Remembering Marvin Hamlisch

In 1951, Marvin Hamlisch was just a 6-year-old kid studying music at the Juilliard School. A dozen years later, at the age of 18, he landed his first job as a rehearsal pianist for “Funny Girl,” starring Barbra Streisand.

She wasn’t a diva. She was virtually unknown. And so was he.

A fast friendship formed. Mr. Hamlisch soon ran in circles with all the up-and-coming starlets, such as Liza Minnelli. They were insecure and anxious, struggling to be noticed, paying their dues, praying for their big breaks.

Then, they all did. And when they broke, they broke big.

It didn’t take long for Broadway producers to notice Mr. Hamlisch’s perfect pitch and ability to play in any key at any time, according to Westhampton Beach-based pianist Jim Badzik, and he was propelled into stardom.

Mr. Hamlisch wrote the music for the Broadway musical and movie “A Chorus Line,” as well as the music for more than 40 films, including “The Way We Were,” and adapted Scott Joplin’s music for “The Sting.” He was also the principal pops conductor for eight different orchestras.

The talented musician has won virtually every major award that exists: he’s received four Emmys, four Grammys, three Oscars and a Tony. Mr. Hamlisch and Richard Rodgers, “EGOT” winners and recipients of the Pulitzer Prize, are the only two people to have ever racked up this collection of awards.

“He was a brilliant composer, a brilliant musician, a really creative guy,” Mr. Badzik, who first met Mr. Hamlisch in the 1990s, said of the award winner during a telephone interview last week. “And just a really, really nice man.”

On August 8, 2012, two days after Mr. Hamlisch died, 40 Broadway theaters dimmed their lights for one minute in tribute to the composer—an honor traditionally reserved for those who have made significant contributions to the theater arts.

The world had lost another star. Another legend. A man who believed in the power behind music.

“Music can make a difference,” Mr. Hamlisch has been reported as saying. “There is a global nature to music, which has the potential to bring all people together. Music is truly an international language.”

In Westhampton Beach last year, where Mr. Hamlisch lived for approximately 15 years before moving to Sag Harbor, his words rang true. Despite the threat of Hurricane Sandy, more than 100 locals turned out for a remembrance concert for Mr. Hamlisch at the local library, performed by Mr. Badzik in late October. The only way to pry the audience members from their seats was with an announcement: there was a mandatory evacuation south of Main Street, the pianist recalled with a chuckle.

“Everybody got up and ran out,” Mr. Badzik said. “That was the way we ended it. It was really quite good timing.”

On Sunday, with any luck, Mr. Badzik will not have any natural disasters to contend with during his encore concert, this time at the Quogue Library. The hour-long performance will honor the life of Mr. Hamlisch through memories and music—selections from his most notable Broadway shows and film scores, the pianist said, most of which predate his chance encounter with the star.

It was approximately 20 years ago in Washington, D.C. After exiting his hotel’s elevator and settling into the lounge, one of Mr. Badzik’s friends insisted, “Jim, get up and play some stuff on the piano.”

“So I’m playing away and after a few minutes, out of the elevator comes Marvin Hamlisch,” Mr. Badzik recalled. “I’m sitting there going, ‘I don’t know what to do.’ He comes over and we start talking. He admired what I was doing. Of course, I got up right away and asked, ‘Would you like to play?’ And he did. We had this serendipitous encounter, exchanging musical ideas and talent. And it was great. I always regret never following up.”

After Mr. Hamlisch’s death—and knowing he’d be performing a remembrance concert for him at the Westhampton Free Library—Mr. Badzik said he was inspired to get to know the man behind the music posthumously. He began with independent research, and then started knocking on doors.

He came to find out that one of Mr. Hamlisch’s neighbors on Griffing Avenue was former Village Mayor Robert Strebel. He definitely had a story for Mr. Badzik.

“One time, he got a knock on his door and it was the FBI and the Secret Service,” Mr. Badzik said. “And they started interrogating Bob about his neighbor Marvin. What he was doing, what he was like, was he suspicious. And Bob was absolutely flabbergasted. It was really one of those things where you think, ‘Oh my god, the guy’s an ax murderer.’ Then they told him, ‘Marvin is going to perform for the President at the White House. We’re just checking out his background.’”

The son of a musician, Mr. Hamlisch’s path was virtually decided from birth, Mr. Badzik said. By age 5, he was mimicking music he had heard on the radio on his family’s piano. Two years later, he was accepted into what is now the Juilliard School Pre-College Division.

His first hit song did not come until he was 21. Recorded by Lesley Gore, “Sunshine, Lollipops, and Rainbows”—which Mr. Badzik said he anticipates he’ll perform—reached number 13 on the Billboard Hot 100 in the summer of 1965. Three years later, he scored his first film, “The Swimmer,” after producer Sam Spiegel saw him perform at a party. Later, he wrote the music for several early Woody Allen films, including “Take the Money and Run” and “Bananas.” His ragtime music score for “The Sting” won him an Academy Award.

Mr. Badzik said that his personal tastes run similar to that of Mr. Hamlisch’s work on “The Sting.”

“My background is jazz piano and early styles of American jazz—ragtime, blues, boogie woogie. I played Scott Joplin a lot, so I will be playing selections from that movie,’” he said. “It will be well-known compositions that people have heard, as well as compositions that illustrate how he composed and worked with lyricists and choreographers on Broadway.”

Three years after his first major stage work in 1972—acting as both straight man and accompanist for Groucho Marx at Carnegie Hall for “An Evening with Groucho”—Mr. Hamlisch composed the 1975 Broadway smash “A Chorus Line,” for which he won a Tony award and Pulitzer Prize. Mr. Badzik will perform its punch number, “What I Did For Love”—a song that barely made the cut.

“Nobody liked it,” Mr. Badzik reported. “They didn’t want to use it. Marvin insisted. He was up against all these producers and everyone else, but he made them put that number in and that turned out to be the breakout hit.

“I think his music is terrific. Quite inspirational and reflects the character of American society, the feeling and spirit of the times he wrote,” he continued. “Broadway was downtrodden. Times Square was a mess. New York was not very popular in the ’60s and ’70s. And he helped with the resurgence.”

Soon after “A Chorus Line,” Mr. Hamlisch composed the song “Nobody Does it Better,” performed by Carly Simon for “The Spy Who Loved Me,” with his then-girlfriend Carole Bayer Sager. Their relationship inspired his composition for the musical “They’re Playing Our Song.” In the early 1980s, their romantic relationship ended, but their songwriting relationship continued.

Director Steven Soderbergh’s “The Informant!” starring Matt Damon was Mr. Hamlisch’s last project before his death at the age of 68.

“Because he died at a young age, I was interested in what really happened to him, what his life was really like,” Mr. Badzik said. “The concert is to educate our residents about his life in the village, to talk not only about his triumphs and hits, but how people struggle. He was immensely talented and popular, yet he had such low self-esteem and anxiety.”

The concert will celebrate the real man, Mr. Badzik said. All sides of him.

Pianist Jim Badzik will give a free concert, “Remembering Marvin Hamlisch,” on Sunday, February 24, at 2 p.m. at the Quogue Library. For more information, call 653-4224 or visit quoguelibrary.org.