I thought I’d try something different in this blog and write about one example of how I used the music that inspires me from other genres to create something new in musical theater. The moment I was writing in this case was the last ensemble number for my musical “Tiananmen,” where the students, in a […]
The post Mendelssohn + Spiritual + Pop Harmony = This? appeared first on The NewMusicalTheatre.com Green Room.
Roughly once per week I call home and complain to my mom about my life. And then she complains back about hers. It’s so much cheaper than therapy or yoga or binge drinking or any of the other ways of dealing with stress. But that’s not the kind of calling I want to address in […]
The post Is It Rude to Call? appeared first on The NewMusicalTheatre.com Green Room.
It seems like the rivalry between the jocks and the theater kids goes back to the beginning of time, or at least to the day when some famous Greek wrestler gave Euripides a swirly in the Athenian communal baths, but fundamentally, although practiced by seemingly different types of people, sports and drama tap into the […]
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I’m not a dancer. I move kind of like Elaine Benes, thumbs and all. And for readers too young to get that reference, I hate you. But my mom is a choreographer and teacher upstate, and I spent my childhood with probably an unusual attention (for a musician) to the movement and dance component of […]
The post Music to Punctuate Movement appeared first on The NewMusicalTheatre.com Green Room.
I’ve heard it more times than one would expect. Someone asks an actor, or producer, or director, or especially a writer of musical theater what their favorite musicals are, or what they recommend on Broadway, and the theater professional says something to the effect of “it’s funny, I do musical theater, but I don’t really […]
The post Musical Theater Professionals Who “Don’t Really Like Musicals” appeared first on The NewMusicalTheatre.com Green Room.
When I stepped onto the plane last week it was 70 degrees at LaGuardia. Granted, it is the global warming apocalypse, but the point is I was leaving a pretty beautiful day in New York City. When I stepped off it was in the 30s in Buffalo. The next day the high was 13. Thir. […]
The post My Secret Source of Ideas appeared first on The NewMusicalTheatre.com Green Room.
“A novel is only a place of storage – of all the meaningful things that a novelist isn’t able to use in his life.” ~John Irving I came across this quote this week near the end of The World According to Garp, a truly amazing John Irving novel that I somehow didn’t read in high […]
The post A Reason To Write appeared first on The NewMusicalTheatre.com Green Room.
We’re all inundated by email. It’s a veritable avalanche that never lets up from the moment we get up until we go back to sleep. To stay on top of it completely would be a full time job. But I have noticed that one of the few commonalities among the most successful theater professionals I’ve […]
The post The Importance of Answering Email appeared first on The NewMusicalTheatre.com Green Room.
I love buttons. For the uninitiated, the “button” is that little bump on the end of a song that tells the audience it’s over and prompts them to clap. Left to my own devices, I would button everything. Actually, I’d triple-button everything: music button, movement button, and lighting button. I have a collaborator who hates this. He’s viscerally opposed […]
The post To Button, Or Not To Button appeared first on The NewMusicalTheatre.com Green Room.
I’ve never done the experiment, but I wonder what would happen if you filled a room with theater professionals – writers, actors, designers, producers, etc., and asked them each to list songs currently in the Top 40. What would the median number of right answers would be? Ten? Five? Two? (If you want to try this yourself, you can […]
The post Reasons to Steal Your 15-Year-Old Niece’s iPod appeared first on The NewMusicalTheatre.com Green Room.
I love an epic six minute story song as much as anybody, but there’s something undeniably satisfying about the occasional little gem that packs a huge punch and then is gone before you quite know what hit you. Doris Humphrey said that “every dance is too long,” and while I wouldn’t go that far with songs, sometimes less […]
The post A Little Post About Little Songs appeared first on The NewMusicalTheatre.com Green Room.
I love “I Dreamed a Dream.” I have an embarrassing number of versions of it in my iTunes. I mentioned it in my first blog post. It’s a bit of a problem. Call the lyrics cliché, call the orchestration overwrought, but somehow it just sort of works. Now that we have that out of the way (did I […]
The post I Dreamed a Dream: Of Good Vowels On High Notes appeared first on The NewMusicalTheatre.com Green Room.
When Vital Theater Company approached me in the summer of 2009 to write the score for their children’s musical UNCLE PIRATE, I half-heartedly said yes. They were in a pinch, having just lost their songwriter, I was free, and the director was a good friend. I don’t have children. I didn’t even know much about them, but I figured I’d […]
The post Five Things I’ve Learned from Writing Children’s Theater appeared first on The NewMusicalTheatre.com Green Room.
There’s an old theater adage that “no one leaves humming the set.” I contend it’s equally true that “no one leaves humming the syncopated, accidental-filled, sixteenth-note-y vamp.” As more new musical theater is being written by amazingly talented, expert pianists (who are often non-singers), increasing attention is being paid to the accompaniment figure, which is being written first, at […]
The post Melody Matters appeared first on The NewMusicalTheatre.com Green Room.
