Burton Beerman goes 'Live with Regis and Kelly'

Regular viewers of ABC’s “Live with Regis and Kelly” television show don’t usually hear the stars promoting classical music—much less experimental contemporary music—but those tuning in June 18 heard Regis talking about BGSU’s own Burton Beerman, musical arts.

On that Friday morning broadcast, Regis Philbin urged his audience to head downtown to New York’s Tribeca area to the Flea Theater (which he jokingly referred to as the “Flea Market”) to hear a performance of two of Beerman’s compositions.

Burton Beerman

Following Philbin’s endorsement, heard by about five million people, and a recommendation in the New York Times, “we had full houses all week,” Beerman said. The performances were part of the Festival of American Music.

In an instance of one degree of separation, Beerman’s connection to Philbin is Stanley Yerlow, music director for the Regis and Kelly show. He and Beerman have been friends since they were in the eighth grade in Atlanta. In addition to Yerlow’s work on the television show, he and Philbin frequently perform together in sold-out shows in Atlantic City, Las Vegas and other vacation spots.

It was perhaps the “human interest’ aspect of the story that piqued Philbin’s interest, Beerman said. Philbin explained to the audience that while he normally does not talk about classical music on the show,
nor about his music director, he was intrigued by the story of the two musicians growing up together and of their longstanding friendship and musical relationship.

In fact, one of Beerman’s pieces performed at the Flea Theater for the festival was “Night Scenes,” a complex piano work written in honor of his long-time friend and performed by Yerlow. The other was “Voices,” for soprano voice and contra bass, sung by BGSU music faculty member Jane Schoonmaker Rodgers.

Both musically precocious as children—Beerman on saxophone and clarinet and Yerlow on piano—the two have each had varied careers spanning an eclectic assortment of musical styles.

Beerman was performing on the saxophone in Atlanta’s largely African American nightclubs at the age of 12, alongside the likes of Little Richard and Bo Didley. He managed to play at the Peacock Club during a time of strict segregation, and wrote numerous gospel songs for black church choirs. He was also a clarinetist and saxophonist with the Atlanta Chamber Orchestra.

Today, in addition to teaching at Bowling Green and serving as director of the MidAmerican Center for Contemporary Music and chair of the board of directors of the University’s annual New Music and Art Festival, he is an internationally acclaimed, award-winning composer and performer of contemporary music. He embraces both acoustic and electronic music, and his work has had an impact on clarinet performance, multimedia productions and dance.

Meanwhile, Yerlow, who received his doctorate from Eastman School of Music and is a Steinway Artist, performs classical music in concert and collaborates with Beerman on contemporary compositions. Conversely, as music director for the television show and in his performances with Philbin, he plays pop music on the piano, with a little classical thrown in for good measure, “and even tap dances,” Beerman pointed out.

The Regis and Kelly show was not the first time Beerman’s work has reached a mass audience. About seven years ago, CNN came to Bowling Green and did a feature story on him and the electronic music studio that was regularly rebroadcast on CNN-CNNI “Futurewatch, The World Today,” and “Headline News” and was seen by an estimated 60 million people. CNN maintains a Web page as a source of information on the story at: www.cnn.com/TECH/9602/performance_art/index.html.

Beerman, who is recovering from a severe accident a year ago in which he was struck by a truck while crossing Main Street in downtown Bowling Green, is now beginning to play his clarinet again. He will play in concert for the first time since the injury at the University’s New Music and Art Festival. He will perform at 8 p.m. Oct. 22 in Kobacker Hall.