If Martians ever do land at Grovers Mill let’s hope they are greeted by Beth Ertz — with her big smile and a song.
Ertz is a Grammy-nominated musical artist and director, composer, arranger, orchestrator, and accompanist. Her studio, PiloTone Music, is located in the old Mill. She will appear as a pianist at the West Windsor Arts Council capital campaign kickoff fundraiser “Cabin Fever Cabaret” on Saturday evening, February 23, playing what she describes as “cocktail music.” She will also accompany Carol Selick, a jazz and blues singer songwriter, and Craig Rubano, a Broadway and concert performer.##M:[more]##
Ertz has a resume with a definite wow factor. She earned her BA in Music at University of Southern California. “Yes, I am a Spartan” she chuckles. She also studied at UC Irvine and at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music. Since then she has been a musical arranger for the Academy Awards and has worked with artists such as Barbara Streisand, Willie Nelson, Placido Domingo, Lionel Hampton, and Bette Midler. She worked on many films (including “Airplane”, “Animal House,” and “Trading Places”) with celebrated composer Elmer Bernstein. Her TV credits cover “Batman the Animated Series” and several PBS Productions. The list goes on and on.
Closer to home she is an accompanist and choreographic arranger for Princeton Ballet.
On Monday, February 25, she will act as musical director for Thalia’s Follies at Symphony Space in New York. Ertz describes Symphony Space, at Broadway and 35th Street, as “a smaller more eclectic version of Lincoln Center.” The Thalia’s Follies series present shows on Monday nights, “Broadway’s night off.” She will be working on the God Follies, “an irreverent look at God and religion.”
One day Ertz says she “accidentally became involved with the West Windsor Arts Council” after meeting her new neighbor, Dick Snedeker, a WWAC board member. Three years ago, for a variety of reasons, Ertz had pulled up stakes after two decades in the music business in Los Angeles and moved to West Windsor. “Music has become more electronic in the last decade,” she says, “and I have a love hate relationship with electronic music. The worst thing that used to happen was that my pencil would break. I didn’t have to call tech support.” She wanted to return to her roots in the New York musical theater world. Born and raised in the New York City area, she says “I have always been involved in musical theater. My parents were talented amateurs active in community theater. I’ve been playing piano since I was four years old. I was my parents’ accompanist.”
Fortuitously, she was offered the position of musical director for several productions at the Westminster Conservatory in Princeton. Since her house had been damaged in an earthquake, she decided to take a “sabbatical” from Los Angeles. “Three months became a year,” she says, so she decided to make the move back east permanent.
Ertz thinks it ironic that she settled in West Windsor, home to the Sarnoff Corporation where television technology was developed during its former life as the RCA David Sarnoff Laboratories. “My grandfather, Isidore Goldberg, was a competitor of David Sarnoff. His company was named the Pilot Radio Corporation.” Goldberg was an early innovator of radio, television and recording technology. Ertz’ studio is named for his record label, PiloTone.
Ertz is not just a one-note Beth, however. She is a licensed pilot and has a keen interest in holistic medicine and medical anthropology (the study of folk medicine). But “my other passion beside music is animal rescue,” she says. She shares her life with two delightful rescued dogs, Mambo and Jake. Mambo, a black and white sweetie who looks like maybe a dachshund met a lhasa apso, came with Ertz from Los Angeles. Jake, a wiry-haired, big-eared little snuggle monster, joined the family later in New Jersey after Ertz and Mambo saved him from doggie death row at an area shelter.
Ertz’ younger sister, Bera Dordoni, is a doctor of naturopathy in New Mexico. (Naturopathy is an alternative approach to medicine that favors natural remedies over invasive surgery and synthetic drugs.) Dordoni, “the Singing Doctor,” treats both humans and animals. The sisters combined their many shared interests and created a music publishing company, called Butterfly Smooches Conspiracy. Ertz produced their 2004 Grammy nominated CD “Voice for a Choice” (nominations for Original Songs and Producer of the Year).
Their songs of “inspiration and hope” (with Dordoni doing the vocals) include “All Who Enter Here Will Find Love” written by Ertz and Dordoni. It was inspired by the motto of the Watermelon Mountain Ranch, an animal shelter and sanctuary in New Mexico. The song is the sisters’ message encouraging animal neutering and adoption.
Ertz has also studied music therapy and uses it informally during her performances. While gauging the mood of an audience, she says she may slyly focus on a couple that seems tense. “I decide to change their mood. I gradually play something more harmonic, more romantic. I’ve done it time and time again and it never fails!”
So come to the Cabaret, friends and have your spirits lifted by Beth Ertz and the many other performers supporting the West Windsor Arts Council.
— Susan Parris
Cabin Fever Cabaret and Home is Where the Art Is, West Windsor Arts Council, RMJM Hillier Atrium, 500 Alexander Park, West Windsor, 609-919-1982. www.westwindsorarts.org. Gala with wine, food, silent auction, and cabaret-style music. Art exhibit in the atrium is for sale with a percentage benefiting the arts council. Eduardo Garcia, the organization’s executive director, will give a presentation on the status of the firehouse. $50 to $150. Saturday, February 23, 6:30 p.m.
