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.
With the cold weather drifting in and pumpkin spice lattes on our lips, it’s hard not to think about the first holiday of the fall season: Halloween. And with Halloween comes the number one google search*: What costume to wear. Of course, you can always go as a nurse or football player, but really, you’re […]
The post #NMTHalloween Across the Globe appeared first on The NewMusicalTheatre.com Green Room.
I was sitting on a beach in the Baja when it hit me. I’d had it with writing musicals. I’d been doing it for a while, and with a decent degree of semi-success, but I’d hit a wall. They take forever to finish. And they’re so – well, so American. I was longing for something that happened […]
The post What Does A Musical Theatre Writer Do When They Get Fed Up With Writing Musicals? appeared first on The NewMusicalTheatre.com Green Room.
We’ve all dreamed about that one moment that changes everything. Audra McDonald hears you sing karaoke at your mutual friend’s birthday party and asks if you’d be interested in singing a duet with her on her next album. Or you send a draft of your latest show to one of your former professors, who thinks […]
The post Be Prepared appeared first on The NewMusicalTheatre.com Green Room.
This blog was inspired by a tweet that read: “I wish I could move to NYC to be a super famous composer like @DrewGasparini” I laughed… Here are some truths. I don’t feel like sugar-coating too much, so I will just lay it out. For some reason, sometimes people see what I do, some become familiar […]
The post Boobs, A Starbucks Bathroom, and A Bank Teller appeared first on The NewMusicalTheatre.com Green Room.
Most get into musical theater by listening and watching others before they join in creating the magic themselves. In fact, most are lead to participate in this creation because the passion they gain from being inspired by previous actors, writers, singers, etc. This passion is what drives us, and it’s what keeps us going. When […]
The post #NMTVotW: Passion appeared first on The NewMusicalTheatre.com Green Room.
Adding new songs to your repertoire can be a challenge. On the upside, there’s a great site like NewMusicalTheatre.com to help you find new material! But, once you do, you have to learn the song and develop a performance, and that can be like solving a mystery. And the only help the composer and lyricist have given you to […]
The post What The Hell Are You Singing?! No…Seriously. appeared first on The NewMusicalTheatre.com Green Room.
Welcome back to Song Spotlights! Before we dive in, I wanted to give a little background about the inspiration behind this series. Once upon a time, in a class on the American Musical, my professor declared his unofficial death date for the Golden Age as 1981 (Merrily We Roll Along and its original flop production—clearly […]
The post SONG SPOTLIGHT: Blue Hair 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.
Let me take a moment to say how excited I am for the return of the musical Natasha, Pierre and the Great Comet of 1812 this season, this time pitching their tent closer to Times Square in the empty lot by 45th and 8th Ave. The thing about this show I find incredibly thoughtful is that it […]
The post Bits and Pieces appeared first on The NewMusicalTheatre.com Green Room.
I am sitting in my living room while doing a lot of email correspondence for work and in the background my partner is watching the film There’s No Business Like Show Business starring Ethel Merman, Marilyn Monroe, Mitzi Gaynor, & Donald O’Connor. (Stereotype, I know.) Every so often I look up to see a truly […]
The post There’s No Business Like Show Business appeared first on The NewMusicalTheatre.com Green Room.
When people hear “Musical Theatre” they think Broadway, with full performances and storylines with arcs and subplots, intermissions and costumes. Maybe they think of community theatre or touring theatre, again with the same grand gestures. But the awesome thing about musical theatre, especially NEW musical theatre, is that it isn’t limited to this 2.5 hour […]
The post #NMTVotW: Variety of Venues appeared first on The NewMusicalTheatre.com Green Room.
Last year I was contacted by Erin Guinup, a musician/teacher in the Seattle area who was preparing a lecture and paper on female musical theatre composers and wanted to include my work alongside the music of Kay Swift, Mary Rodgers, and Jeanine Tesori. In addition to showcasing some of my songs, she asked me to respond to the following quote […]
The post Drama Is Drama: Women’s Voices in Theater appeared first on The NewMusicalTheatre.com Green Room.
In the opening post of the NMT Green Room, Kait Kerrigan wrote about how NMT’s mission – and now the blog’s – is to be our own little “room of requirement” as we find new ways to create and celebrate our community. As the blog’s editor, I agree that there’s no better way to frame […]
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If you’re a hardcore musical theatre fan – and let’s be honest, you probably are if you’re on this site – you’re familiar with the term “trunk song.” On the off-chance that you stumbled onto this blog thinking I’m one of the writers and producers of Sex and the City – I’m not, by the way – I’ll […]
The post Baby, Bathwater or Both? appeared first on The NewMusicalTheatre.com Green Room.
Once you’re a fan of musicals, it can be difficult to keep your appetite for cast recordings satiated. Back in the day, it used to be easy to browse through the musical and soundtrack section of Borders, but how is someone supposed to figure out what to listen to next in this day and age? […]
The post “Please sir, I want some more!” appeared first on The NewMusicalTheatre.com Green Room.
