There is So Much Music in the Words of the Poems -
Interview with Mrs. Maria Newman and Mr. George Thatcher

An elite member of the new generation of American composers, Maria Newman, composer of the musical piece "Prince," is the daughter of Alfred Newman, a nine-time Oscar Award winning composer. George Thatcher, her husband and the conductor of "Prince," is also a prominent composer and lyricist.

MN: The poem "The Prince" is absolutely beautiful. I picked it because it had so much music in the words right away, and I felt that it would be lovely to write a piece of music to it. It's a lovely poem. George will be conducting the piece with a full orchestra, and with a beautiful solo soprano named Anne Marie Ketchum.

GT: 's a very sensual poem - the way the words flow together, the imagery. I remember reading it - we read through it. They gave us quite a few of Her poems and they were all beautiful, but this one struck me as one that would really suit Maria's writing style and what we are trying to achieve - writing more of an art song than a pop song or a commercial style song.

More traditional. - more traditional orchestra, more traditional harmonic concepts. There's no rhythm section per se laying down a beat like you get with so many of the big ballads and pop music. There's a lot of tempo changes, a lot of rubato; a lot of the harmonic structure is more like what you find in, I don't want to say a Schubert song, but still once again, it's a lot more like a modern language harmonically than that, but I think it's a very beautiful piece for a very beautiful poem.

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