Read on to discover the musical experiences and collaborations that helped to shape Star Trek actor William Shatner...
Who is William Shatner?
Most famous as Captain James T Kirk in Star Trek, William Shatner is one of Earth’s great ambassadors when it comes to curiosity about life, the universe and everything. His new album So Fragile, So Blue is out now, and sees him performing with Washington’s National Symphony Orchestra in a project inspired by his own trip to the closest reaches of space in 2021.
William Shatner remembers... New York Philharmonic Broadcasts
'My father would come home on a Saturday at noon, having worked a five-and-a-half day week, and gather strength for the weekend by lying down and napping for a couple of hours. Saturday afternoon was when the New York Philharmonic and the Metropolitan Opera would have their broadcasts. They featured great conductors who, after they died, entered the musical lexicon. That was the only music I heard in my house when I was growing up in Montreal. But I’d play the current music scene as an adolescent boy; I would listen to Sinatra and the crooners on the radio.'
Hearing Oscar Peterson at New York's nightclubs
'Montreal was, and I’m sure still is, a fun city, and it had more nightclubs per capita than any other major city – certainly more than New York City,' says William Shatner. 'The late choreographer Brian Macdonald was a really great friend of mine at college, and even then he was a member of the National Ballet of Canada. Not only was he a college student and a dancer, he had a job writing reviews of nightclub entertainment for one of the newspapers. So he would go around visiting seven clubs or more and he would invite me to go with him on these critical sojourns. I had access to some of the more popular bands and people. I would hear the likes of Oscar Peterson and trumpeter Maynard Ferguson at these nightclubs; a lot of great jazz musicians came out of Montreal.'
William Shatner... on meeting conductor Zubin Mehta
'There was lots of music at the Hollywood Bowl when I got to Hollywood. My wife and I went there for years to hear the orchestras or performers, so I spent a lot of time there listening to these great artists, whose names I couldn’t tell you now. Like so many people, I am ignorant as to the specifics of great music, but I know I love it.
'I did get to know conductor Zubin Mehta a little bit, though. We were on tour for a couple of days with an orchestra, and my impression of him was one of great erudition; he was very knowledgable about music, but he also loved his Indian food and he always carried with him a capsule of red peppers which he’d sprinkle over everything, even breakfast! But he was, and is, superb in his musical knowledge and his ability to transmit it.'
William Shatner... on working with composer Jerry Goldsmith on Star Trek
'I remember I had a great meeting with composer Jerry Goldsmith on a Star Trek movie that I directed (Star Trek V : The Final Frontier), and I had the audacity to say to him that I thought we needed music here or there, and he was sufficiently in agreement with me. So I was able to have some kind of a hand in the compositions of the music for the film. That was extraordinary.'
Working with singer-songwriter Ben Folds
'Singer-songwriter Ben Folds called me years ago to say he’d heard an album I had made and wanted to work with me,' remembers William Shatner. 'So he wrote a song for me, "In Love", on his album Fear of Pop. It was very popular, so we decided to make an album together, which he called Has Been, and on that are several songs that either I helped write, or he wrote, plus a cover song which did very well ("Common People"). Ben is a terrific musician. We recorded in Nashville, so I went there for a couple of weeks to make that album and went around the clubs with him and feasted on country music.
'I came back filled with the joy of making that kind of music and was given the opportunity to make an album of country music myself. Then not long after that it was suggested I could do a blues album, so we did that and I even did a Christmas album. Given my background in Shakespeare and iambic pentameter, and the poetry I’ve performed for a living over the years, I feel comfortable in the "music" and beat of verbal English.
'I can pick up the rhythms and the word trickery that the authors or composers have created, and I have done that in my own compositions. The "speaking music" that I’ve devised seems to me as close to music as I can get, so I’m doing music as best I can.'
