A Meeting With Tori's Sheet Music Arranger

Added September 12, 1997

I received the following email from Amber Hansel:

Hi, my name is Amber Hansel, I'm a freshman drama major at Syracuse University, and I've been a professed Toriphile for years now (not just some teeny-bopper fad follower). Anyway I'd like to report an interesting experience I had while volunteering for a Hospice event at Syracuse Stage (a local theatre) on Monday night.

I signed up to help with the clean up for this event, so I had to wait for quite some time backstage before I had to work. The performer was an actor/singer named Joseph Neal, and both he and his pianist were trying to dodge the crowd backstage where I was waiting. So I tell them how much I enjoyed the performance and we start to chat. The pianist, I found out, by the name of David Pearl, IS THE GUY WHO ARRANGES THE SHEET MUSIC BOOKS FOR NONE OTHER THAN THE GODDESS HERSELF- YES!- TORI! Well, needless to say I freaked out. I told him the he was a very controversial man (thousands worship the books he arranges, more detest the often butchered job he does) and that I had just read on your page about the "ashre" controversy. He said "No, no, I remember that lyric. I wasn't sure about what it was, so I asked her to write out the lyrics for me (her lyrics are so hard to understand anyway). The word she gave me is exactly what I printed in the book."

This man (yes, check the credits on your sheet music books!) has arranged Little Earthquakes, Under the Pink, the Bee Sides, and Boys. We got into this very intense discussion of her work and he pretty much said that he liked her earlier work the best. "Baltimore was fun, and I loved her piano music in the first one, Little Earthquakes. Oh, and I really liked this one ballad she did in Bee Sides... I don't remember the name... (I said, maybe Black Swan, that happens to be MY personal favorite.) ...oh, yes! That's it! I liked that one as a good ballad. But I think that most of her recent stuff is just too much. It's like now that she's popular, she thinks that she can do whatever she wants. (I said, yes, it was her freedom to do that in the first place!) There was this one lyric at the end of this one song... I don't remember the song or the word... but I just thought, no, that's too much, so I changed it. (You WHAT?!?) Yeah, they give me a certain amount of freedom, but on one side there's some execs. going 'If you make the music too hard to play, no one will buy the books!' and the producers on the other side going 'If you don't write down EXACTLY what she plays and says, there will be mutiny by all of the fans!' So I tried to stay pretty true to what she does. I would love to just re-arrange everything she gives me, but... (Do you understand what the fans would DO to you if you did that? Besides, my friends and I just counter-re-arrange the stuff you changed, back to what Tori originally plays. The execs. should just leave the music exactly the way she does it in the first place!) I didn't know she had such a loyal following." I just laughed.

We talked a bit more about his work and the fact that, no, he's never met her, but he expects to do the next book as soon as he hears from her people. I was just so amazed to meet this guy and asked him if it was alright to write to you and tell about this meeting on your site. He said of course, just don't make him out to be too bad of a bad guy. Then he gave me his home address in New York City and his home phone number (both of which I promised to keep secret.)

I was just so amazed at this whole coincidence, and thought the rest of the Tori-worshipping world might like to hear about it!

Go Back To Extras

Go Back To ToriNews

Please give me feedback, comments, or suggestions about my site. Email me (Michael Whitehead) at mikewhy@iglou.com