My favourite musical moments from amazing cast albums. By Michael Kras (Actor/Playwright/Director)
We all have them. Those moments on ANY music album that just make us go 'Damn!' and have us reaching for the replay button. Oftentimes, they're over and done in like a second and we sit there compulsively going back and relistening dozens of times. Whether it's an eargasm-inducing high note, or wow-worthy orchestrations, I have my share of these moments. And thus, I present to you a few of my favourites.
The opening piano and strings of 'The Beauty Is' from The Light in the Piazza
This is one of my favourite songs from Adam Guettel's score for Piazza, but the thing about it that has given it such replay value for me is the opening few seconds. It starts with a great Guettel-esque piano melody and the strings get added on top of that, making for pure ear-candy. Give it a listen!
A rant about the WORST kind of audience member. By Michael Kras (Actor/Director/Playwright)
Every time I'm at any kind of show, whether it be a play, musical, or concert, I notice something upsetting. To me, this one thing is one of the most disrespectful things an audience member can do in the theatre. And to be frank, the amount of times I've seen it and will continue to see it pretty well enrages me.
I'm talking about The Early Leaver.
(Not Pictured: The Early Leaver. Because they're gone.)
Why do I hate them so much? Let me count the ways.
Whether for relaxing or appearing "smart" at a dinner party, classical music is where it's at. by Ali Gordon
This morning I woke up with a migraine and promptly puked my
guts out. It was awesome. Just kidding, it wasn’t awesome. It was absolutely
horrible, and I still feel terrible. But there was only one thing I wanted as I
crawled back into bed in my misery, alone in the house save for my dog.
I wanted to listen to some goddamn classical music.
I love classical music. There’s no point in harping on the
importance of classical music because you’ve heard it all before: it paved the
way for the tenants of popular music, it stimulates brain development, it’s
used extensively as therapeutic means, and if not for Richard Wagner we
wouldn’t have the stage “spectacular” theatre is so fond of now. Harold Bloom
compares listening to classical music to reading a good book – an introspective
experience that will not necessarily make us “better” people, but gives
us the opportunity to know and hear ourselves better. But then again, he
didn’t like Harry Potter, so what the
hell does he know?
Also, according to the film, Mozart was a total hottie, am I right ladiesss?
So I’m not going to try to convince you into liking
classical music, because the music can do that for itself. Need something to
study to? Feeling stressed out and need to chill out with some music for a
while? Want to say something impressive about Prokofiev
on your next date? Or maybe you just spent all morning vomiting and need a
little comfort? Read on.
I think Adam Guettel could be the next big thing. Here's why. By Michael Kras (Actor/Director/Playwright)
Do you know this man?
If you're a fan of musical theatre, I suspect you do. But Adam Guettel is still surprisingly 'under the radar' in the theatrical world, and this is for a variety of different reasons. He's only written three shows, and just one of those three shows has appeared on a Broadway stage. If you're not familiar with his work, I'm here to tell you exactly why you should be.
Allow me to make a bold statement: I like Adam Guettel more than Stephen Sondheim. Now, before you come after me with pitchforks and torches, notice I didn't say that Guettel is BETTER than Sondheim. But I like Guettel more. In fact, he's my all-time favourite composer. Here are just a few reasons why.
Unless you're a penguin. By Alisha Giampola (Actor)
It's nice to get out of the city in the winter. In the dead of summer NYC can smell like the armpit of a drunk homeless man, but in the dead of winter, it feels like God is smiting you with daggers of ice lightning - so honestly, I guess you have to pick your poison. However, if I were to pick any time of year to escape the city, it would be mid-January to mid-February, when you can no longer go around whistling "city sidewalks, busy sidewalks, dressed in holiday style", and you are left wandering said sidewalks with slushy sewer water seeping into the cracks in your 5-year-old wellies that you're sure you'll get around to replacing eventually.
Of course, escaping the city can sometimes backfire on you... like that time I was on tour in February, my least favorite month, but we ended up having a 5 day long sit-down in frozen Wisconsin and another 3 day stay in Philadelphia during a blizzard that actually shut down absolutely everything in the City of Brotherly Love except for our !#*&;$%#@%ing show, including the bank next door to our venue. I've never wanted to be in finance so much in my life.
Some people (read: Northerners, people of Scandinavian descent, and genuinely insane persons) say that I should be grateful, because in the past few years that I have lived in New York City, we have had several unseasonably warm winters. I, however, was born in sunny Florida and am of Arabic and Italian stock and my thin-blooded, desert-tent-dwelling DNA absolutely hates winter and the frigid horse of the apocalypse it rode in on. In my opinion, a winter isn't unseasonably warm unless you can actually wear sandals every day between November 15th and April 30th.
I guess this is all to say that we can't always escape the flu-infested, freezing cold death traps that are the subway stations during these awful, awful winter months, but we can take care of ourselves. So here are some things we should all (all, I say, and not just those of us who use our voices for a living!) be doing to take care of our larynxes and our health in general. Because your body is your instrument, bitches, and would you just let a Steinway hang out without a coat at 3am on a snowy night between 8th and 9th on 47th Street?
Hey musical theatre writers! Wanna tell unique stories that have meaning? Wanna innovate with the form? Wanna get PAID?! Try opera! MONKEY BUSINESS by Tony Asaro (Composer/Librettist)
It was a hassle getting out there–huge post-Sandy nor'easter and all–but on November 8th, I arrived in New York City in time to attend Opera America's New Works Forum. I ended up on a red-eye on United despite the fact that I had a ticket booked for 16 hours earlier on American. I guess they all tag team when flights start getting cancelled. I arrived in Newark at 7:00am, and had just enough time to take NJ Transit to my hotel, get showered and shaved, press my suit, and get down to the newly opened National Opera Center for the opening remarks and introductions.
There were about 70 people in the room. Some looked very put together, others completely disheveled. All were there to talk about new opera and new opera development. (NYC musical theatre peeps, think NAMT for opera.) Most of the attendees were representatives from various opera companies in the US. A few were publishers. Some were performers. And some of us, myself included, were writers. I had been invited to attend the New Works Forum as a writer.
In 2010/11, I participated in American Lyric Theatre's Composer/Librettist Development Program as a librettist. It was a year-long program in which the eight participants learn to write opera. (NYC musical theatre peeps, think BMI Workshop for opera.) At the end of the program, you present one-act operas. (NYC musical theatre peeps, think NYU thesis projects.)
I worked on two different one-acts with two different composers. One was about gay steroid abuse called "Cycle" with composer Clint Borzoni, and the other was a retelling of the Echo/Narcissus myth, called "All Wounds Bleed" with Chris Cerrone.
On Jan 6th, the founder of American Lyric Theatre, Larry Edelson, told Chris and I that he was submitting "All Wounds Bleed" for the New Works Festival. A month later, we were informed that our piece was chosen out of over 40 submissions to be included in the festival! It was quite an honor to be selected.
Things couldn't have gone better. The presentation of "All Wounds Bleed" was amazing. We had a fantastic cast and music director. And people rushed up to us after.
Here is a video of the presentation. My piece starts at minute 12:00, and is a half hour long. In a quick summary: Echo and Hera are both tortured in their mutual unhealthy love of Zeus; throw in a stolen Cupid’s arrowhead, and a mortal who has sworn off love forever and things get a little crazy on Olympus.
The people in attendance really loved the piece. They were effusive with comments about the craft and the subject matter. They ran up to us with business cards after. It was so gratifying. And it got me thinking about musical theatre...
For seven years, I banged my head against walls trying to get anyone in the world of musical theatre to notice me. I wrote funny pieces, dramatic pieces, personal pieces, complex, pieces, fun and silly pieces. I submitted to this showcase, and that festival, and every award competition you could think of. I had very little to show for it. Few seemed to notice.
But without having done ANY legwork, here I am getting accolades and interest from the opera world. Not to mention that they paid for my travel, my hotel (the Yotel on 42nd and 10th!), dinners, drinks, tickets to Vox... It was like an alternate universe! A universe where I felt appreciated. I cannot conceive of a world in which musical theatre pays for a postage stamp, let alone all travel and accomodations.
So if you've been following the blog, you'll know that when it comes to musical theatre, I'm doing my own thing. But now, I have this whole new field opening up to me: opera libretti. There aren't that many people who want to write them, and I'd be happy to step in. It worked for Michael Korie. Here's to telling stories onstage with music, whatever the genre!
TONY ASARO is a composer/librettist currently working on various musical theatre and opera projects including the award winning Our Country. He is also Co-Founder and Producing Artistic Director of the new San Francisco based musical theatre company, The FOGG. To learn more about Tony's writing, please visit unrelentingmonkey.com. NEVER STOP SWINGING!
With the release of her latest choral album, CELEBRATING THE AMERICAN SPIRIT, Judith Clurman proves why she is the premiere choral conductor in New York City. I sat down with Judith to discuss the album, a superb tribute to United States presidents by her appropriately named ensemble; ESSENTIAL VOICES USA.
by David Davila (playwright / song-writer)
With presidential fever running rampant across America, Judith Clurman could not have picked a better time to release her latest choral album with Essential Voices USA. CELEBRATING THE AMERICAN SPIRIT (Sono Luminus DSL-92162) is a collection of classic and newly commissioned works celebrating America.
The centerpiece of the album, SING OUT MR. PRESIDENT, is a cycle that is based on quotes by sixteen of our presidents, from Washington to Obama, set to music by some of America’s most important composers like Milton Babbitt, Robert Beaser, Jason Robert Brown, Jake Heggie, Andrew Lippa, Nico Muhly, Georgia Stitt, and Zazhary Wadsworth, among others.
The recording is illuminated by the gorgeous voices of Broadway stars Kelli O'Hara and Ron Raines, who join the chorus in works by Leonard Bernstein, Irving Berlin, and Larry Hochman.
Other composers featured include Pulizer Prize winner Jennifer Higdon, David Ludwig, Stephen Paulus. Marc Shaiman, and the father-daughter team of Laurie and Larry Hochman. An added bonus is a new setting of lyrics, written for the recording, by Broadway lyricist Sheldon Harnick, to music by Tony award winning orchestrator Larry Hochman.
(Watch a preview of Judith Clurman and friends recording the album.)
Judith took time to sit down with me during Hurricane Sandy to discuss this stellar album, the future of choral music, and of course - Big Bird. Here's what she had to say:
That scary music in your movie trailer this Halloween is more than likely "BRAM STOKER'S DRACULA" by composer Wojciech Kilar... By David Davila (Playwright / Songwriter)
When I was ten years old, I was really into Winona Ryder, and Aaron Copland, and Mary J Blige. Okay, Mary J has nothing to do with this story, but my obsession with Winona and her cult-classic-goth-glam of course led to my deep desire to watch Franis Ford Coppola's adaptation of BRAM STOKER'S DRACULA.
I didn't understand the movie, but for some reason I was obsessed with it. I was obsessed with the actors, the costumes, the weird accents, and of course the music! I loved the music so much that I asked Santa for the soundtrack, and he happily brought it Christmas morning.
Oh yeah... about Aaron Copland. I was really into Romantic and Modernist orchestral music back then, since my fifth grade music teacher, Audrey Chapman (rest in peace), had me competing in district wide music memory competitions. I could name a Tchaikovsky, Copland, Beethoven, or Rachmaninoff piece in less than one second. It was pretty impressive.
Some collegiate artists have too much passion to fit inside a single box. by Amanda Louise Miller, grad student
One of the hardest things for me about completing these blog posts every week is deciding what to put as a "job title" after my name. “Grad student” is accurate, but boring (and, to be honest, a bit misleading, since I've been working as a professional in education since 2003). But “writer-composer-performer-educator-faculty developer” sounds silly and pretentious. Often, I try to err on the side of unpretentious and/or funny, with varying degrees of success.
Fact is, I’m a “hyphenate.” I play in many different creative sandboxes, and they’re all extremely important to me. We’re a rare breed, we hyphenates -- we’re generally too busy to let you in on everything we’re doing, we’re probably running on caffeine and deadlines, but we’re out there.
A few fun and famous examples of “my people” include Barbra Streisand, Carla (from Top Chef), and I have to mention Nathalie Stutzmann (the extremely badass conductor-vocalist of early music I recently researched for a grad class in a project that inspired this blog post).
I thought the most interesting way to explore this idea, though, would be to focus on the famous-to-be. So today (and in some future posts down the road), I’m sharing profiles of some of the coolest collegiate hyphenates I know, sharing - in their own words - their plans, talents, and opinions on what it means to be so fabulously multifaceted.
This week, we'll get to meet an "actor-poet-visual-artist," a "theatrical-dance-opera lighting designer/modern dancer/stage production technician," an "actor-director-choreographer," all persuing undergraduate or graduate degrees at various colleges in the Midwest.
Say that five times fast. (Because "Talk Like a Pirate Day" should be celebrated all week long!)
by Amanda Louise Miller, part-time parodist
So many things are neat when one's acquiring their "MM" degree. (Espec'lly at a school where music theatre's[1] a specialty!) There's History and Theory for your music nerd inspire-ment, AND Music Theatre[1]Lit, where surfing YouTube's a requirement...
("And Music Theatre Lit, where surfing YouTube's a requirement.")
("And Music Theatre Lit, where SURFING YOUTUBE'S A REQUIREMENT.")
("AND MUSIC THEATRE LIT, WHERE SURFING YOUTUBE IS A CLASS REQUIREMENT!")
And one of the best finds in all this "research" I would say, by far, is just how many parodies of Gil' and Sullivan there are. I started a collection 'cause of all the jolly kicks we got from this amusing mash-up that pairs "General" with Mixalot:
