Lyricist, U. grad, returns to see fruits of labor

Imagine returning to campus to watch a student performance of a Broadway show whose lyrics you had written. David Zippel, who graduated from the College in 1976, did just that Saturday night. A lyricist living in New York City, Zippel came to the University this weekend to see the Pennsylvania Players' final production of City of Angels. The experience, Zippel said, was "flattering, terrifically exciting and ? totally cool." Zippel met with members of the cast and crew before the show to answer questions about his memories of the University and his career. "The road to being a lyricist [which] I took was not the most direct path," he said. Instead of going straight into the entertainment industry after graduation, he said he followed his conscience and his pocketbook to Harvard Law School. However, law was a fleeting pursuit for Zippel, whose true love for writing music became his career after finished law school. Looking back, Zippel said the end of graduate school was an important turning point in his life. "If I had gone into a law firm, I would have gotten used to having an income," he said, adding that this is a bad idea for those interested in pursuing a performing arts career. While at the University, Zippel was very involved in the theater world. During his senior year he wrote the lyrics for Rotunda, a musical produced in Washington, D.C. Luck has been an ever-present force in his life, he said. One night, when Zippel went to hear singer Barbara Cook at the Copley Plaza Hotel, he ran into Cook and her musical director, Wally Harper, in the hotel's lobby. The next morning over breakfast, Harper told Zippel he was always looking for a good lyricist, and to call him in New York. Harper and Zippel later sold a pop song to a company owned by Cy Coleman. Zippel's big break came when Coleman asked him to write the lyrics for City of Angels. Zippel said he recalls sitting in a constitutional law class at Harvard in 1979 and reading a New York Times article about a new jazzy musical, City of Angels. He said that at the time he thought the show would be perfect for him. During his visit to the University, Zippel emphasized that success in the art world is only earned by hard work, intense dedication and patience. He was "in limbo" in New York 10 years before City of Angels came along. Zippel had advice for theater arts students and journalists alike. He told aspiring artists that the myth of overnight success is inaccurate and stressed that years of struggling precede the glory and satisfaction of being part of a Broadway show. But Zippel encouraged passionate devotees to take a chance and ignore the odds. He is currently working on adapting Once in a Lifetime, which he said he first read in Van Pelt Library. He added that he has wanted to do this since his days at the University.