Elisabeth Vincentelli

Well, so my parents would go to Broadway and go see shows.

And they developed an interest in Sondheim.

And we didn't know who that was.

And they would bring back cassette tape recordings.

And I...

We had a cassette tape recording of A Little Night Music, and I was obsessed with it.

This is 1973 or something like that.

And I couldn't really understand all the lyrics.

It's very contrapuntal.

There's voices here and there.

And I was so obsessed with it.

And because it was a tape, there was no lyric booklet.

And I...

actually transcribed the entire musical by hand.

I did.

And in order to get some of the lyrics, you know, you had to switch, you know, move to the right speaker, move to the left speaker.

And of course, I got a few mondegreens out of that, like crazy wrong lyrics, but that I was convinced were the right lyrics.

But when you want to be part of the musical theater...

And you can't be there yourself.

You will find these weird ways to incorporate it almost physically, in my case, into my body by writing it and then, you know, singing it, unfortunately, whenever I played it again.