Conducting her way through the Spider-Verse with love, sweet love

Family friend (and once little girl playing the piano and banging the drums) Shelbie Rassler is conducting the Spiderman Across the Spider-Verse orchestra as the show comes to The Lyric on November 15th. Wait’ll you hear her Burt Bacharach story about the world needing love, sweet love…

Shelbie Rassler tells Nestor a…ming to Lyric on November 15th

Wed, Oct 23, 2024 9:09AM • 21:47

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

Spider-Verse tour, Lyric Opera House, Shelbie Rassler, Burt Bacharach, COVID project, live orchestra, Miles Morales, multiverse characters, family-friendly event, tour schedule, Broadway music, Juilliard grad, CBS award, Good Morning America, Top Gun

SPEAKERS

Nestor Aparicio, Shelbie Rassler

8

Nestor Aparicio  00:01

Welcome home. We are W, N, S, T, am 1570 Towson, Baltimore and Baltimore, positive. Uh, we’re going to be out on the road the next couple weeks, celebrating our 26th anniversary, 26 oysters in 26 days, 26 ways. All that are brought to you by our friends at Liberty. Pure solutions. They keep my water clean the way the oysters keep the Chesapeake Bay clean, and our friends at curio wellness and foreign daughter, of course, educating us here and getting our 26th anniversary underway. You know, you live long enough your friends kids grow up to do special things. And I have one friend who has a child playing major league baseball these days, I’ve had several friends with the kids play football. I know some rock and roll people. I let my hair out for this interview, so you know, music’s gonna be involved in this one. But a long time ago, I met a kid in in Florida whose family I befriended, and she was a little girl banging on a piano and really banging on drums, and also holding a cat like a bag of potato chips that I now do with my cat. So I always think of this young lady who’s she’ll always be 12 to me, but she is out doing just amazing things. She is a recurring figure, not only in my life at Miami Dolphins games from time to time, but was also made famous during COVID through a Burt Bacharach remake of one of the great songs ever written. Think we’ve lost Burt Bacharach since the last time that I’ve had Shelby rastler on the program. Shelby is part of a traveling troupe of musicians. She is a composer and a conductor of all things music, and she is bringing a timeless thing. I go back to Spider Man. Wasn’t a big Spider Man comic book, dude, but I but I was big spider man was a part of the electric company when I was a kid, and they’re bringing this spider verse in concert show all across the country, and all these incredible places like the Keswick theater up in just outside of Philadelphia, where a lot of great artists play the National Theater in DC on the eighth and ninth of November, and at two shows on the ninth the Peace Center in Greenville, South Carolina. My mother’s part of the world where I saw Sammy Hagar, but here in Baltimore, and one of my favorite places in a place where as a child, I saw Tchaikovsky and Mozart and Beethoven’s names on the wall as a kid, the lyric theater now the Lyric Opera House bringing the spider verse tour in. I welcome Shelby Rassler, back onto my program. What have you been doing? You’ve been like touring the world in this thing. Look at you, Shelby. Well,

Shelbie Rassler  02:42

first of all, thank you so much, so great to see you. Ness I just I thank you so much for having me again, and so great to see you. And, you know, sharing the history of how long we’ve known each other, and just like family these days, you know. So

Nestor Aparicio  02:57

you’re not 12 anymore, though, right? You’re really not a little bit, a little bit more than

03:01

8

that. Yeah, I’m 26 now, and I, you know, we’re out all

Nestor Aparicio  03:05

of 26 you’re not even halfway to me. I keep skipping you. I’m at 56 you’re not you’re by the time I’ll be 60, when you’re 30, that would that’s going to be a meal. I don’t know what you’re going to be doing, but every time I bring you on, you’re doing something like crazy, brilliant. We’re Facebook friends. I’ve tried to turn you on to this awesome place in New York that’s right by your place that we were going to get, like, these incredible little Indian raps. And we’ve never done it, but we are going to get together on November the 15th, and I think families coming in. We’re doing this thing up right here. And hopefully I’ve watched the videos, and I’m just doing what you do. I don’t know what you’re doing. I’m just doing it’s like watching baseball and saying I’m just hitting, but you’re doing this every night. This is a really aggressive tour schedule, and you’re doing something really cool that like anybody can fall in love with the Spider Man story and the music and just being a part of it. This is like an family friendly event that’s coming to the lyric on the 15th, huh?

04:06

It definitely is, yeah, absolutely. And that’s something that I was most excited about for this tour is, you know, we’re, we’re doing the, the full orchestra thing, so we have, you know, live musicians on stage. And it’s amazing to get to introduce, you know, young children and families to orchestras for the first time, but then in such an accessible way, because Spider Man is, you know, a household name, everyone knows who and what Spider Man is and and sort of Marvel as as a franchise, is such a huge part of American culture. And so to get to kind of introduce the world of live music to people through the accessibility of this movie that everyone knows and loves. It is just such an incredible opportunity, and something that we’re just having the most fun of our lives doing out here every single night. And yeah, it’s been, it’s the schedule is pretty it. Incredible. It’s we’re in a different city nearly every single day, so it’s a it’s been just unbelievable. Yeah,

Nestor Aparicio  05:06

alright, so because you’ve known me a long time, and it’s kind of weird, just in a general sense, you know how weird I am. I did a show in Miami last time I saw your dad, I was doing a show Miami Beach, and I had one of the biggest stars in the world, apparently, movie star that played the Tom Cruise role in Top Gun, Glenn, I don’t know. My wife tells me he’s a big star. So, nice guys. A couple four years ago, the movie never was released because of COVID and like all this stuff happened, and I admitted him, and the video on YouTube’s got 10s of 1000s of views now, because I’m the idiot who has him next to me. And I admitted to him and the beautiful actress I’ve never seen, Top Gun. So I had to admit that to them. So now I have to have my life for friend Shelby wrestler on who’s coming to town with this spider verse thing? Spider Man, across the spider verse, I don’t on the 15th and they’re going to be in DC. You can get the whole schedule. I’ll get the it’s spider verse in concert is the way to find this spider verse. I’ve never seen. Spider Man, I don’t. What am I? What is this is a movie I don’t I’m old, even though I have young hair.

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06:26

I love, I love the hair, by the way, I think, I think you’re rocking it. It’s amazing. But yeah, so this is part of the spider verse series. So this is actually this movie that we’re doing, the Live in Concert version of is the second movie in the series. So we had the first one was into the spider verse, which is a whole new story, sort of in the Spider Man cannon, if you will, where we’re following a new character named Miles Morales.

Nestor Aparicio  06:56

So when I come to your gig, I’m in part two.

06:59

So you’re in part two Exactly.

Nestor Aparicio  07:03

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Listen, listen. No offense to the Star Wars nerds. Some of them are out there. Alan Max, you know who you are, all these Carrie Fisher people and Mark Campbell, whatever it is, I get trilogy and prequel and Twitch, you know, like I had a hard time with pulp fiction, but I did make, you know, I got the the, you know, the storyline together. So I’m coming into part two, into in on the 15th for your story, correct? That’s

07:27

exactly right, yes. And so Sony did a tour exactly like what we’re doing right now, of the first movie two years ago. So we had the the Live in Concert. I wasn’t part of that. But another amazing orchestra did the Live in Concert of the first film in this series. So they did into the spider works. So that introduces, you know, everyone to the story of Miles Morales and how he became the sort of next Spider Man in the in this universe. And so, yeah. So now we’re in the second movie across the spider verse, and this is where our main character, miles, gets to meet all of the other spider people from all of the other movies of Spider Man, essentially. And it’s this awesome kind of multiverse of all of these different characters that are animated in all different kinds of styles, and also, like real life people from the movies that weren’t animated. So it’s, it’s just an amazing sort of scrapbook, almost of all of these different films and characters and stories and everything and so, yeah, so this is the second movie, and then there will be a third movie coming out in I’m not sure the exact release date. They haven’t announced yet, but there will be a beyond the spider verse, which is, you know, eagerly anticipated by lots of fans around the world right now as well. Well, these

Nestor Aparicio  08:55

tours are out, and you can go to the website and get tickets and come down to the lyric. If you’re near DC, there’s a bunch of shows down there. Go get tickets with Alan down there, anywhere in the area. Shelby rastler has been my friend since she was a little girl. She’s now big girl, and she’s the conductor, you know. So I am ignorant to a lot of this, and I want you to Don’t Be humble whatever you do. Tell me about this Burt Bacharach thing and how it changed your life because I had you on in the moments of it. I think since then, like Joe Biden came by to all sorts of weird stuff, Oprah, I think Barbara Streisand was involved. I don’t know, but like, I have told three or four people Thomas Dolby, who’s my famous rock star buddy. I’ve told him about you because he tries to teach kids like you here at Hopkins. You would be the star, beautiful human in his professor a ship to go on to do this professional work at the age of 26 old. Now, by my standards, anyway, um. But how did you get here? I mean, I’ve tried to tell your story to other people, and I know you’re going to tell it in a humble way, or whatever, but like you were screwing around with this Burt Bacharach song, and a bunch of people locked up in COVID, you created this online orchestra, and I’ll let you pick up the parts. I don’t know, because I think that’s much as accurate. Is that right? Shelby, yeah, that’s

10:22

That’s exactly right. Yeah. So, so yeah. Rewinding to 2020. I was finishing up my undergraduate degree at at the Boston Conservatory at Berklee College of Music in Boston, and had an amazing four years of learning all about different kinds of styles of music and composing and conducting, and sort of all of the things that I love doing now really started there.

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Nestor Aparicio  10:48

And my Miami kid freezing her ass off up in Boston, I might have, oh, go ahead. Alright, keep going. Yep,

10:54

yep. That was the most difficult part of those four years, for sure.

Nestor Aparicio  10:58

But when you get older, right? Yeah, you know, yeah. Now

11:03

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I’m up in New York City, you know, same thing snowing every winter. And I’m like, What am I doing here? I’m from Florida. This is totally, I

Nestor Aparicio  11:10

tried to get your Frankie Bombay wrap, but, you know, right up there in the 100, yeah, you know, one day. Okay, keep going. But when I caught up with you were, you were, like, in New York at that phase, right?

11:20

Yeah. So

11:21

we I was actually, I had just gotten at home from Boston back to Florida, actually, at the time, because that’s when our school was shut down for the rest of the spring semester. And so, you know, one afternoon, I was in orchestra rehearsal in Boston, putting together an orchestra for my senior recital at the time, we were just a few weeks away, and those are sort of all of the events that you look forward to during, you know, a conservatory degree where you have your fourth year there. Yeah, exactly, yep, fourth year there. So graduating, you know, we had all of those things to look forward to the senior recital that I had been writing music for for years at that point to premiere there. And then, you know, graduation, all of those events, and unfortunately, everything was, of course, canceled because of COVID and, you know, all of the just, it was a really horrible time for everyone. And yeah, it was just, it was really awful. And so we all were sent home for the rest of the semester. And on the flight, on the way home, I was just thinking to myself, you know, what can I do to try and keep everyone’s spirits up and try to get us through this, you know, difficult time that we all were entering, and sort of had no idea of what to expect or what was happening, really, and so I just had an idea of inviting people to put together a little music video of the the song What the world needs now is Love by Burt Bacharach and Hal David. And I just

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12:51

call that crowdsourcing. Yeah, sure, yeah, exactly. Just checking. I’ll

Nestor Aparicio  12:56

just let you know how cool I am, Shelby, come on now. You’re

12:59

super cool Ness. Never, never doubt it for a minute. Yup, and and, yeah. So I, so I invited all of my friends from from school to send in videos of themselves playing at their own and

Nestor Aparicio  13:13

8

this isn’t like some amateur doing like karaoke. These are like Berkeley kids, like you’re like you’re dealing with serious people, literally, right?

13:24

Yeah, oh yeah. Absolutely. Some, some of the, the most incredible musicians that I’ve, I’ve played with and met, and definitely yes and yes. So everyone, I wrote an arrangement of the song for full orchestra and voices and everything, and sent out the sheet music to anyone who wanted to be part of it, created all of the individual

Nestor Aparicio  13:44

parts. How many instruments

13:47

there were? About 75 people in the video. I think there were probably maybe 25 to 30 different parts. And so there were, you know, seven or eight violinists, seven or eight Viola players, a couple of people had just, you know, themselves on their own parts, if they played at like we had one Trump player, you know, all of those kinds of things. So, yeah, it just, we kind of pieced it all together. And one of my dear friends from college, Dan Santiago, was the mix engineer on it, and we edited it all together and put together this music video of a bunch of people singing and playing. How long

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Nestor Aparicio  14:28

did it take inspiration on the plane to video being out? How long was that process?

14:35

It was probably, that’s a great question. You know, I don’t remember exactly, we spent a few days putting the video together days, but

Nestor Aparicio  14:45

not weeks, because this thing hit probably May, June. When did it? It was in

14:50

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March. Actually, yeah. We was in March. Yeah, yeah, oh, wow. Okay, wow. So looking back on it, I do think that was one of the reasons. It became, why it kind of caught on and went sort of viral overnight was because it was one of the first videos of that style, where a lot of people were kind of coming together and had each individual box of all of the people involved.

Nestor Aparicio  15:15

Everyone was home, staring at a screen of some kind, right? Was coming to people and being shared. Shelby wrestlers here. She’s brilliant. Her spider verse is coming here to the lyric on the 15th. She’s the conductor, and I’m going to get to all that. So you conducted virtually this thing, right? What I’m going to get all, I’m going to get all Malcolm Gladwell on you right now. What was the tipping point. What? What was it? Stri is it? What? Oprah, who was it that shared it, that sort of moved it? Well? I

15:47

think, I think what really kind of took off was somehow Good Morning America was one of the first people to see it, the team at Good Morning America. And so I believe it was either the next morning or the or the following full 24 hours that it Good Morning America talked about it on the show and played a short clip and and that sort of was butterfly, yeah, exactly. And so shortly after that, the today show did a full segment on it, where we did, like, a full interview, and they did, you know, a whole thing, and then we did a CBS Sunday Morning whole segment, and then ended up winning a CBS sunny award with David Pogue over there and and, yeah, it just kind of took off. And then all of a sudden, tons of, you know, celebrities and influencers and just people all over the world were sharing it all over. The

Nestor Aparicio  16:47

second choice on the song, by the way, like, I mean, you obviously picked a great song. There’s a lot of love songs you could the million love songs you could have. Why that one? What was two and three?

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16:58

That is such a great question. You know what? I I kind of didn’t even have any other ideas in mind, to be honest, it kind of it felt like the right, the just kind of the right decision. Because it did feel like, at the time, everyone was just kind of sitting, just sort of waiting for something to happen like it was. There was so much uncertainty. And so the message of just, you know, we need to love and support each other through anything, and then we can, we can get through it. I think that was sort of what at least I needed to hear at the time, and what my friends you know, were voicing that they needed to hear, just that they were surrounded by love and support. And so it just sort of felt right. And I had also worked at Boston Conservatory in Berkeley on a Valentine’s Day themed show that we did just the month prior, and our big finale song was what the world needs now, is love. And so it was sort of at the forefront of my mind already, and a song that I love so much. And you know, Burt bacha, who I’ve been a huge fan of forever, and then I got to work with him for the CNN Fourth of July special, and that was, you know, something that I’ll just remember forever and ever. And the fact that I got to connect with him before he passed away, it was just unbelievable, you know, so it, yeah, it just that sort of snowballed into just a whole new world of opportunity and adventure. And I got connected with Seth Radetzky, who is now a dear friend of mine and a really prominent figure in the Broadway World and the New York theater scene. And so I’ve worked with him a ton on lots of different kinds of projects within the Broadway community. And one of the first things that we worked together on was a video for the presidential inauguration of Joe Biden back back in the day. And so we put together a huge Broadway music video for for that event that was hosted by Tom Hanks, and, yeah, so it was just, you know, a lot of excitement and and sort of all you know, happened really quickly, all at once. And then I ended up going to Juilliard for grad school, right? You know, the next year as that all was happening, and you know that, you know, opened so many other doors, and I am just so grateful to be doing what I’m doing every day. And it’s hard to kind of believe the adventure of the last couple years, but it’s, it’s really, really exciting and well, this is

Nestor Aparicio  19:33

the latest adventure, like living on tour. Bosses, you’re in San Diego today, LA tomorrow, you’re here in two weeks, you’re there. I’m looking at this schedule, and I’ll send everybody out to the website again. It is spider verse in concert, and you can find my friend Shelby rasher. You’re the conductor. How many pieces are in your orchestra? And how does one get to be a conductor? It looks like it’s cool gig, but it looks like maybe my arms would hurt. It looks like yoga. For me, it’s sort of like. Miyagi, wax on wax off a little bit. Yes, yeah. I don’t know what you’re doing up there, but I’m going to come and admire it. And I guess I better see the first part of that. I told the Top Gun kid, I’m like, I guess I better see the first part if I’m going to see your movie. I still haven’t seen either one.

20:13

Yeah. Well,

20:15

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you know what you have. You have some time now. You have a couple weeks now to to catch up on all of the spider verse lore. It’s but this

Nestor Aparicio  20:22

is grueling. You’re going to do this dozens of times before I even see you. This is more than like a rock tour. This is way more aggressive than most tours I’ve ever seen of any kind, even fans living in the back of their car. You’re aggressive. Exactly. Yeah,

20:37

no, yeah, we’re hitting, you know, over 70 cities. You know, 70 before. It’s unbelievable. It’s just the adventure of a lifetime that I can’t believe I’m on. So I’m just trying to, you know, take in every moment, enjoy the ride with these amazing musicians, amazing crew. We just, we’re so lucky to have the people that we do and and this opportunity to bring live music across the country and a movie that you know so many people know and love, and it’s a great time. So I can’t wait to see you in Baltimore, and I really hope you all enjoy, enjoy the show. And, yeah, I’m super excited.

21:10

November 15, how

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Nestor Aparicio  21:12

many musicians? Oh,

21:14

we’ve got 15 of us up on stage there every night. Yep. Alright, alright.

Nestor Aparicio  21:17

Crab cakes on me in Baltimore. You’re downtown. I’ll take you to fadelies, because I know times of the essence. We got a show. We got things to do. We’re in places 15th. They’re going to be in Baltimore, the spider verse tour. My dear friend, Shelby wrestle. What a story it’s unfolding. I’m going to write the book one day. I am Nestor. She is Shelby. They’re coming in on the 15th down at the Lyric, come on down. All you Spidey fans out there. I’ll get caught up on what it’s all about. I’ll read the Cliff Notes back tomorrow. Baltimore. Positive. Stay with us.