"The Backyardigans'" musical tour guide is a Lounge Lizard

Most of the regular half-hour episodes require Lurie and his collaborator, Douglas Wieselman, to deliver four original tunes, plus  an overarching theme and incidental music. To Nickelodeon's credit, Lurie says they've never pushed producers to forgo the esoteric fare for more popular styles, a la rap and hip-hop.

"Backyardigans'" other big focus is to encourage kids to get kids off the couch and in touch with their inner Alvin Ailey. The characters perform dance routines to Lurie's tunes that are carefully choreographed for by Alvin Ailey Dance School alum Beth Bogush. They don't take the cheap route just because it's kidvid, Lurie says.

"Nickelodeon understands that if I'm going to do a Rossini piece, I'm going to need 25 musicians. They've always been pretty good about letting us have the money required to do what we want to do," Lurie says.

Even for someone who's lived a life steeped in music, the challenge of creating original works in a wide range of  genres has been an education unto itself.

"We're constantly switching gears, we're and listening to hours of stuff you'd never imagine you'd be listening to," he says, citing a palette ranging from samba to Italian pop to Bollywood to Sly and the Family Stone.

"We've got a Motown episode" coming up, Lurie says. "I've been listening to that stuff for so many years  but  without really hearing everything that was going on on those tracks. Going back and pulling it apart was really fascinating."

Lurie (pictured at right) and Wieselman are involved in the production of each episode from the get-go, starting with the story outline and through the final-final edits. Between meshing the music with the lyrics penned by the show's writers, the choreography, the animation and recording the vocal tracks for the tunes from the kids who provide the character voices, the production process on each half-hour seg takes about a month.

Lurie's entree into the kidvid biz, after scoring a number of indie and foreign pics, came through his brother, who worked with artist Dan Yaccarino on an animated TV commercial. When Yaccarino was setting up the animated series "Oswald" with Nick Jr., he mentioned John Lurie as someone he'd like to recruit to handle the music. John recommended Yaccarino try his brother, and it was a good tip.

Evan Lurie delivered to "Oswald" segs scores and original tunes that made a good show that much better. Even by Nickelodeon's high standards, the soundtrack of  "Oswald" stands out for its originality and exquisite craftsmanship. Lurie's chamber music riffs and jaunty-jazzy original song compositions added warmth and depth to the sweet-natured story of an earnest blue octopus, his hot-dog shaped dog Weenie and their moral adventures in Big City.

"Backyardigans" was coming together at Nick around the time "Oswald" was wrapping. As it happened, Lurie was a longtime friend of "Backyardigans" creator/exec producer Janice Burgess. After his impressive work on "Oswald," it was a no-brainer for Lurie to be tasked with keeping up with the "Backyardigans."

The demands of the show hasn't left Lurie much time for film scoring in the past few years, though he is at present working on the Stanley Tucci-helmed indie "Blind Date."

"In certain ways scoring a movie is surprisingly similar to (kidvid); in others it's completely different," Lurie says. He did a movie for Steve Buscemi a few years ago, 2005's "Lonesome Jim," and had to resist the urge to put in a musical "sting" every time a character delivered a corny line or mentioned a particular food product.

"You don't have to help the audience understand what has happened as much," he says. "Unless it's cute. Then I always hit it."

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As a coda, just because we can (thank you YouTube), here's two glimpses of Evan Lurie in action with the Lounge Lizards in their prime.

First, a 1988 rendition of "Voice of Chunk" from the memorable NBC latenight series "Night Music," hosted by musician David Sanborn.

Second, a clip of "Bob the Bob" from what appears to be a jazz festival perf in Germany in 1989.

For further enlightenment, click here to check out John Lurie's website.