Inside the Music with Maybe Happy Ending co-creator Will Aronson

Will Aronson is a composer, lyricist, and writer whose multiple Tony Award-winning musical Maybe Happy Ending—co-written with Hue Park—has captivated audiences around the world. With the release of the official, artist-approved sheet music, we caught up with Will to talk about the show's origins, his musical inspirations, what it takes to bring a new musical to life, and his advice for aspiring writers.

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Interview with Will Aronson

Sheet Music Direct ("S"): Firstly, can you tell us your first experience of music as a child?

Will Aronson ("W"): Well actually, it's funny. It's kind of on topic. My mother used to sing me Irving Berlin songs as a baby, which is funny because now I'm in musical theater, right? And I actually don't think it's a coincidence. I guess she had heard an album that her mother had. She sang Christmas carols year round, and also Irving Berlin songs, and some of these songs actually had rather complicated chord shifts, which even though it was a cappella my mom would be singing. And I wonder if some of this stuff being put in my ear—all these different harmonic relationships—actually carried through and influenced me.

S: That's fascinating. And who were your musical inspirations growing up?

W: Well, it shifted around. The first influence was film music. I would tape film scores using a cassette player, off of Spielberg movies or Hitchcock movies or Tim Burton movies. I would listen to these tapes, and then I later found out you could actually buy the soundtracks! So that was the first influence. Then when I got into high school, we had a great jazz band and great jazz teachers as well, and I got very into Duke Ellington. That was a huge influence. Then in college, I sort of discovered classical music and opera, and I had a phase where I think Wagner had a big influence on me, oddly enough. The surface style is quite different to what I write, but the compositional methods of using small motives to build a larger texture definitely influenced me.

“I think Wagner had a big influence on me. The surface style is quite different to what I write, but the compositional methods of using small motives to build a larger texture definitely influenced me.”

S: Interesting. And what was the first ever piece of music you wrote, if you can remember?

W: Well, I found this recently. Around the time I was 10, I wrote a song called "Springtime," and it's about how beautiful the flowers in spring are. I don't know if I had heard that's what poetry was supposed to be about. What's funny about it is it had a two octaves and a third range for the melody. Right? And it's funny, because I will say that's still something I struggle with, making sure my writing isn't too rangy, so it's a problem I've had since I was 10!

S: That's funny! How did you get into writing for musical theater specifically?

W: Kind of sideways a little bit. I did co-write the book and lyrics for a musical in college, but it was because a friend convinced me to. Then I wrote music for a musical in college, but again I didn't see it as something I was eventually going into, but I did get that experience at the time. I also had some mentors in college who were influential and made me more interested in theater. I guess it was at the end of college, where I was trying to figure—I liked storytelling and I liked music, and the question was, where was the best place to do that? And somehow it seemed to me that musicals combined all of these different arts in an exciting way. It was a very broad tent and there was a great diversity of musical styles that could be represented under this umbrella of musical theater, which I think attracted me to the art form.

S: And how about your songwriting process? Do you have a fixed process, or does it change depending on the project?

W: I would say it's probably different on each project and with each collaborator. With Hue Park, my collaborator on Maybe Happy Ending, our method is rather unique. It really starts with stories and characters—everything is coming from that source, on the one hand. But when it comes to actually writing songs we work music first, generally. Then the lyrics are added to the music. That's usually the order.

S: How did Maybe Happy Ending come about? How did the collaboration come about with Hue? Where did it all stem from?

W: Well, Hue and I had already written a musical together, and because that had gone well, we were able to get a commission to write a new musical. And Hue had a few different ideas, and this was one of them that I immediately thought was great. I mean, people hear robots in love and they think that's a terrible pitch. But I point out that that's not what Hue pitched to me. He pitched much more of a mood and a character and a vibe. He pitched this idea of a lonely robot in a basement parking garage playing jazz trombone anonymously at night. And I loved that image, and was very excited to write this show together. So yeah, that was like 10 years ago now. We wrote this first draft and put up readings in Korea and in New York, and we got producers here and there at about the same time, but I would say the speed of production moved quite differently, because Hue and I already had an established career in Korea. Even though he is Korean, I actually dragged him into Korean musical theater to do an adaptation of a Korean movie. Because that had gone well, we were able to get Maybe Happy Ending up quite quickly in Korea, whereas it took longer in America.

S: 10 years ago, wow! And do you have a favorite musical moment from the show at all?

W: It is very hard to say, but I will say Hue and I were really excited with the show to experiment with some non-vocal sequences. We felt that it was built into the idea that, because our protagonists are robots, they're going to have a bit of a cap on how much they can belt. So instead, we created the script and the score to have these big sort of pantomime sequences, basically sequences that are just music with no singing. And we were excited to sort of try this experiment, and excited to see that it was well received and has remained part of the show, and is part of the Broadway production. Maybe unusually, it's part of the Hal Leonard score—we included all the instrumental sequences, which is probably not the norm, but for us, it would be like taking out the power ballads. If we took out the instrumentals, you'd be losing the climactic musical moments from the show.

“Because our protagonists are robots, they're going to have a bit of a cap on how much they can belt. So instead, we created the script and the score to have these big sort of pantomime sequences…that are just music with no singing.”

S: That is quite unique, yeah. So obviously the show won an incredible six Tony Awards and has been a huge commercial success. Did that come as a surprise?

W: Some of these questions are hard, that one is not hard. It was a very big surprise! Hue and I had another show, a brand new show, that we were opening in Seoul right after Maybe Happy Ending opened on Broadway. So we actually left the morning after opening night and we said goodbye to everyone because we thought we weren't going to see them again. We said, "What a beautiful process this was. You're all amazing. What a dream this has been. Let's have a reunion one day." And then when we came back a month and a half later to find out that the show was still running, it was sort of mind-boggling. So yeah, we didn't expect any of it.

S: So, you’ve obviously been involved in a lot of projects aside from Maybe Happy Ending. Is there one that you're particularly proud of that maybe didn't have that level of commercial success?

W: Well, you know, Hue and I have written several other shows that we haven't done our New York readings of. Maybe Happy Ending was unique because the group that commissioned it, as part of the commission, wanted to do a reading in New York and in Korea. All our scripts start in English, but the lyrics tend to start in Korean. So we have to choose which complete script we are going to finish first, because our first draft is essentially English language text with Korean lyrics. And so in that case, we sort of completed both. We translated the script into Korean for the Korean reading and then translated the Korean lyrics into English for the American reading. For our other shows we didn't have that development. So we translated them into Korean, and did Korean productions of them, but never did those New York readings because it wasn't part of the commission process. You know, readings are expensive.

But I think now we're going to try to actually do New York readings of some of our other shows that we've already put up in Korea. And I'm very excited about that. There's a show called Il Tenore that we wrote after Maybe Happy Ending, which is about the first opera tenor in Korea in the 1930s but it also involves political assassinations and comedy. We were joking about how you'd pitch it, and we sort of jokingly, but honestly said, "Well, it's sort of if Billy Elliot met the Bridge on the River Kwai." That’s probably not going to sell it to anyone, but I'd say if you combine those two, you'd get Il Tenore!

S: And do you have any other musical artists or composers that you particularly enjoy listening to or indeed playing right now?

W: I guess lately I've been in a little bit of a desert and haven't really been taking the time, but I'm sort of ready to get inspired again. I know that when Hue and I were writing Maybe Happy Ending, we were listening a lot to Ben Folds with yMusic - they were collaborating and doing amazing work. Gabriel Kahane is another artist we both loved.

S: Lastly, what advice do you have for aspiring songwriters or people who want to write musicals?

W: I think holding yourself to your own highest standards is important, although there's sort of a time and a place for that. First, you just want to generate material. Get stuff on the page. Get all your stuff out there. Don't over-edit, don't be self critical, but then be very critical. You know, once you get the thing, you go, "Could this be better? Is this really matching what I had in my head before? No, it's not as exciting as I thought it would be. Okay, why not? Can I make it more exciting? Oh, we said we wanted it to be this. It's not really that. How do we make it that." So I think it's a back and forth between being very free and easy on yourself and fun and playful and then very honest with yourself. And if you have people who you trust, who maybe come to your reading and they say "I really just lost the thread there," you probably want to listen to them.

“If you try to anticipate what other people like and want, and if it isn't really what you're doing authentically, people generally can smell that and it doesn't work.”

But also, if you try to anticipate what other people like and want, and if it isn't really what you're doing authentically, people generally can smell that and it doesn't work. I think many of the most successful people, it just happens that what they really love is loved by a lot of people. And you can clarify moments, you can fix plot points and these sorts of things to help it work better. But that's a little different than saying "I personally like things that are very delicate and quiet, but I see everyone loves that other thing, so I'll kind of pretend that's what I do." I think audiences and you can feel if it's really coming from an authentic impulse. So yeah, I think you've got to write what you love and then refine that.

S: Wise words. Well, thanks so much for your time today and great answers, we can't wait to play some of the songs from the show!

W: Thanks so much.

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