JOURNEY TO THE INNER LIGHT

Potts-Chattaway presents a biography of her husband, musician, arranger, and composer Jay Chattaway.

Born in 1946 in the small Pennsylvania town of Monongahela, young Jay Chattaway quickly developed two passions: music and sailing the Monongahela River, which flowed just blocks from his childhood home. These two loves would become the guiding forces of his life. Jay received a full music scholarship to West Virginia University, and, in 1969, faced with his impending drafting into the Vietnam War, he applied to and was accepted by the U.S. Navy Band. In March of 1975, Jay’s original composition “An American Celebration” was performed at the Navy Band’s 50th anniversary celebration, held at the Kennedy Center. In 1990, at the age of 44, Jay was hired to do the musical scoring for an episode of the television series Star Trek: The Next Generation. It was the beginning of a relationship that would be “the highlight of his career,” lasting 16 years, during which time he scored more than 200 episodes for The Next Generation and its sequel, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, earning an Emmy Award along the way. Potts-Chattaway, Jay’s second wife, meticulously, lovingly, and sometimes laboriously chronicles the details of Jay’s life, from childhood and throughout his career. The narrative’s excitement is in its behind-the-scenes portrait of the work itself; the story details the complex intricacies of composing and orchestrating, which require pages of individual scoring for each instrumental section. Jay describes composing work for his Paramount audition in this typically edifying passage: “My music became much more parallel fifths, including a lot of non-triadic music…there weren’t a lot of major or minor chords in it. The trick was to make it sound as neutral as possible, but yet have enough texture to it that you knew they were Klingons.”

A bit challenging for non-musicians, but illuminating and intriguing nevertheless.