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Margie Balter |
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Margie Balter is a pianist, a composer, an actress, a playwright and she
is the piano teacher that some of Hollywood’s biggest stars turn to,
whether to learn piano for simple enjoyment or because their role in a
film requires them to play a song or two. What should not be overlooked
however, is how much of an inspiration Margie Balter is to so many,
including this writer in the short time that he has been acquainted with
her and how others look to her as a personal mentor. Margie Balter’s
current album Music From My Heart was released a few years ago, about
the time when the music business seriously hit the wall and since it is
a timeless album comprised of original treasures you should buy it now.
Yes you!
Ms. Balter’s foray into the entertainment world was, one might say
almost predestined. A couple of members of her extended family were
entertainers, including the actress Aline MacMahon who was nominated in
1944 for an Academy Award as Best Supporting Actress for her role in the
film Dragon Seed.
Remembering Aline MacMahon, Margie Balter says, “She had this very big
voice and this very large personality (Margie
imitates her). There was something about her life and she had all of
these pictures of herself, headshots and even as a little girl I was
like, that is what I am doing. Right now kids don’t really know what
they want to do in their lives and that was not me. I don’t know what
drove me, but I was so driven as a child at a very, very young age I
knew I was going to be an actress and not only an actress, but I was
going to be a musical actress. As a child I took dance every single day
and it wasn’t my mom, it was me who was saying, can I take this? I want
to take more dance. Can I go every day? My mom was like, really? Then I
was yes, I really want to take this extra class and that extra class.
Literally at age three, I was taking dance three days a week. That
continued almost until now, because I just love to dance.
I took ballet, jazz, tap and it was all part of my plan to be a
musical theater actress. That was my main, main plan.
I started taking piano lessons when I was four and it wasn’t really that
I wanted to be a pianist, but it was just that I wanted to be able to
know music for my acting career. Being completely compassionate about
it, I considered myself to be outside of every other person that I knew.
I started my own theater company. I had a lot of energy.
I wrote the plays, I had music in them and I had little theme songs that
I did at the beginning of every one. I wrote musical numbers. I had a
room in my house that I devoted to the sets and costumes. I had this
giant birthday cake made out of boxes and ribbons. It was huge, seven
feet tall. I was very serious about it. It was fun. It was really,
really fun.”
Margie Balter describes herself as, “I am kind of a takeover leader type
of a person if I am in a group, and even if I try not to be a leader it
falls on me to make it better. I have done that with most of the bands
that I have been in and most of the big projects. I am an individual
person that really has a lot of force. My parents had a lot of force and
their parents had a lot of force. It is like an ancestral energy and
force.
My father didn’t have any show business in him, but he was in such a
hurry to be successful and he was very successful, as both a lawyer and
a business man. He skipped four grades. He just wanted to learn, learn,
learn. He was the youngest person to graduate from law school in the
state of Pennsylvania (at the time that he did).
He even had a case before the Supreme Court of the United States.
That kind of energy was something, I don’t know, I just had it
and I still have it. I like it. It is fun. It is sort of a game and it
is who I am.”
Ms. Balter is not slowing down either, “I am not tired of exploring the
places that I want to go as a writer and as an actor. I am not tired of
anything. I am ready for more and I don’t feel like that at all. I have
to set my alarm when I do stuff. When I am practicing I have to set an
alarm to stop myself otherwise ten hours will go by and the same thing
(will happen) with my students. I’ll be at their house for hours. If my
watch doesn’t work, their lesson is two hours and we both look up and
say, oh my God what happened? My alarm goes off when a person’s lesson
is over. Both of us go, oh
crumb, it just went too fast. It is kind of odd. I don’t really know
that many people who are like that.”
Interestingly enough it was when Margie Balter enrolled at Northwestern
Drama School that she turned her attention more seriously to music.
I went to college for drama and you had to audition to get into
Northwestern Drama School. I hated Northwestern, it was a shock to my
system that I went to a theater school with such a great reputation and
it was so conventional. Theater was in a very tiny narrow box and there
were so many interesting things going on that I couldn’t hack it. I
didn’t like it and I hated my professors. I just couldn’t believe that
here was this prestigious school that Stacey Keach and all of these
amazing actors had gone to and it was just so narrow. I didn’t want to
do it. I didn’t like it. I decided in an intellectual way to become a
pianist. I thought what else could I do? I thought a pianist doesn’t
need anybody else. As an actor you need other actors, a director, a play
and I said you know what, I am going to build my piano skills and I
don’t need these other very phony people.
That was very sincere and I made a giant switch, which my mom
still doesn’t understand. I
started studying Jazz piano. I locked myself in a room to get more chops
and all of that. That was after one year at Northwestern. I was
nineteen.
When I say I decided that, I still loved acting. I just didn’t like the
business of it, because I had been in summer stock, as a teenager and it
was so, who are you sleeping with and all the other girls in my group
and they were plotting who they were going to sleep with, so they could
get a role and that was just a drag. I am a natural actress and it is so
easy for me, I don’t have to do anything for it. It is just simple for
me to switch into a different person.
I love doing it, but the politics of it really bothered me.
I didn’t have giant boobs and I didn’t really look like an
actress at that point. I looked like an ordinary person. It was a shock
to me, but I didn’t really abandon it. I knew at some point that I would
come at it from a different direction.
So from the time of being nineteen until now I still have done a
lot of acting, not as much as I would have liked to do and I still hope
to do much more.”
The next part of Margie Balter’s journey took her to the University of
Washington in Seattle.
“The reason I picked Seattle is because I am two things, I am a pianist.
I have that solitary vision, happy to be alone personality.
I am also like a social magnet. I am great at any party or event.
I am a party girl too. Not a
party girl in the way of floosy party girl. I just like to meet people.
I like to be out and I have a big personality. I love it (socializing).
I think it is a blast. I am outgoing and I don’t have a shy bone in my
body. It is very hard to become a pianist if you have that other side.
Most pianists have to develop and I was not as developed as I wanted to
be. Seattle was the only
city in America that had a musical school that I was interested in and
where I didn’t know anybody. I envisioned that I was going to go to
Seattle and that it would rain all of the time. I would be sitting in my
piano cave practicing five to eight hours a day just to get my chops
together. It didn’t work out that way, because very early on I was asked
to join a band and I was out all of the time again, so I really didn’t
get the chance to do that.
I went to Seattle to study ethnomusicology. The reason I wanted to study
ethnomusicology is I had studied Classical music since I was four and I
felt that I really knew that. I didn’t want to be a straight piano
teacher or a concert pianist in a symphony. I didn’t really want that. I
wanted to study music from around the world, something that I didn’t
know. I also had spent quite a bit of time studying Jazz, something that
I am crazy about. I wanted
to study Brazilian music and African music again. This was way, a long
time ago, before anybody even heard of this. For me it was fascinating
and I chose Seattle. There was an ethno department here in Los Angeles,
but I have thirty family members here and I figured I would never get
anything done. It was a pretty mature decision. I don’t think most
people would have made it. I had the desire to sit in a piano room by
myself and I figured the best shot that I had at it was to go to a city
where I didn’t know anyone.
My journey in Seattle was incredible. Early on I was taking an African
music class. I figured it would be fun and interesting and the guy
teaching the class Dumisani "Dumi" Maraire was an amazing musician. I
used to joke that the main reason he asked me to join his band was
because I had a station wagon and all of his instruments could fit in my
car. I didn’t really know African music. I first joined as the rattle
player and then I became a marimba player. I was in a band for five
years and it was called the Minanzi Marimba Ensemble. I became the
manager of the band, as well as one of the main dancers. I danced
African dance and I know that sounds bizarre, but I did and it was one
of the most amazing experiences that a person could have. We became one
of the most popular bands in Seattle. We played loads of jobs. We played
every single day. We were super popular in clubs in Seattle. We went all
over Canada. We opened for amazing acts. We went on tour with Taj Mahal;
we opened for Grover Washington, the Neville Brothers and all of these
different reggae bands and people that you would never think of meeting.
I spent six days with Bob Marley. It was an amazing experience to do
that. I played in nine other African or semi-African bands as well.”
After quitting one of the Seattle bands that she was in, a friend of
Margie Balter’s who happened to be in the city called her and said that
he needed a production assistant for a television show that he was
working on.
“He was going to
pay me this exorbitant amount of money to be a production assistant. He
said, well I will sit down with you for an hour and I will explain
everything that you need to do. Just bluff it. He came over and we and
sat down by Lake Washington, which is gorgeous and he talked to me about
blocking camera angles and whatever. There I was working on a show for
HBO and I had never heard of HBO at that point. I did the job and it was
so much fun. I loved being a PA and it was super fun. About a week later
my friend was like, what the heck are you doing in Seattle with all of
your talent and your music? He knew I was an actress. He said you belong
in Los Angeles. About a week later, I get this call from the production
company that had done this show and they said you did such a great job.
We would like to know if you would be willing to come to Los Angeles, we
have another job for you. I
said, sure I would love to, when do you need me? They said, tomorrow. I
left my house, my dogs, my students and everything and I flew to Los
Angeles. The same day that I got picked up I went to the house of George
Segal the comedic actor and I was sitting at his swimming pool taking
notes. I went from show to show for six to eight months. Finally, I went
back (to Seattle) got rid of my house, got rid of my stuff and formally
moved to L.A. to be a production assistant and working in the business.
It took me about a year to say, hey I came here to do something
else and I stopped doing all of that,” she says.
Margie Balter’s life however, was about to take yet another unexpected
turn, something she now refers to as “weird serendipity.” She was still
working as a production assistant and teaching piano. Her lone piano
student recommended her to actress Jane Fonda.
“Piano students came from everywhere. It was very odd, because I would
get someone at the peak of their career or just as they were coming over
a little bit to get to the top. It was coming from everywhere and it
wasn’t just Jane although Jane was amazing. She was warm and wonderful.
She was at a very big peak, because she had the exercise stuff,
On Golden Pond was going on
then, Tom Hayden (Jane Fonda’s
former husband) was running for the state senate. She invited me to
stuff, but it didn’t just come from her.
At that point I still wanted to be an actress and I would go to acting
class and I would have just come from Jane’s house. I heard all of these
people (at acting class) bullshitting about crap. I never said a word
about where I just was. I would have just been at Roger Vadim’s house,
Jane’s house and all of these different people. I didn’t even mention
where I was. I kept it very
discreet. At a certain point it tipped over, but it probably didn’t tip
over until Holly (Hunter). I was recommended to Holly through Jill
Eikenberry from L.A. Law. Jill was a wonderful student of mine and I
love Jill and we are still friends. When I go to New York she is on my
top list to call and I meet with her and her son with whom I am still
super close. I started teaching him at nine and he is a musician in New
York. Jill recommended me to Holly and Jill recommended me to a
bazillion people, John Lithgow, just an enormous number of big, big
stars. She was wonderful to me.
I had dinner at their house all of the time. I went to their
children’s wedding. It is an odd job being a piano teacher, because you
are half in the family and you are half not, but you are close to people
in the family. It is really a lovely job,” says Ms. Balter.
People and in particular celebrities came to Margie Balter for piano
lessons for all sorts of reasons.
“Holly came, specifically for the role. Jill Eikenberry came to me for
years and for no role. She studied with me for years, maybe five years
or something like that and her son as well. She was an extraordinary
student and she is a wonderful pianist. She mostly studied Jazz piano
with me and she was a delight to teach.
Once I started with Holly, it was specific for this role that she
was about to get and that she did get. It was very intense and it was
very directed. I am good at that. I am good at either way. I have
students that have studied with me for twenty years and I am amazed that
I still have something new to teach them. It is kind of like life. I am
a natural teacher. I can see what a person needs you to say and once you
say it they evolve in a different direction.
It is a unique thing. I have no preparation for it. I have no
agenda for it. I don’t teach anyone in the same way. I may use similar
tools and I have some things that I do with people.
Jill Eikenberry once asked me what I thought the key to teaching was. I
said, I think it is caring. I really give a shit. I have been quoted as
saying; I love my students into learning, which I also do. I love them
and I love making them challenge themselves and going over a hump. It is
hard to get over a hump. Learning is not a walk in the park. It is
challenging to really learn stuff. Every single person who has studied
with me will say they have learned something. Everyone that I have
taught will say, she pushed me and she made me do this or that. It is in
the thousands that number. There is just something about can you make it
to the top of the mountain? Maybe you can and maybe you can’t, but can
you give it your best to get there.
Somehow I am good at inspiring people. I am part cheerleader,
part sage, part Yoda and part wink wink. It is positive reinforcement
and here is how to do it.
When I start a student I say, okay you’re my bird now. It is my
responsibility to get you to fly and I do get them to fly. It is fun (you
can hear that in her voice) It is like watering a garden and the
next thing you know you have this magnificent flower and then the next
thing you know you have another one,” she says.
Margie Balter took a few minutes to talk about her songwriting and her
album Music From My Heart.
“I write a lot of Pop songs and I have been writing Pop songs for a very
long time, but I also wrote piano music that was not Beethoven and it
was not just hardcore Jazz, but it was some music that my students could
enjoy playing and that I could enjoy playing. It was between Classical
and Jazz, that was virtuosic, had hints of Classical, hints of Jazz and
was a piece that you could play. You didn’t have to be a great
improviser, although I left room for that, because my CD has a lot of
improv on it. I had this song that was produced by David Foster for
Denise Williams. I had like fifteen major artists about to record my
song or who did record my song and it never happened. I didn’t actually
write it for Denise Williams, I wrote it for a boy band, but Denise
Williams got ahold of it and David Foster got ahold of it and they cut
it. I went there when Denise (was there) and Philip Bailey was singing
background vocals. It was just amazing and David Foster was producing.
The song was called “ARNS,” a total hit song. It is a hit concept.
Denise recorded it and it wasn’t coming out. I had this friend and he
had a friend who was at Epic and Denise was at Epic Records. I kept
calling this guy at Epic Records and saying, what’s happening and he
would say, I don’t know. They are delaying the release of it and it is
never going to come out. This guy’s name was Dan Beck and he was a big
executive at Epic. I was at this party and somebody said, come on play
something and I played one of my solo piano pieces that I had written,
that a bunch of my students played and I loved to play. He (Beck) was
like, oh my God, forget writing Pop songs. The Pop songs are great, but
this is incredible. This was in the late eighties or something and he
set me up and he tried to get me a record deal with a big New Age label.
At any rate, I went all the way on that label. They were going to give
me a deal. It was going to be partially my own music and also recording
music that I had played in film. Just as the deal was about to happen
they changed direction.
I had been thinking about it for a very long time, from the eighties
until 2007 when my CD came out. I was courted by another record label
and I had a similar thing happen just as the deal was about to go
through, we had the budget and we had all of these meetings, it
completely fell apart. The label changed direction completely.
It was in my mind and I had this little two minute demo of all
these pieces that I wanted to do.
I was working on
the movie Beauty Shop and they bought two of my piano pieces and just
the way everybody reacted to my solo piano piece, I decided to do it
myself. (editor’s note: only one
of the songs by Margie Balter was used in the movie Beauty Shop, but it
was in a main scene in the film.)
I started going forward on my own and I had an assistant.
I said I am going to do this myself. I was going to write a piano
music book and that was going to be my first thing. Somebody said you
should do the CD first and so I did. I just recently, a year ago did the
book. Two things off of the bucket list and that I did myself. The book
goes with the CD and it is a music book with the music that is on the
CD. You can buy it everywhere. It is digital (she
lists all the regular sites).
It is very disappointing to me that my CD came out just as the entire
music industry crashed. Had it come out a year earlier or three years
earlier it would have had a much more resounding sound.
I feel very lucky that I did my CD, but I would have been luckier had I
done it a few years earlier. In 2007 was when iTunes was coming way in
and also the economy started to collapse. I still with all my passion
and all of my energy completely believe in my CD. I have very rabid
fans. I have some people who say, your CD is my constant companion and I
listen to your CD every night before I go to sleep or every morning as I
am having my coffee or your CD is the thing that got me through blah,
blah, blah. I have very, very, very strong fans, but I don’t have enough
of them. It didn’t really get out enough, as I was hoping it would.
People are still discovering it all over and I have had great licensing,
track three “Bluesie,” has been on
Scandal and in the movie Date
Night and I feel very lucky about how it is. It is a rare thing,
because had I had the record deal on Windom Hill or on Higher Octave, it
wouldn’t have been what I have (now with my CD). I hear people say about
their projects, well I did the best that I could, but somebody was
telling me what to do or I didn’t have the budget. My CD is exactly what
I wanted. It is one hundred percent my artistic vision for exactly,
exactly, what I wanted. It is not that often that you get to do that. I
am ecstatic for that and I will probably be happy with it for the rest
of my life. Some things go out of style, but this will never go out of
style. It will always be exactly what it is, positive, inspiring,
soothing, but energizing,” says Margie Balter.
“My CD and book is a dream come true, really. My teaching is amazing.
There are still so many things that I haven’t done and that I am still
planning on doing. I have a dream project, which is my sitcom that I
have been working on for years and it hasn’t come out yet. It hasn’t
happened, but it will eventually. I just don’t know when. I have my next
album to work on and I have started it. My next album is going to be
more of a collaboration. There will solo piano music that can still be
solo, but with a little twist on it and going more for my
ethnomusicology. Some of the solo piano stuff, even though you can’t
hear it, unless you know ethnomusicology there is an African song on
there. Now that African song when I perform it I like to have African
musicians play with me on it. I like to hear a rattle with it. I like to
hear other parts to it. You are only hearing one part and I am hearing a
whole bunch of other things. Some of the pieces are like that. Some of
the pieces have words. I perform one of the pieces with an amazing
singer and sometimes with a saxophone player.
Aside from how I conceive some of these songs, other people have come to
me like a few Hip hop artists have used my songs with their tracks and
my most recent collaboration is with an Indian artist, by the name of
Ricky Kej and he has taken three of my solo piano tracks and added
Indian music. He is a well-known Indian artist. One of the pieces has an
amazing Indian violin and these Indian voices. It is incredible.
I am going to do a more World (music) record with piano. Of
course I am constantly writing Pop songs,” she says.
As for Margie Balter’s acting career, “I am still acting. Nobody ever
heard of improv comedy when I started doing it. I wasn’t that good at
it, but I became really great at it and I have used it the rest of my
life as a life tool. A couple of years ago I was cast in a film. (The
people producing the film) knew that I had a lot of characters and a lot
of accents and they said well we would like you to audition for this,
the villain role, which is very anti-me to be the villain. We would like
you to audition for this, but do you have a Russian accent? I said no I
don’t. Give me a few days and I studied a Russian accent just like I
would study a piano piece, like learning Beethoven or Chopin. I met with
people who were Russian, I listened and I read a book over the internet
and I had a friend record it and by God I have the best Russian accent
ever. I did the entire movie in a Russian accent. Hopefully, it will
come out sometime. It is an independent film.
Another guy who was in the movie called me and he was doing a project
and he said this is a reality show and it is about Hip hop producers and
we need a villain, we need like a Simon Cowell. Would you mind doing it
in your Russian accent? People loved my Russian accent even though it
was brand new to me. I have now done two projects as the Russian
Svetlana, which is hysterical; because I can go into it very easily (she
imitates a Russian accent).
I don’t know if you know Russian, but I can do it so simply.
People crack up about it. I am about to do a role in another film, not
with the Russian accent. We will see how that goes.
I have throughout my life felt very, very blessed and lucky. I have, as
I said an ancestry and family behind me that has made me very strong,
which I know most people don’t have.
That is just a blessing and you don’t know how you got to be that
lucky. It is how I feel almost every day. I always want to give back and
recently I became involved and I am on the board of advisors of the
Playing For Change Foundation. The Playing For Change Foundation is such
a perfect fit for me. It is
positive change throughout the world through music and music education.
They build schools in Africa and India and all over including they just
partnered with a charter school thing in America to spread people coming
together, because the value of music.
It should not surprise anybody that Margie Balter is giving back. You
only have to spend the hour or so that this writer did getting to know
her and you realize with everything that she has already accomplished in
her career, she leaves you with a feeling of anticipation that mirrors
the words of that song by Bachman Turner Overdrive, “You Ain’t Seen
Nothing Yet.”
This Interview published July 30, 2014 by Joe Montague is protected by copyright © and may not be reproduced in print or on the internet or through any other means without the written permission of Riveting Riffs Magazine, All Rights Reserved |
My
mother just moved to Los Angeles and the other night we were at a dinner
and there were a lot of my friends there and they said, just tell us a
quick story about Margie. I had no idea what my mom would say. She said,
well she had this theater company and the theater company was called The
Playwrights. It was from fourth grade through to sixth grade. Every
single Saturday they were playing somewhere, they had a job. Margie cast
all of her friends in these roles. Inevitably one kid would get sick and
one kid would have a different thing their mother wanted them to do and
whenever that happened Margie would play all of the roles if she had to.
Everybody at the dinner said, that sounds like Margie. It was kind of
like do or die for me. I just went for it and I did whatever it took. If
I had to do all of the roles and do it as a one person show I did it.