In 1980, one Saturday afternoon, while IU worked at the Drama Book shop, a portly gentleman bought the last copy of the vocal score to Jerome Kern’s “The Cat and the Fiddle.” I had been coveting it, but even on my book shop discount, I couldn’t afford it. I knew the person with him - I don’t remember who it was now - and he introduced us, It was Bruce Pomahac, an orchestrator whose name I recognized from the recording of Richard Rodgers’ Columbia University show, “Fly With Me,” which we sold in thew shop.
In 1987, we met again at the Library of Congress dress rehearsal for that evening’s concert, “Babes in Arms,” restored by John McGlinn, and some time after that, we began seeing each other socially, and soon Bruce was calling me into the offices of the Rodgers & Hammerstein Organization, where he was the director of music, on various projects: cleaning up and finishing the materials for “Babes in Arms” and “The Boys from Syracuse,” a new orchestration for “Annie Get Your Gun,” a ballet based on “Oklahoma!” and more. In 2001, when I restored “Dearest Enemy” fort the Richard Rodgers Centenary, I asked Bruce to compose some dramatic underscoring that I needed to fill out the Act Two finale. As soon as a recording I had worked on was released, he either came to my place or I went to his for some dinner and a listen. He loved my last two, “Dearest Enemy” and “Roberta,” but he was always in my corner cheering for me. In 2017, when City Center Encores! produced Cole Porter’s “The New Yorkers,” which I co-orchestrated with Josh Clayton, he flew in from Milwaukee to see it.
Milwaukee? Yes, when he retired from Rodgers & Hammerstein, he packed up , left Manhattan and a lovely apartment overlooking the Hudson at 42nd Street to return to his family in Wisconsin.
For years we traveled to Ohio Light Opera in Wooster, Ohio. He paid for the flights and I took care of the rental car and acted as his chauffeur, as we terrorized Wooster and environs. One year, a bottle of Listerine broke in my travel bag, and I spent the weekend smelling like mouthwash. I think our last jaunt was a trip to New Jersey to see Bruce Kimmel’s musical, The Brain from Planet X,” a show I had orchestrated, and which he loved.
For years I teased Bruce that he had got the last copy of something I really wanted. In the late 1990s or early 2000s, after he had been working at the St Louis Muny, he handed me a wrapped package with the comment "I stole this from the Muny library." I opened the package. It contained a pristine copy of "The Cat and the Fiddle" vocal score.
Goodbye, dear Bruce! I always thought/hoped that we'd end up together on the porch of an old musicians' retirement home, rocking and laughing at the world, which is a sadder place without you but Heaven will be a lot happier with your good humor and enormous heart.
