Behind the music

LOS ANGELES -- The red carpet was ripe with starlets and studlets. The ratings juggernaut known as "American Idol" was celebrating itself, and Fox Television had sent the beautiful, baby-face casts of its TV shows out in force. In their shiny finery, or intentionally underplayed outfits, they appeared on the cusp of celebrity, as well as adulthood.

Michael Orland stood off to the side, amused and bemused. At 42, he's a full-fledged grown-up in a town that loves teenagers and 20-somethings. But he's too good-natured to complain much. Instead he takes huge pride and no small pleasure in helping send the kids on their way.

Technically, Orland is musical director on "American Idol." He's the guy on piano leading the band, the one host Ryan Seacrest jokingly created new names for each week during the preliminaries (now a prerecorded orchestra takes over for finalists.) He's also "the guy," according to contestants, the one who calms them and cheers them and causes them to sound better than they otherwise might. As Dean Banowetz, the show's hairstylist, who is also known as the Hollywood Hair Guy (really, hollywoodhairguy.com), put it, "When people can't hit a note or get the rhythm, they turn to him because this man has the sense of humor to take a sorry situation and make it go their way."

Orland, however, hasn't always been comfortable around the younger crowd. Growing up in Worcester, he remembers himself as friendless, a middle child with no play dates or playmates. Instead he had his piano and his LPs, an obsession with music that began after
he saw the movie "Mary Poppins" multiple times and returned home to play the score from memory. He was 3 and change. The lessons began before he was 5. And they paid off long before he became a professional piano player. In high school, which he finished in Warren after his parents divorced and he moved with his mom to West Brookfield, Orland was popular at last: in school musicals, chorus, even a garage band that covered Chicago songs. It was his first foray into pop music, and he never looked back. Not even a two-year detour as an accounting major at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst (his family's idea) dissuaded him from his dream.

He dropped out after getting a gig playing piano twice a week for $50 a pop. That was his first small break. His second, bigger break came after he moved to New York with $300 in his pocket and began bunking on a friend's extra bed. He'd rented a piano, and another friend referred a cabaret singer to him; the two worked up an act and went into a famous piano bar called the Duplex to try it out.

Lucky for Orland, the bar's piano player was a no-show until later that night. By then, Orland had the job.

"I remember having literally no money when I went in, and my friend passed around the tip bowl while I was playing, and I made like $50 in a half-hour," Orland recalled. "I was like, omigod, what is this? At the end of it, the owner said, `We base our entertainment on how many drinks we pour, and as soon as you started playing we didn't stop mixing drinks, and you just got yourself a job.' And that was it. The guys who owned the Duplex owned two other bars in the city, and within three months I was working six nights a week in piano bars. That was wild. So I never even got to use my two years of accounting skills."

Instead he got a chance to meet a who's who of New York's musical talent. Broadway stars stopped by to sing a song or two after their shows. Others worked up after-hours acts. People introduced him to other people. Eventually he ended up on a cruise ship where Wayland Flowers was starring with the puppet Madame. Next thing Orland knew he was Flowers's musical director. He came to Los Angeles to rehearse with him in late 1986 and never left -- except to back up a roster of famous, not-so-famous, and not-so-famous-anymore stars. Let's just say Orland can name-drop with abandon and does, although only to say nice things about his pals or to make a self-deprecating point about his own career trajectory.

Among his best friends: actresses Kathy Najimy, who checked coats in a bar where he played way back when, and Estelle Getty, whom he somehow ended up taking shoe shopping when he first moved to LA. Currently between houses, he mentions he is bunking with former "Idol" contestants Clay Aiken and Kimberley Locke.

On keyboards he has backed (and sometimes conducted) Lainie Kazan, Chita Rivera, Jennifer Holliday, and Gladys Knight. He played rehearsal piano for his idol, Barry Manilow, the job where he made the musical contacts that ultimately led to being hired as a rehearsal pianist for the finale of the first season of "Idol." He's also played for a fair share of hit New York shows, "When Pigs Fly" among them.

Success aside, Orland says he still works the counter of his grandmother Jinks Levitsky's pharmacy when he goes home to Worcester to visit, which he plans to do "the second the show is over." His father recently moved to Connecticut; his mother is still an elementary school principal near Worcester. For his part, Orland hasn't lost all of his accent, particularly prominent when he starts sounding like the Massachusetts boy bowled over by Julie Andrews in her singing heyday.

"I love him, I love him so much, when I got to work with him it was the most thrilling thing," Orland said of Manilow, in one run-on gush. "The same with Gladys Knight. I flew to Las Vegas to work out her arrangements, and we're sitting there in her house . . . and I'm playing piano and going, `Gladys Knight is singing in my ear, this is not real.' She's amazing. It was amazing."

The enthusiasm is returned. Back on the red carpet, where the "Idol" finalists were being introduced to the media, Orland looked slightly uncomfortable in head-to-toe black, an East Coast look he maintains regardless of hour, regardless of unseasonable heat wave. But contestants say that Orland is responsible for their own comfort performing in front of millions of TV viewers and the evil-tongued Simon Cowell.

Said finalist George Huff, 23, "He keeps us going. What he does most is make sure we're in touch with the song we're choosing. Any doubts or fears we have, he makes us feel comfortable. He's just pleasant to be around and an awesome musician. The man can play his tail off."

For his part, host Seacrest described Orland's role as providing "a comfort zone in a pressure cooker." Judge Paula Abdul said she and Orland share a code about contestants: making faces at each other to indicate how well someone is doing. Cowell joked that Orland receives thousands of fan letters a week and that "anyone who can make `American Idol' sound like the lobby of a Holiday Inn is OK by me."

Orland's job, of course, isn't to impress his sound upon the singers but to help them polish their own. The rules prevent him from suggesting songs or ordering contestants not to sing sure losers. That's not so hard to adhere to at first, but almost impossible as he gets to know and like them.

Like everyone, he has his favorites. Unlike everyone, he's not saying. Although he's not on camera anymore -- the band played live only until the 12 finalists were chosen -- he's still a big behind-the-scenes player. He works with the contestants, helping them learn their songs, then preparing charts for the orchestra that tapes the music for them. He makes sure that the recordings match what was practiced so that they are in synch on live TV.

The hours are so crazy that they've kept Orland from two of his loves: seeing live performances ("Sting and Annie Lennox at the Hollywood Bowl, how's that for a double bill?") and writing music. A singer's pianist, Orland longs to be his singers' songwriter. He describes his music as in the Manilow mold: catchy pop tunes and big-blown ballads. And he knows he's missed opportunities. He didn't ask former "Idol" stars who went on to make CDs to consider his music. He says he will now.

"Meantime, I'm the luckiest guy that I get to make a living being artistic and, especially, on [`American Idol']," Orland said. "Clay and [`Idol' winner] Ruben [Studdard] thanked me on their albums, and that's amazing. I was a tiny little part of shaping them into what they became. I love that I get to be a part of that."