I’m the music man. Our B.F.A. musical theatre students come to me in their senior year, and I’m their singing and acting teacher. Our kids get work because they’re actors who know how to sing.

I was writing super titles [projected lyrics above the stage] for Opera Pacific and John Mauceri was conducting there. I was conducting “West Side Story” at the Orange County High School of the Arts and knew he was a protégé of Leonard Bernstein. I wanted his input, and he very graciously agreed to go to lunch.

At the same time, there was the announcement of the creation of the Hollywood Bowl Orchestra and the naming of John as conductor.

A month later, he called, because they were scheduled to record their first CD before the Bowl season began. His assistant in New York couldn’t come out, so all of a sudden I’m teaching high school and taking a few days off to do this project.

I eventually became associate producer of that series. The Hollywood Bowl didn’t have the funds for an assistant for John, so I was hired as a member of the orchestra, but my job was to be John’s assistant.

The duties are so varied. We restore a lot of scores, things that are played for the very first time. Because I sit next to John and we’ve studied the soundtrack, when we go into rehearsal and the French horn parts aren’t right he asks me to figure it out. The players come to me if there are note errors, because they know that John’s busy, and sometimes I can do it by ear.

When it comes to Movie Night, we make up the program. At the beginning of the summer we rent a lot of movies, and then start talking to the studios.

I’m a vocal coach – working with special guests like Kristen Chenowith and John Lithgow last summer. I played piano for Julie Andrews for “The King and I.”

The first time I was entrusted as a vocal coach was with “The King and I.” Ben Kingsley had never sung before and was performing the role of the king. He was a little nervous, but he trusted me because I’d been teaching musical theater for so long and was used to talking to actors. Patrick Stewart was the same way. He had never sung in public and wouldn’t agree to “Camelot” until he met with me and had my okay in saying this would work.

The variety, because that’s what keeps me happy. We’ll do an opera, a musical, Tchaikovsky and movies. Our orchestra loves the variety of all of this stuff.