Music Man

Ever wonder who comes up with the musical sound track for that grand cinematic kiss, dramatic chase scene, or heartbreaking goodbye? It just might be Hunterdon County composer and musician Robert Sands.

These days the fourtime Emmy Award winner—he earned two Emmies apiece for New Jersey Network films and his work on daytime soap operas—is writing the music for two TV documentaries. The Hidden Child, about a Dutch woman who survived the Holocaust, will be broadcast on New Jersey Network in April in observance of Holocaust Remembrance Day; The Diary of Immaculee (diaryofimmaculee.com), produced by fellow Hunterdon Countians Steve Kalafer and Peter LeDonne, about a Rwandan woman who escaped a 1994 massacre, is being shopped around to film festivals.

Sands is also recording a Yoga-for-kids album, and this month he’ll accompany the Eric Steckel Band on keyboards at the New Hope, Pennsylvania, nightclub Havana; the blues band’s December show at Havana will be released as a live album after Sands finishes fine-tuning it in his basement studio.

“I have to wear a lot of hats,” says Sands, who compares himself to a character actor. When he produced a country album for local farmer-cum-cowboy Dave Bond, he says, “I had to put a cowboy hat on and just do it.”

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