all I do," says Melba one afternoon at the comfortable midtown office that is used as the nerve center for her multiple activities. She is dressed in a striped hat, a white s.h.i.+rt and a bright red necktie. Easing her slender form onto the couch, she looks smaller, younger, and more beautiful in person than her photographs indicate. I remark on her flashy necktie, and Melba, using her hands expressively while she speaks, tells with amus.e.m.e.nt how she saw it on the collar of a salesman at Fiorucci's and said to him, "I want that tie."

Melba's first professional stage role was in _Hair_; from 1968 to 1970 she rose up through the chorus to win the female lead. "I have no hard-luck stories," she says, in her clear, nearly accentless voice. "From _Hair_, I went right into _Purlie_." That was the role that earned her the 1970 Tony Award for Best Supporting Actress and the New York Drama Critics' and Drama Desk Awards.

Melba was born 32 years ago on West 108th Street. Both her parents were entertainers, and Melba began singing at the age of 4. At college she majored in music, and upon graduation, taking the advice of her parents to "get some security," she taught school for a year. But soon a burning desire to get into show business took hold of her, and she quit teaching.

"Ever since that day," she recalls, "even before I got my first singing job, the whole world looked better to me."

It was while working as a studio singer that she was given an audition for _Hair_, and since then her story has been a virtually unbroken success.

Melba has starred in numerous television shows, including her own summer series for CBS and an ABC special on the life of abolitionist Harriet Tubman. Better known for her singing than her acting, Melba has recorded nine alb.u.ms and has received a Grammy nomination. Her most remarkable vocal feat, however, was probably her one-woman concert at the Metropolitan Opera House in December 1976, which won her rave notices from every music critic in town. In the concert, she performed everything from ballads to rock to opera.

"Singing opera actually rests my voice," says Melba. "It's like doing vocal exercises." Equally at home in a nightclub or a concert hall, she has demonstrated her four-octave range with many of America's leading orchestras.

Her new alb.u.m, released late in September by Epic Records and t.i.tled simply _Melba Moore_, contains both disco songs and straight ballads.

One of the cuts, "You Stepped Into My Life," is out as a single. Another cut is "The Greatest," from a film about Muhammad Ali. "No, I didn't sing it in the movie, but I am an Ali fan. I'm a fight fan. I turn on the cable and watch everyone -- flyweights, everybody. People I've never hard of."

Her new movie, _Purlie_, in which Melba will recreate her Broadway smash success, is scheduled to begin filming this November in the countryside of Georgia. Melba plays the orphan Lutibelle Gussiemae Jenkins. After the movie, she will devote most of her time to a new musical, _Harlem Renaissance_, which is planned to reach Broadway next spring.

The day after she quit _Timbuktu_, Melba headed for Acapulco to be one of the judges in the Miss Universe Pageant. "They said there were going to be 600 million people watching, so I made sure my nose was powdered. ... They worked us from sunup to sunup, but I did manage to get a little suntan," she says teasingly, showing me a patch of light brown skin directly under her top s.h.i.+rt b.u.t.ton.

Married for the past five years to restaurateur Charles Huggins, Melba is overjoyed to have a child at last -- "we have been waiting for her" -- and spends as much time as she can with her daughter. A Westsider off and on for most of her life, Melba is fond of shopping at Vim and Vigor Health Foods (57th Street near the Carnegie Recital Hall), then going next door to the Merit Farm Store, where she buys her favorite junk food.

Of all her accomplishments in the last 10 years, Melba is perhaps proudest of her involvement with an international television series for children, _Big Blue Marble_, which is currently being shown in 78 countries.

"I'm very much into international things," says Melba, "I have appeared in some of the segments, but basically my role is to let people know about it. ... In some way, we hope that the program can help promote peace and understanding to these children -- while they're still at a vulnerable age."

WESTSIDER MICHAEL MORIARTY Star of _Holocaust_ returns to Broadway in _G.R. Point_

5-5-79

When Michael Moriarty rose to national stardom last year with his chilling portrayal of SS Officer Dorf in the NBC miniseries _Holocaust_, his performance was witnessed by some 120 million Americans. His current vehicle, _G.R. Point_ at the Playhouse Theatre on West 48th Street plays to a maximum audience of 500. Yet, in the lead role of Micah Bradstreet, a wet-behind-the-ears soldier from rural Maine, Moriarty delivers what Clive Barnes of the _New York Post_ has said is "the best performance, so far, of his career."

_G.R. Point_ is a play about the Vietnam War and its effects on those who are forced to partake in it. Set on a strikingly designed stage built to resemble a devastated hillside, the play demonstrates how each of the eight characters manages to cope with his predicament in his own way. Its message is summed up in the final words of the drama, spoken to Micah as he departs for the U.S.: he is told to "count the living, not the dead."

"One of the main reasons I wanted to do this play is that it affirms life,"

says Moriarty, in a dressing room interview just before a performance. "It doesn't take any specific political stance, but it doesn't avoid any of the horrors of war. Its only stance is: in the end, what overcomes the situation is love. And love sometimes shows itself in the strangest, most bizarre ways."

He is tall and solidly built, looking somewhat younger than his 38 years, and though his demeanor has an edge of shyness to it, Moriarty's penetrating eyes reveal that much is going on beneath the surface. Asked about his personal views on Vietnam, the actor replies, "I'm not an intellectual, so I have no specific feelings about it." But his conversation soon reveals him to be a deep thinker and a wit besides, whose remarks are tempered as much by humility as by professional instinct.

"Whatever I could say about the war has been better stated by David Berry, the playwright. I'm able to show my emotional response to the war through Micah Bradstreet. ... I'm not trying to influence anyone in any way in particular. I do think the play tells the truth about Vietnam. So the more information people have, the better decisions they can make."

Moriarty's decision to become a dramatic actor can be traced to his undergraduate days at Dartmouth College, when he was overwhelmed by Paul Scofield's performance in _Love's Labor Lost_. Following graduation, he won a Fulbright Scholars.h.i.+p to attend the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art. In 1974, after years of perfecting his craft in theatres across America, he picked up the first of his two Tony Awards for his performances in _Find Your Way Home_. Equally skilled at television acting, he is the recipient of two Emmys, including one for _Holocaust_.

A Detroit native of Scandinavian and Irish ancestry, Moriarty attends Catholic ma.s.s regularly, and finds much inspiration in the Bible, both spiritual and literary. His chief hobby is music: he is a polished singer/pianist/songwriter who frequently performs in the city's leading nightclubs between acting a.s.signments. Asked whether he would consider teaming up with octogenarian blues singer Alberta Hunter at the Cookery in Greenwich Village, he replies with a laugh, "That's very heavy company. I'll cook and she'll sing." He usually practices in the morning.

"I'll ramble over the piano and play some easy music. It's purely according to my libido. You might call it ad libido. Hey, not bad! How's that for an alb.u.m t.i.tle?"

Another of his talents is writing plays. Although hesitant to discuss this up-and-coming aspect of his career, Moriarty finally admits that one of his plays was recently read dramatically at the McCarter Theatre in Princeton, New Jersey, under the direction of Ben Levit. "It was none of my doing.

I sat back, and it all happened before my very eyes. I was astonished, and pleased, and proud, and in no great hurry to see it produced except by this director -- if he wants to."

Long a devotee of Shakespeare, Moriarty founded his own non-profit Shakespearean company, Potter's Field, in 1977. He and his group perform free each Sunday in Central Park near the statue of Sir Walter Scott, weather permitting.

In response to a question about the West Side, where he has lived for the past five years, Moriarty says that "you can walk one block and encounter everything the world should either be proud of or ashamed of." His favorite local restaurants include Coq du Vin on 8th Avenue and O'Neal's Balloon at 6th Avenue and 57th Street. "Pat O'Neal and I crack jokes about my career as a waiter. I worked at O'Neal's off and on for about four years. I was terrible! They kept me on out of sheer compa.s.sion. I guess I became an endearing lunkhead."

Other goals? "None that I'd care to mention," says Moriarty, smiling softly. "All the other ones are neurotic, and I don't want to expose them.

I've done it too often. In my neuroses, I think, 'Gee, I'd like to do that or this.' But in my higher self, I have no unfulfilled needs."