I’ve added an “About Me” page to the site, with rapid-fire smart-aleck remarks.
The above pic: this is a drawing I made of Jay Chattaway’s house on Martha’s Vineyard in the early 1990s. Jay was a composer on Star Trek for many years, but from time to time I talk so persistently about Star Trek, he’s like, “You know, that’s not all I’ve done, right?” He scored films like Silver Bullet, and was an arranger/producer for Maynard Ferguson in the 1970s, among many other credentials.
When I was publishing Film Score Monthly in the early 1990s, I wrote Jay a fan letter (he lived in Malibu at the time), and he wrote back, and I’m paraphrasing this, “You know, you could have looked me up in the Vineyard phone book.” He had a summer place in Edgartown! I was like, MIND BLOWN. (At a different time, I was even more astonished to learn that one of my high school classmates, last name Muldaur, was Diana Muldaur’s niece. “Yeah, my aunt’s on Star Trek,” she sighed. “Aunt Dinny” has since retired to the Island, and is a super lovely person.)
Jay is married to Terri Potts-Chattaway, who also worked on Star Trek, and her blog is here: https://www.sailblogs.com/member/svcadenza.
Jay has always been super nice to me, very caring, thoughtful, and generous with his time. When he came to the Vineyard for a few weeks or month every summer, I always enjoyed going to see him and his lovely family. He would take me out on his sailboat—he’s a very experienced sailor—and one time I puked off of it. I’m fairly useless on the water.
The above drawing came about because Jay needed—I forget why—a picture of his house, but it was obstructed by trees in a way that made taking a photograph difficult. So I drew it!
This is about as good a time as any to lament that I haven’t been back to the Island in two years because of you-know-what, and I miss it. I miss my family, I miss the sights and sounds of my childhood—and I miss dropping in on friends like Jay. It was and is so reassuring to know that there are people in the world who are nice, and artistic, and talented, and worldly, and big-hearted...and they can become your friends.
I remember being excited when I saw Jay's name pop up in TNG credits. I recognized him as the arranger of so many tunes we'd played in high school jazz band (yes, a lot of them were Maynard's charts).