The Performance of a Lifetime : Baton Is Passed to Chatsworth Composer to Direct Music at Olympics’ Opening and Closing Ceremonies

The athletes who enter Olympic Stadium in Atlanta tonight behind the flag of their country will be realizing a lifelong dream. Mark Watters will be one of the non-athletes with the same kind of goose bumps.

Watters, whose road to Atlanta began when he laid hands on his first guitar as a teenager, knows tonight will be the biggest night of his musical composing career.

Tapped last year to direct the music for the $20-million opening and closing ceremonies, Watters, 41, of Chatsworth, has spent the last two weeks in Georgia readying the enormous productions with a cast of thousands.

“Nothing compares to a show like this,” the Texas native said by telephone this week from the newly built stadium, where staffers have been working almost around the clock to prepare for the Olympic opening.

Although many details are still under wraps, the 3 1/2-hour ceremony will include the lighting of the Olympic flame, the parade of athletes and performances by the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, a 300-voice choir, former Grateful Dead drummer Mickey Hart and pop singer Celine Dion. It will conclude with opera legend Jessye Norman, a Georgia native, performing “Faster, Higher, Stronger,” an original work by Watters and lyricist Lorraine Feather.

“It’s a very dramatic show. It’s a very emotional show,” Watters said. “There’s a certain seriousness to gathering the whole world together for an event.”

That first guitar in Watters’ life was a cheap acoustic model he received on Christmas morning in 1965.

“It must have cost $20. It was just a real junky guitar,” he recalled. “I loved it.”

Inspired by the Beatles, Watters initially dreamed of pursuing a career in rock ‘n’ roll and played guitar in a band called the Cobras for two years during his teens. In high school in Irving, Texas, he switched to the saxophone.

“He was a gifted and talented person,” said Earl Haberkamp, Watters’ music teacher. “He worked very, very hard. He wanted to learn, he wanted to excel.”

After making Texas’ all-state band several times, Watters won a scholarship to USC and moved to Los Angeles in 1973. He met his wife, Vanessa, a singer, dancer and teacher, in college and they married in 1981.

After receiving his bachelor’s degree, Watters planned to return to Texas as a band director, but a UCLA Extension class in film scoring set him on another path. He put away his saxophone and concentrated on composing.

Today, Watters does most of his work with a pen and a baton, writing scores for the animated TV series “Tiny Toon Adventures” and Disney’s “Aladdin” and conducting orchestras with singers Barry Manilow, Mel Torme and Trisha Yearwood. He has two Emmys to his credit, he’s about to start work on an animated version of “Babes in Toyland” for MGM and he’s looking ahead to scoring live-action features.

Last summer, the Olympic ceremonies’ executive producer, Don Mischer, approached Watters to be a consultant on planning the Games’ entertainment. Within a week, Watters was offered the job of overseeing the music for the opening and closing ceremonies.

“I thought about it for about a second and a half,” Watters said, adding that the opportunity allowed him to compose much of the music for the ceremonies.

As music director, Watters helped select the songs for the program and will conduct several pieces with the Atlanta Symphony during the live broadcasts. “I’m both a traffic cop and at times I’m part of the traffic,” he joked.

Grateful for the chance to share their work with more than half the world’s population, Watters and the show’s artistic director, Peter Minshall, say it’s an experience that neither will forget.

“It’s quite an extraordinary and humbling thought to think that if for one moment something you created could cause the whole world to go ahhhh,” Minshall said.

Watters admits he’s disappointed that the ceremonies will not be recorded for sale, but he has made sure to document the adventure by sneaking a camera into the stadium during rehearsals.

“A dozen times an hour I’m reminded of what a great honor it is,” he said. “I probably will never have this type of experience again.”

And while the threat of terrorism hangs faintly over everyone working feverishly to put the final touches on tonight’s gala, Watters has other potential catastrophes on his mind.

“Our only fear is rain,” he said. “If we get through it, I know it will be a success.”