Facing the Music

Musical Director and arranger David Loud, a legendary Broadway talent, recounts his wildly entertaining and deeply poignant trek through the wilderness of his childhood and the edge-of-your-seat drama of a career on, in, under, and around Broadway for decades. He reveals his struggle against the ravages of Parkinson's and triumphs repeatedly. This memoir is also a remarkable love letter to music.  Loud is the 'Ted Lasso' of the theater business, ever the optimist!

“‘Music has consequences,’ a wise teacher once told a young David Loud; so does a story well-told and a life fully-lived. I lost count of how many times I laughed, cried, and laugh-cried reading this wonderful, wry, intimate, and inspiring book. David wields a pen like he wields a baton, with perfect timing, exquisite phrasing, and enormous heart.”
    — David Hyde Pierce, actor, Frasier, Spamalot, Curtains

“Beautifully written, filled with vivid details, braided with love and loss and wit and the perspective of someone with an utterly unique story to tell." 
-- Lynn Ahrens, lyricist, Ragtime, Once on This Island, Anastasia

“Luminous and surprising, an extremely honest memoir of a life lived in the world of Broadway musicals, by one of the theatre’s most gifted conductors. I can’t think of another book quite like it.” 
-- John Kander, composer, Cabaret, Chicago, New York, New York 

Unforgettably entertaining and emotionally revealing, Loud is pitch-perfect as he describes his path to the podium, from a stage-struck kid growing up at a school devoted to organic farming and mountain climbing, to the searing formative challenges he faces during adolescence, to the remarkable behind-the-scenes stories of his Broadway trials and triumphs. Skilled at masking his fears, Loud achieves his dream until one fateful opening night, when in the midst of a merry, dressing room celebration, he can no longer deny reality and must suddenly, truly, face the music.