I was working on this podcast episode, my first actually, as a surprise for David, who sadly passed away in November 2023, just a few weeks before I completed it. He was among my most significant mentors and a close friend, imparting wisdom on music and beyond for the 20 years I was fortunate to know him. When I first met him, he was in his 60s, and was vibrant, charming, and strong, with a quick, sharp intelligence and wit, and a sometimes inappropriate sense of humor that he kept until the very end.When I started making documentary films, I knew that I would eventually produce one about David. Initially, I thought the film would address his early music (like I had done with my first film, Sonata (1957),    • Sonata (1957) – documentary film and perfo…  , about Donald Harris’s first work), but when I discussed this with him, he waved his hand and called that topic boring–typical David, he was always unabashedly honest. Instead, during the first formal shoot at his West Village apartment in NYC, he directed me to ask him about “gay music.” To his credit, he knew that this was to become a major exploratory topic in the documentary. Ultimately, the broadest topic for both the feature, called Secret Music, and the later short, Gay Body of Music ( http://opus1films.vhx.tv/ ), was that of transformation. Throughout his life, David transformed whenever his inner voice led him to his next frontier: among these were from pianist to composer; from Catholic to atheist; from serial composer to neo-tonal composer; from a good boy with no awareness of sex to uninhibited explorations of his identity; from alcoholism to sobriety; from worldwide fame to a turning inward following self-discovery at the Body Electric retreat; from neo-Romantic music to “gay music”; and his final frontier, as he called it, from having no health issues to suffering from Parkinson’s disease, from which he died.The interview here covers these transformations and more, and was filmed during production of my documentaries, which also feature David’s phenomenal music. Please help support my work by subscribing. If you wish to watch the short, Gay Body of Music, where David answers the question he initially wanted me to pursue, “what is gay music?”, follow this link: http://opus1films.vhx.tv/.Featured music: The Ballad in Yellow (1997):    • The Ballad in Yellow by David Del Tredici  ______________________________________________________________David Del Tredici (1937 – 2023) is a widely celebrated composer whose name is in history books as one of the founders of the neo-Romantic movement in American classical music in the 1970s. He won numerous awards, including the Pulitzer Prize, and was a Woodrow Wilson and Guggenheim Fellow. His music has been performed and recorded by some of the most prestigious soloists and orchestras the world over.Read more about David here: https://www.daviddeltredici.com/https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_D…______________________________________________________________With much gratitude and credit to the following supremely talented people:Mike LaVoie, director of photographyBodine Boling, editorMarcus DiLauro and Ben LeHouillier, sound recording and mixingMarcus DiLauro, post sound mixerhttps://www.seeraudioproductions.com/

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