FERNANDO M. RIVAS
Post and Courier Article
The event in 1986 was to honor that year's winners of the Princess Grace Foundation Grant, presented to up-and-coming performing artists. Rivas had won for "Santiago the Birdman," a song he composed for a theater musical.
Rivas was in a state of bliss as he heard Ol' Blue Eyes deliver with his usual aplomb a 15-song medley. "I just couldn't believe this could be happening to me, and I'll never forget meeting Cary Grant, especially since it wasn't long before he died," says the 51-year-old Rivas, who was born in Havana, Cuba. "He was so charming, and Grace Kelly's two daughters were there, Princess Caroline and Princess Stephanie, along with actors such as Robert Wagner."
Five years ago, after 27 years of composing music in New York, the Juilliard graduate and winner of two Emmy Awards for the songs he wrote for PBS' "Sesame Street" moved to Charleston. He brought his vast knowledge of music to Porter-Gaud School, where he started a jazz program last fall.
Rivas has the Internet to thank for his move.
The composer first communicated with Charleston native Maria DeLuca in 1995 after joining a writers' club that required members to send work to other members for a critique.
Having separated from his wife, Rivas made his first visit to Charleston and fell in love with DeLuca and with the city.
"I felt that Charleston was the perfect place for me to find the peace and quiet to compose the music and words that I had been trying to write amid all the bustle and haste of New York life," he says.
"Yet I still have my contacts in New York and Los Angeles," says the composer.
He has written for the likes of Cyndi Lauper and the late Celia Cruz, and his song, "Mambo I, I, I," was recorded by Gloria Estefan and was included on the Grammy Award-winning Sesame Street album "Elmopalooza."
Rivas also has worked with such Latin artists as Willie Colon, Iris Chacon and Paquito de Rivera.
FLIGHT FROM CUBA
Were it not for geopolitics and a bloody revolution, things may have turned out very differently. Rivas might never have had the chance to attend Juilliard.
Soft-spoken, with pale skin and light brown hair, the composer recalls his childhood in Cuba and the way he and other young boys were forced to wear uniforms and adhere to the Communist manifesto.
"I was on my way to being brought up by the school and government to be a little Communist," he says. "But then in 1960, when I was about 9, my parents, who both had been born in Spain and were still Spanish citizens, decided we should move to Miami.
"My mother was determined there was no way I would be brought up under Castro," says Rivas. "She and I didn't have any problem getting on the plane and flying out to Miami. Luckily, my older sister was already living there."
However, Rivas' father stayed behind to shore up his small business and try to get more money for the family's move.
"After the Bay of Pigs in 1961, the country closed up and things got really rough for the non-Communists there," says Rivas. "Therefore, my father didn't get to join us in Miami until 1966."
Battling Castro, his father managed to hold onto his business for another year or so. Then it was taken from him, and he was thrown into prison. Because of his Spanish citizenship, his father managed to travel to Spain in 1965, where he stayed a year before coming to Miami."
Rivas looks back on a childhood with an absent father.
"I went six years without seeing my father," Rivas says with regret in his voice. "From age 9 to 14, when I most needed him."
He adds, "When my father did come home, he was never the same after all that had happened to him."
Sadly, things would never be the same.
Two years after joining the family, his father died. Rivas was 17.
Rivas' mother and sister tried to make certain he had a good life.
When he was 11, while attending summer camp, Rivas became interested in the piano when he heard a boy his age playing one afternoon.
"I started copying what he played even though I had never had a music lesson," recalls Rivas. "When I got home, I convinced my mother to buy me a little plastic organ. Then, I began copying the jingles and the music I heard on television."
Noticing her son's love for music, his mother soon enrolled him in piano lessons. "After the first year, I was playing music usually only played by advanced students. When my teacher realized this, I advanced pretty rapidly," say Rivas.
After graduating from Miami's Christopher Columbus High School, he went on to study at the Manhattan School of Music from 1970-73 before transferring to Juilliard for four years. He graduated with a degree in music composition in 1977.
"It was boot camp at Juilliard, very competitive, very harsh, a place where you don't generally make too many friends," says Rivas, the only Hispanic in the music composition program at the time.
After seven years of college, Rivas hit pay dirt one year out of Juilliard.
This opportunity changed the direction of his career from the field of academia to that of entertainment.
"One day, I was playing keyboard, rehearsing with a jazz band in this big building," says Rivas. "A film director, who was working in an office in the building, liked what he heard and came to investigate.
"He asked me to write the score for a documentary on Muhammad Ali to be produced by what was then Metromedia," says Rivas. "I did the film, and it was wonderful for me in that it earned me my ASCAP card (the American Society of Composers and Producers union)."
Rivas said that without the break, he had planned to go on and earn his doctorate and teach music at the college or university level.
Still, Rivas found composing jobs came slowly.
"I stumbled around some in pop music and radio, and then a friend and I started an advertising agency in New York, and I also worked with a friend who had a recording studio in Florida."
Specializing in the Hispanic market, Rivas, with his partners, composed radio and television advertising jingles for Toyota, AT&T, Kraft Foods and the Army. He also composed ad tunes for McDonald's and Burger King that were aired in Puerto Rico.
"We wrote a bunch of those, sometimes writing 30 to 40 jingles a day," says Rivas.
ON TO 'SESAME STREET'
Although the money was good and the pace invigorating, Rivas had a yearning to work in the theater.
"I had a friend who was an actor and was connected with the INTAR theater company, where I composed for various off-Broadway productions starting in 1984. Also, I composed for the Theater Communications Group, where I collaborated with Maria Irene Fornes and Tito Puente in the musical 'Lovers and Keepers.' "
He was working with INTAR when he composed the song "Santiago the Birdman" for a musical that was set in Peru. Rivas co-wrote the musical with Peruvian playwright Alonso Alegria.
"Amazingly, it was the winner out of 13 songs submitted for the Princess Grace Award," says Rivas.
While working in theater, Rivas met a Cuban actor who told him that the PBS children's program "Sesame Street" needed authenticity in their Latin music for youngsters.
"They needed a Hispanic composer who could bridge the gap," says Rivas. "This was perfect for me, since Spanish was my first language."
At "Sesame Street," he was known as the "Hispanic Guy" because the writers always called on him for tunes with "cha-cha-cha" or mambo rhythms. He wrote 25 songs, including the popular "Conga Counting Song" that teaches kids to count from 1 to 10. The "Jelly Song" that inspires children to move their bodies to rhythm also was composed by Rivas.
It was at "Sesame Street" that Rivas wrote "Mambo, I, I, I," which tells of how much a person loves to do the Mambo. "It was really lucky that Gloria Estefan happened to hear the song while she was watching 'Sesame Street' and decided to record it," says Rivas.
In 1995 and 1996, Rivas and other writers and composers on "Sesame Street," were recipients of two Emmy Awards for the music on the show.
CBS America chose Rivas' recording studio and publishing company, which he named JAM (Just Arrived Music), to record its national Spanish-language radio program "HBO Espectaculares" in 1995.
"Two years that I especially enjoyed were when I played with my band four nights a week at the Rainbow Room high atop Rockefeller Center," says Rivas. "That place has such a history. It was where Duke Ellington and Count Basie and other legendary figures had played."
Through his connections in Miami, Rivas has worked as musical director with the Coconut Grove Playhouse in the musical "Miami Lights." Rivas also scored six full-length feature films, most notably "Ranger," produced by Alexandria Films, and "Carmelita Tropicana," an independent short feature shown at the Lincoln Center Film Festival.
In 1997, Rivas and Luis Santeiro were recipients of the Richard Rodgers Award for the musical "Barrio Babies." A scene from this show was featured in the Hispanic Heritage Awards aired by NBC in 1998.
"Here is Fernando right here," says Maria DeLuca as she points to a large color photograph of the Richard Rodgers Award winners past and present when they were honored at the Academy of Arts and Letters in New York. Seated with Rivas are such luminaries as Stephen Sondheim and Ned Rorem.
Santeiro, who wrote the story and lyrics to go with Rivas' music for "Barrio Babies," says from his New York apartment, "Fernando is excellent to work with because he has it all. He is classically trained as a composer at Juilliard, he understands Hispanic music since it is his heritage and he knows jazz. Plus, he is so easy to work with."
The following year, "Barrio Babies" was produced by the Denver Center Theatrical Company. This success was followed by Rivas' collaboration in 1999 with David Varquez on the children's musical "El Bluebird" at the University of Florida at Gainesville.
His latest musical was "Selena, Forever," based on the tragic life of the renown Tejano singer, which was staged in San Antonio to standing ovations. With obvious pride, Rivas says, "In 2001, 'Selena, Forever' embarked on a six-city tour and returned in 2001 to be performed in Los Angeles."
HITTING NEW NOTES
It would seem that living in Charleston might be tame after his successes in large cities.
"I was eager to make contact with other musicians," says Rivas. "In 2002, James Holland, the principal cellist for the Charleston Symphony, and I recorded 'Dialogues,' a piece for cello and piano that I composed." Rivas also played the piano on the CD.
In his living room, Rivas demonstrates how the mixing console for creating recordings receives various musical instrumental sounds from modules. From the console, the music is sent into a computer, on which Rivas mixes the sounds. The result is then sent back to the console, where a song is recorded onto a CD. Rivas sends the CD to a studio in New York to be duplicated.
Last winter, Rivas composed the score for the 60-minute videotape documentary made by SCETV that chronicles the 200-year history of The Post and Courier. The documentary was aired in January.
While writing the music for the newspaper's documentary, Rivas watched the videotape playing on a TV in the room. He then composed the appropriate music for each scene.
"Maria was a great help in describing the situation in the city that was created by Hugo," says Rivas. "My only problem was that the film editor was always changing things around, and so I would have to switch the music around as well, but it all turned out great."
JAZZ AT PORTER-GAUD
"The news that Porter-Gaud was seeking a jazz music teacher came out of the blue," says Rivas. "I was contacted by Margot Raven, a children's book writer who lived on Kiawah, to collaborate on a music project. Then when Stephen Blanchard, headmaster of Porter-Gaud, expressed an interest in creating an instrumental program at the school, specifically jazz, she suggested me."
Rivas met with Blanchard. "We agreed on the vision for an instrumental ensemble as a good starting point." Next, Rivas talked with Gregory Pittman, director of the school's fine arts department, and discussed the possibilities of the program.
"Oddly enough, Porter-Gaud had a fine vocal music group but didn't have an instrumental program at all," says Rivas. "I'm very excited to be part of this new initiative, and I'm committed to the concept that music instruction should be an integral part of every young person's educational foundation."
He adds, "I have always thought this, and my experiences with 'Sesame Street' reinforced the essential role music plays in communication and learning. The opportunity to interact with students at Porter-Gaud and share this new musical adventure is one I could not refuse."
Rivas says his work at "Sesame Street" also helped with Porter-Gaud students. "The staff at 'Sesame Street' always told us never to write down to the kids," he says. "Therefore, I never thought of the music as kid-type stuff although it had child-like elements."
At Porter-Gaud, Rivas has found the students to be "terribly bright" and eager to try new jazz techniques. "I always tell them not to try to improvise until they know the music itself inside-out," says Rivas. "Then they can go off on their own style."
Hugh Knight, administrative assistant for the arts and director of the handbell choir at Porter-Gaud, says, "It's been such an experience working with Fernando this year. We worked on putting together the jazz program and both of us played keyboard and did the orchestration for 'Les Miserables' at the school. He was so great composing and working with the different skill levels of students, and he's so laid back," says Knight.
"Also, the parents have been so impressed that we have someone of Fernando's quality and credentials in our midst."
LOVE ON THE INTERNET
In 1995, Charleston resident Maria DeLuca joined a writers' group on the Internet.
"This was back when the Internet was not as frequently used as today, and online participants were sometimes considered suspect," says DeLuca with a laugh.
I thought that what Fernando wrote was sensitive, so intelligent, as well as humorous and imaginative," says DeLuca. "We began to write to just each other, and then after a month, Fernando came to Charleston to take me to lunch."
While it was just lunch, DeLuca's office friends were worried that Rivas might be a disreputable character. "They had me call one of them in the middle of it so they would know I was OK," she says with a wide smile. "I even had a code word to use."
As DeLuca and Rivas continued to court long distance, the Internet bills piled up. "This was back when you had to pay by the minute, and one month the bill was $500," says DeLuca. "We also flew back and forth and talked frequently on the phone and the phone bills mounted."
Then in 1998, Rivas moved to Charleston.
"We actually bought our marriage license over two years before we got married," says Rivas.
Finally, on the morning of Saturday, Feb. 8, the pair woke up and just decided to get married on that very day. "We called around to ask who would marry us, and we found a minister who had a chapel in Goose Creek," says Rivas. "He charged us $200."
DeLuca adds with a sparkle in her voice, "We had a wonderful time. My dad came. And my son, whom we had called early that morning, surprised us and flew from Washington, D.C., just in time for the afternoon ceremony. I was really shocked to see him!"
As DeLuca leans against the counter in their newly renovated kitchen, she tells of a quiet life filled with music and films.
"We love to rent DVDs and check out the musical scores in the movies," DeLuca says. "We also like to imagine that we had cast different actors in the roles. Then we may turn the sound off and create our own dialogue for the characters."
Speaking of films, in 2000 Rivas scored Sharon Bowers' film "My Sister's Wedding," shown at the Sundance Film Festival. He also writes poetry and fiction and is a freelance contributor to the Charleston City Paper. But he would like to compose more.
"You really have to keep reminding people in New York that you are still around but just live in South Carolina," he says. "It's either feast or famine in this business. It's all part of the game."
It appears that opportunities for Rivas may be increasing. According to the June 19 edition of USA Today, Hispanics now make up 13 percent of the U.S. population.
Aware of this, Rivas says, "I would like to do some musicals with a Spanish theme, but more importantly, some that are off the beaten path."
