IT IS a career that has taken in Broadway, the West End and multi-million pound films.
But Martin Lowe - arranger of hit Broadway musical Once - says he owes it all to a disastrous production at the University of Hull.
The musical orchestrator, whose credits include the ABBA stage musical and film Mamma Mia!, was, in 1988, an eager young student.
Together with two friends from the drama department, Marianne Elliott and Stewart Harcourt, he decided to stage a show that would tackle a particularly bleak and difficult theme.
"We wanted to do something edgy – to prove that musicals did not have to be silly and could take on a really serious subject matter," he told the Mail.
The resulting show, dealing with paedophilia, was – as he recalls in the University of Hull book Huddled Together – "traumatic."
Not only did responses from fellow students vary from muted to vitriolic – the resulting debate finished with a "ghastly outpouring" of bile from one supposed friend – Martin hated every moment of writing the score.
It was to prove the pivotal moment of his life.
He dumped the dream of being a composer and decided to focus on musical arranging.
More than two decades later, Martin is the Tony Award-winning orchestrator of Once, the romantic musical currently running on both Broadway and the West End.
Speaking to the Mail from New York, where Martin is currently dividing his time between the US and London, he can look back on the Hull production with a laugh.
"Whether it was a good decision or not, we were definitely very serious about our art – as students are," he said. "It was at the time of the Cleveland scandal, so the issue was in the zeitgeist at the time.
"Although I mention it was traumatic, it wasn't a crushing experience. Marianne Elliott went on to become a director and it gave Stewart Harcourt the determination to become a writer."
Martin arrived at Hull following a music and drama course in his home city of Stoke On Trent.
"It was tricky at the start – I was at tertiary college, so I did not have any peers that were on the further education route," he said.
"The fact that I got there seemed a miracle – in the mid-80s there were only five universities offering music and drama as a joint degree, so I felt really lucky I won a place.
"There was a working theatre – before that I'd only been used to a classroom painted black – and also a really healthy combination of staff- led productions and student-initiated shows.
"The fact that we were left to our own devices, and could be in there working until midnight or 1am, or whenever they decided to lock up, was what I had dreamed of."
It took him time, he recalls, to establish himself among the more "noisy students".
"I wasn't shy, it was that my skill set was slightly odd for the department," Martin said.
"I was not a very good actor or director, so I did not have the traditional things that made people shine in a drama department, but I was a good musician, that was my way in."
During his summers, he went to work at a children's musical camp in upstate New York – the French Woods Festival of the Performing Arts – which, over four successive summers, saw him stage 24 musicals.
It gave him the experience that, on graduation, helped secure his first job, the Cameron Mackintosh produced musical Just So.
Mentored by the show's orchestrator, Martin Koch, it proved the first in a couple of breaks that have shaped his career.
Ten years after they had worked together on Just So, Koch called him with another job offer – to help shape the musical Mamma Mia! alongside ABBA songwriters Benny Andersson and Björn Ulvaeus.
"He knew I was an insane ABBA fan, which I have been since childhood," said Martin.
"It was something I could not have seen that happening in the mid-80s.
"It was madness – there is a theory that you should never meet your heroes but Benny and Björn were two of the nicest, hard-working blokes you could ever meet."
The second break can be traced back to his student days at Hull, when, at the National Student Drama Festival, he met a young comedian called Richard Thomas.
Years later, when Martin was working with Boy George on the musical Taboo, Richard came to watch an early run-through and offered him the chance to take part in a new production he was writing.
Jerry Springer The Opera, a funny, foul-mouthed musical – built up to become a worldwide smash hit.
"It was the most exciting time," said Martin.
"It was such a little show – worked on by ten of us at Battersea Arts Centre – which just got bigger and bigger."
Further large-scale shows, including War Horse and Once, show he has the experience to deal with the pressure.
His triumphant appearance at the Tony Awards, though, was a different matter.
"It was the most stressful experience – I was too afraid to have a drink in case I had to make a speech," he said.
"I don't know if my nerves could take it again."
Though, as the disastrous Hull show proved, having a nerve – and dealing with the nerves – is an important lesson in showbusiness.
