Remembering Ed Lojeski
REMEMBERING ED LOJESKI L to R: Ed Lojeski, Mac Huff, Emily Crocker John Jacobson, John Leavitt, (front) Roger Emerson Like many others, I first got to know Ed Lojeski through his choral arrangements. I started teaching in the 1970s and I quickly learned that my middle schoolers always sounded their best with a Lojeski arrangement. Beautiful chord voicings, great part-writing and piano accompaniments that sounded fantastic even when I played them! Those 8 th grade girls simply swooned over Anne Murray’s “You Needed Me,” “The Theme from Ice Castles,” the Carpenters. (Some of these classic pop arrangements exist only in choir department libraries – if you have them, keep them!) Then later, the iconic arrangements from The Phantom of the Opera and Les Misérables came along. So, it was a bit daunting when I went to work for Hal Leonard in 1989, to call Mr. Lojeski and tell him I was his new editor. He was pleasant, and then informed me that I was “number ten.” What? He e