abstract
| - Danny Epstein (1925–2010) was the director of music operations for Sesame Street. He had been with the program from the first season in 1969. "At the beginning, I only came for two weeks," he said in 1986, "just to help devise a system and get it started. That was sixteen years ago." He was an associate of Joe Raposo's since 1964. Epstein began his career as a percussionist for Raposo's house band on Sesame Street and The Electric Company. He took the music for the show very seriously: "Music is the binder that holds it all together—wonderful moments of feelings and of the curriculum—and it's been like that since the very beginning. Music was always considered to be the attention-getting tool, the reason that the kids retained what they saw. If somebody were to recite the Gettysburg Address to you, you'd probably forget it. But if they sang it to you, you might remember!" "The music for Sesame Street is never childish," he says. "The way everyone looks at it is that we're dealing with a very short audience." In 2006, Epstein served as a judge for the International Songwriting Competition. Epstein can also be seen making a cameo as a street musician in Christmas Eve on Sesame Street. Epstein won four Emmy awards during his lifetime for outstanding musical direction. He retired in 2009 at the age of 83. Epstein passed away on August 4, 2010.
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