Alterman’s Music Featured in Olympic Documentary

When the credits rolled on Georgia Public Broadcasting this week during the telecast of the documentary, “The Games In Black and White,” about the 1996 Atlanta Olympics, Joe Alterman’s name got a full page credit as composer of the music for the production.

The 90-minute documentary that premiered earlier this year at the Atlanta Film Festival is the story of how Atlanta’s moment of Olympic glory was built on the partnership between Billy Payne, a white Atlanta lawyer and former University of Georgia football star, and Andrew Young, the Atlanta Mayor and Black civil rights icon.

The documentary is a well-talked story, with strong production values, of how the two beat out the world, including Athens, Greece, the sentimental favorite, for the centennial edition of the modern Olympics. The production benefitted from a healthy budget that allowed for a shooting schedule in Paris, Oslo, and Los Angeles, as well as Atlanta. The producers taped more than three dozen interviews and assembled video and graphic materials from 72 archive sources. Veteran Hollywood actor Greg Alan Williams was the host.

But it is the music that particularly stands out in the production. Alterman, the well-known jazz pianist and executive director of Neranenah, the Atlanta Jewish music series, has both composed the music and performed much of the music track. There’s no mistaking the upbeat jazz tempo that is so evident in the film. It’s very similar to what has become so familiar in many of his public performances, but creating the music for the documentary was a change of pace.

“It’s just another fun way for me to think about and approach music, Alterman said. “It’s different from how I play for a gig in a club or for Neranenah, and I just like the mindset that it puts me in. There’s real satisfaction in doing the work and it’s cool to watch the finished movie afterward. I’ve scored five films, and I just love it every time.”

Alterman worked alongside Dallas Austin, the Grammy Award-winning singer and songwriter who was the film’s music director. He’s worked with such stars as Madonna, Janet Jackson and Boyz 2 Men and has produced more than 60 songs that have been on Billboard Magazine’s Top 100 chart. The process of scoring the film followed the same route Alterman takes when he’s improvising during a performance.

“The job Dallas and I had was to create music where it was needed in the edited production and to give it the flavor of music that the producers called for. We would just watch the scene over and over again and I would start playing at the keyboard and come up with something. It was eventually incorporated into the finished cut, but everything started out of nothing.”

Austin created an original song, “Too Busy To Hate,” for the documentary, which was sung by the Atlanta-based hip-hop musician Champp. The song’s title comes from a quote from Atlanta Mayor William B. Hartsfield, who, in the middle of the last century, was reacting to all the racial troubles American cities, particularly in the South, were having. His often-quoted response. which became a slogan for the city’s Chamber of Commerce, was that “Atlanta was a city too busy to hate.”

Bob Judson edited the film and was the co-executive producer with the script writer, George Hirthler. He first encountered Alterman at The Breman, which, co-incidentally was established the same year as the 1996 Olympics and had the Games, as its first exhibit.

“I had worked with Joe several times at The Breman and recognized his talent both as a jazz musician and as a composer and arranger,” Judson said. “The result is a rich musical tapestry, when combined with the sound design provided by Dave Wilson … [it is] a uniquely moving film that chronicles the importance of Atlanta as a melting pot for the arts and a catalyst for civil and human rights.”

The screening of the documentary on Georgia Public Broadcasting coincides with the recent debut of Alterman’s new series, “The Upside of Jazz,” on WABE. It’s airing on Saturday evenings.

Also in the works is a series of programs on Jews and jazz that Alterman first developed for Neranenah and is hoping to take on the road to a number of other American cities. All these projects and the film work have come as a kind of revelation to him.

“For so long, I was a piano player who had all these other interests in music,” Alterman observes. “And really, I thought that was the only way I could incorporate those interests. I never knew that I’d be able to make them part of my career.”