Practical Thinking

This past week at work was less about teaching music and more about putting things together, which, unsurprisingly, involved a lot of collaborating.  We worked with the choreographer and the director to make some cuts and make sure everyone is speaking the same musical language.  Where the music goes is pretty set at this point, but now we want to make sure it’ll be at performance level ASAP.  For any show, but especially a play with music, this stage turns very practical.  If something’s not working, in a musical you might say “This is hard, but it’s important” and spend extra time on it.  For this kind of piece, chances are that if it’s not good yet, then we haven’t found the best solution.  Luckily there hasn’t been too much of that, but that’s the outlook I have this week.

I also had the pleasure of doing some music assisting at Encores! this week.  I was helping mark cuts in orchestral scores, which I haven’t done with this caliber of parts in a few years (by this caliber, I mean special thick paper, hand-taped scores, generally really nice-looking stuff).  It’s a really good exercise in thinking about how people read music and what would be easiest to read if you were seeing this in real time.  I was at orchestra rehearsal briefly today, and they went through a piece I had cut, and besides one very small error I may have made in one part, everything flowed totally smoothly!  I was quite happy.

The week was completed with seeing the musical ONCE, a lovely visit to Princeton Saturday night and Sunday, and some piano practice, thanks to a friend willing to let me use her piano.  I’m hoping to do more this and next week.  We also sang through a few songs, and I did some vocal coaching with her, and while it was more for fun than for an actual voice lesson, I was very pleased to have had a sense of what to work on.  I was thinking about vocal anatomy at a performance at Princeton on Sunday, imagining what I would do with the actors were we having a voice lesson.  I’m not as quick to diagnose problems as the genius faculty at RCS, but having ideas is a good start!

The Lion, the Shrew and the Teapot

My first week back in New York has been a blast!  I’m working on The Taming of the Shrew at Theatre for a New Audience, and I spent most of my week teaching both vocal and instrumental music to the friendly and enthusiastic company of actors, most of whom I expect would never call themselves musicians but all of whom are doing fabulously.  We’re putting a lot of music in the piece, and I’ve done some arranging, transcribing, and general hunting for sheet music while I haven’t been teaching.  I’m really pleased to be doing this show for my work placement and am excited to see a run and actually find out what’s going on in all the scenes!  I must confess that I really only know the plot of Shrew from its musical and film adaptations (Kiss Me, Kate and 10 Things I Hate About You).

As exciting as my work is the work happening in the other rehearsal studios in my building.  We share the floor with Gore Vidal’s The Best Man, which boasts Angela Lansbury, James Earl Jones, Candice Bergen, Eric McCormack (Will from “Will and Grace”), Kerry Butler, and John Larroquette among its cast members, all of whom I have seen in the tiny hallway between our rehearsal rooms.  I have never been so starstruck!  I also shared an elevator with Alan Menken, whose new show is rehearsing downstairs.  Evita and Newsies are around as well, and though I have not yet seen Ricky Martin (or at least haven’t recognised him), I did eat lunch one table away from the Newsies stars on Thursday.

I also made it to two incredible performances this week.  On Thursday, I saw Regina Spektor perform at Jazz at Lincoln Center.  She shares the stage with only a piano and the occasional makeshift percussion instrument (read: a chair), and she complained of a cold the whole time, but she was a force of nature.  I thought about all the vocal anatomy I’ve been learning while she sang because she has astounding control of every facet of her voice, all while maintaining perfect rhythm and pitch, even while singing a cappella.  Every performer should aspire to her level of technical and artistic mastery.

On Friday, I saw Death of a Salesman on Broadway with Philip Seymour Hoffman, Linda Emond, and Andrew Garfield.  Mr. Hoffman should win a Tony solely for his very first stage cross, followed by the simple first line “Boy oh boy oh boy”.  With that alone, he broke my heart.  The rest of the cast was equally strong.

I rounded out the weekend with a trip to Philadelphia to visit my grandparents, who joined me in listening to my first ever radio appearance!  I was featured on the show “On Broadway”, where I talked about Strange Faces.  If you missed the live broadcast, you can listen in your own time at this link: http://www.broadwayradioprograms.com/podcasts/2.26.12.mp3.

Radio Interview Tomorrow (Sunday) at 5:30

Before I write my week’s post, I wanted to let you know that I’m doing a radio interview tomorrow (Sunday), February 26, from 5:30-6:30 pm.  The show is “On Broadway”, and I’m discussing Strange Faces and the general musical theatre writing experience.  The broadcast will feature several songs from the Strange Faces soundtrack.

If you’re in the Hartford area, you can listen locally on WRTC-FM, 89.3.  Anywhere else, you can listen via live streaming online at www.wrtcfm.com.  You can read the news article about the interview here: http://bit.ly/zFdinc.

I hope you get a chance to listen!  In return, I promise a full post tomorrow.

(The insider’s scoop: I actually already did the interview.  We recorded it from Scotland.)

Beauty’s in the Eye, Well the Eye Can Lie

This week began with a wonderful workshop with Nadine George herself!  We observed 12 of the acting students go through a warm-up sequence with her guidance, then work their way through text using her techniques to discover and explore.  In the first half in particular, Nadine spouted useful proverbs/mottos/slogans every few sentences, and I filled 4-5 pages of my notebook with ideas from her.  By the end of the afternoon, I was both pleased with what I had seen and satisfied that, even if I never do Nadine work at school again, I have an idea of the big picture of what her work entails, and I know enough to do some exploration on my own.  Of course, that doesn’t mean there aren’t plenty of things I am eager to explore at school as well in our next MD Nadine workshop, which should happen in our third term.

I spent Tuesday through Friday with ten actors, a director, and the hilarious Kielty brothers developing Active Virgin, a new musical (comedy, actually) about body dysmorphia and gym culture.  We began the week with a few ideas and one existing song and ended with a 15-minute sequence of five songs and a few sketch-y scenes.  I had some of the most fun I’ve had all year – John would write a new song in his head, play it two or three times, and then hand over the rehearsal to me with a request to “add some harmonies” or “make this sound better”.  He also wanted to explore using gym-style music, so I did some playing on Logic and made a techno track we ended up using for a whole “Vogue”-style number.  Our sharing on Friday went incredibly well and got a lot of laughs, and if I’m lucky, this will be one of the new musicals we take to the Edinburgh Fringe in August!  I would love to keep working on it.

I played for some more auditions yesterday, but other than that, I’ve had a calm weekend at home packing and seeing my friends here before I take off for New York tomorrow morning.  I’m very excited to go home, but I’m going to miss it here!  I’ll look forward to coming back for third term.  In the meantime, USA, here I come!

Independent Learning

I’ve had a generally quiet Independent Learning Week, consisting mostly of reading in the library, piano practice, and relaxing.  I tore through The Theater Will Rock, a fascinating history of rock musicals, which gave me a lot of ideas for our style & contextual studies project on pop/rock musicals.  I’m in the middle of Musical Theater: A History, which started with the ancient Greeks and so is taking a bit longer to get through.  I find early musical theatre really interesting, so I’ve enjoyed learning more about operetta and vaudeville.

I also took time this week to make a list of vocal warm-ups I know and to build some templates of good warm-up routines.  Warm-ups are more important than people usually think, and leading warm-ups is a common source of anxiety among young music directors.  I feel much more confident now that I’ve taken time to think about which warm-ups I like and why, and I’ve even developed some hybrid warm-ups of my own in the process.  I feel like I’ve filled a gap in my personal MD identity.  If I’m happy with these, singers I work with may forever associate me with the sequence I invented this week!  Fortunately, of course, I can change things whenever and however I want.

I also took some time to relax this week, which mostly meant watching the newest episodes of “House” and the first season of “Mad Men”.  I also did some delicious cooking, including a massive batch of quinoa with roasted vegetables and pesto.  I planned to take a picture of if, but it looked much uglier than it tasted.  I also had a brunch party with a friend and made red velvet pancakes with honey cream cheese glaze (yum!).

This coming week begins with a Nadine George workshop led by Nadine George herself, followed by four days of New Musical Development.  I’m music directing a new show by the Kielty Brothers, who wrote one of the school’s Fringe shows during an NMD week last year.  I hope this show will be similarly successful.  I can’t wait to get started!

A Tale of (Travel Between) Three Cities

My shortened week has nevertheless been filled with its fair share of excitement.  I came back from London on Wednesday after one more round on the sightseeing bus.  I actually had the bus to myself for about an hour and got a personal tour of about half the city.  Thursday and Friday were the last two days of Company Scenes, and I jumped in for a 45-minute band call, a sitzprobe, a spacing rehearsal, and a dress run of “Twenty Million People” before we performed on Friday evening.  I was quite thankful that my number was the opener; after eight minutes of high-energy conducting, I got to relax and enjoy my fellow MAs’ work from the past four weeks.

The MDs celebrated in Scottish style with Simon by going to a chip shop (where they fry pretty much everything imaginable) and ordering deep-fried Mars bars.  They’re a lot like fried Oreos, but I think they’re slightly better.  Because mine took a while to come out, they gave me an extra Mars bar.  I can’t say I didn’t enjoy eating them both, but I think that’s enough unhealthy food to last me at least a week.

On Saturday, I accompanied recalls (callbacks) for the BA Musical Theatre course.  In the morning after dance call, everyone performed “devised pieces”, which they must create in any format they choose.  They had about an hour over lunch to connect one song and one monologue from their audition books to create a three-minute performance.  That is relevant to me because they need to mark their music clearly so I know what to do, which can be difficult if you’re cutting different sections of song and text together.  I stayed around them over the lunch hour so they could check their markings with me.  I didn’t help too much, but I did just enough to be sure I could be as helpful to them as possible in the audition room.  Learning to mark your music for a pianist is a very important skill for performers.

Today is the first day of my independent learning week, and this time, I don’t have Into the Woods rehearsals, so I can plan my days as I please!  I expect to practice lots of piano, learn more musical theatre repertoire, and do some research for our style & contextual studies projects, among other things.

One more exciting update: this term includes a work placement for the MDs, which starts February 20 and can run from 2-6 weeks, depending on how we use our time.  Today, I booked my flights to return to New York, where I’ll be doing some part-time work and meeting with some industry professionals.

Now, as promised, a couple pictures from London:

Tower Bridge at sunset, viewed from London Bridge.

Big Ben! I loved the intricacy of the clock faces.

A beautiful courtyard in New College at Oxford.

There’s No Place Like London

Greetings from London, and apologies for the late post!  I have not had regular Internet access here, so my writing was delayed.  In return I have more to say.

Last week was dominated by a whirlwind of showcase rehearsals, arranging, and orchestrating.  The first two performances on Thursday went over well, including with the other MDs and the music directing staff, so I was pleased, but I was dissatisfied with my own piano playing and with the disorganised band parts I made.  Both were the direct result of very limited time, but if this were a job in the future, I would want to hold myself to a much higher standard despite time constraints.  Luckily our next few projects rehearse for longer, so I’ll be able to get into a routine I can then speed up.

My pit musicians for showcase are fantastic, which is both a blessing and a curse – a blessing for obvious reasons, and a curse because good musicians always know what’s going and catch your mistakes even before you do.  For that reason, they intimidate me as a music director, and I am 99% sure many, if not most, music directors feel similarly.  They were a huge help while I was swamped and not organising parts well, but I hope in the future I will have more time to prepare so I can answer their questions before they are asked.

We also had conducting class with Hilary Brooks about conducting from the keyboard, both in person and on a video monitor.  Again, the topic of great musicians arose: don’t conduct more than you need to because good musicians know how to read music and just need entrances and tempo changes to be cued for synchronisation’s sake.  Conducting on visual monitor is all about minimising extraneous movement.  It’s actually great practice for conducting standing up.

If other things happened last week, I’ve forgotten them because I’ve been here in London!  (I have pictures that will be posted next week.)  I spent Saturday mostly on the train and then caught one of the last sightseeing buses of the day.  London is beautiful and I fell in love almost instantly.  Saturday I sat in the pit for a West End show, which was a fantastic treat, both for the pit experience (to see all the music technology we’ve learned in action) and to meet the friendly and talented music director.

Sunday I went to Oxford for a fantastic visit with some fellow Princeton ’11 students.  Oxford is also beautiful and full of character, but it’s surprisingly difficult to explore.  Many colleges are closed off even to other students a lot of the time.  The academic system is very different from anything in the States or at RCS – lots of free study/research time, very little class or tutorial time.  The centuries-old traditions (like the formal college dinner I attended) are incredible primarily because they have lasted so long.

Monday I magically got my sightseeing bus ticket extended to Wednesday, so I took another ride before visiting a friend of a friend in the gorgeous rural areas around London.  Among other good things, I saw my first pheasants, which I thought was very exciting.

Today, of course, was the day that I was actually here for: showcase in London!  The theatre is smaller than the theatre in Glasgow, so we had to do some respacing, but I thought the show went very smoothly, and the audience laughed a lot.  I enjoyed the process, but I am glad it’s over, especially since I’ve been hearing so much about Company Scenes from my fellow MAs while I’ve been gone, and I miss them terribly.  I’ll have Thursday and Friday with them at least.

The trip so far ends with Matilda the Musical, which I saw this evening.  It is one of the most original musicals I have seen in a long time.  It is not at all what I expected or could have even thought to expect, in what I think is a good way.  I enjoyed it, but I’m still trying to figure it out.  My parents will be pleased to know that they have show magnets here in the West End as well (I’ve bought show magnets for years), and I can now add an international magnet to my collection.

Get Ready, Cause Here I Come

The highlight of this week was hands-down our first Nadine George workshop on Tuesday morning.  The performance students have been talking nonstop about their Nadine experiences since the first week, and after much nagging, the MDs finally got ourselves two sessions this term.  The Conservatoire is the only school in the world with a voice and performance department based primarily on Nadine’s work.  For a very basic description, this technique involves active breathing, relaxation, interpersonal interaction, and four fundamental voice qualities or energies to focus energy, access emotions and learn to project them out to the audience.  It can be very intense; people frequently cry, and breaking through lifelong tension can lead to dramatic consequences.  We often discuss the pros and cons of that level of emotional work.  I was excited, though somewhat nervous, on Tuesday.

To anyone who has ever heard phrases like “find your core,” “feel the energy through your body,” etc. and responded with skepticism, I say get yourself to a Nadine George workshop.  I understood all of it for the first time.  I have never felt so energised or focused or actively connected with the people and the world around me.  I am so eager to keep moving forward at our next workshop.  A Nadine warm-up to start off my day will positively impact my rehearsal technique and conducting tremendously.

On Friday, we had a wonderful conducting class with Simon Beck.  I’m slowly understanding what becoming a conductor is all about, which at this point is mostly unlearning “techniques” and thinking much more directly about feeling every aspect of the music in your body.  I expect this journey will continue for the rest of my life.  On Friday, I decided I am much happier taking that journey without using an actual baton, so I’m setting mine aside until it can fill a role my hands cannot.

Beyond that, I’ve spent the week working with the BA3s on their showcase, making many cuts and transpositions and writing some small arrangements for our band.  On Saturday, I accompanied auditions for the BA Musical Theatre program, which is always fun.

I filled the rest of the weekend with arranging and some movie-watching, including my first ever viewing of Who Framed Roger Rabbit?  How I went so long without seeing that astounds me.  I also continued expanding my lunch-cooking repertoire with some new kinds of panini on our George Foreman grill.  This weekend, I made sautéed mushrooms, goat cheese, and rocket (arugula) panini, which were fabulous.

Next week I’ll be posting from London!  I’m looking forward to seeing some theatre, visiting my many friends down south, and playing our third showcase performance at the Criterion Theatre.

Raising the Stakes

We’re back to work, full speed ahead!  This was week 1 of Company Scenes, a 4-week project involving all the MA’s, and week 1 of rehearsals for the BA3 (third-year undergrads) industry showcase, which is at the end of this month.  I’m music directing the showcase, partly because I’ve already worked with the BA3s so much this year, and it’s fun to see them all do what they really do best, which is what showcase is all about.  It’s also the most high-stakes thing I may have ever done: not only are these performances the actors’ chance to audition for top industry agents, but, as this is the school’s first undergraduate musical theatre class ever, we also need to establish a good reputation for the school.

It’s an honour to be trusted with running the performances, but I’m also a bit scared, so I’m glad to have plenty of support from the staff, who are more familiar with how showcases work.  It’s different from a typical performance: the goal is not to leave the audience satisfied with the show, but to leave them impressed with each individual performer’s abilities.  Artistry is sometimes sacrificed for practicality.  It’s really interesting.

Showcase is performed in Glasgow and in London, which means I get to go to London at the end of the month, paid for by the school!  I’ve never been, and I’m super excited, especially since I think they’ll let me go down the weekend before the performances.  Hopefully I have a weekend of sightseeing and visiting to look forward to!

Because I’m working on showcase, I’m less involved with Company Scenes.  Everyone else is working in-depth on a 10-15-minute segment of a musical, and they are paired up as MD’s and assistant MD’s.  I am working on my own, music directing the 7-minute opening number from My Favorite Year, and we had only one two-hour music rehearsal and a 7-hour staging rehearsal on Saturday.

Rehearsals were good in many ways, but the best part for me was our music supervisor, Simon Beck, who is quite the accomplished music director and conductor, as well as my assigned mentor for the year.  He has been watching the MD’s run rehearsals all week and pushing us to our limits, and the only reason I wish I were more involved with Company Scenes is that I want more time with Simon at my shoulder, questioning my rehearsal technique and music work and pushing me to my maximum potential.  I will do what I can to maximise my time with him this month because I can literally feel myself improving when he’s in the room.  (I can literally feel it today as well – my arms and shoulders are sore from conducting!)

Other news: Today ended up being more of an epic cooking day than I expected, but the results were worth the time.  I made a delicious mixed bean and butternut squash stew, which required two pots because we don’t actually have a pot that’s big enough for soup.  I also made a quinoa salad for lunches for the coming week.  Between the squash, the quinoa, the tomatoes in the soup, and the many pots of thick liquid, I made a mess that took a full hour to really clean up (including scrubbing the floor).  I think it was worth it, but I expect as the month goes on, I’ll have to stop making slow-cooking dinners.

My camera lost battery before I got a picture of the whole messy kitchen, but I did get a photo of my soup bowl:

SwissTrip Recap

Happy New Year!  I hope everyone had lovely holidays.  I returned from my trip to Switzerland three days ago, and I’m getting ready to start Term 2 tomorrow.  In the meantime, here’s a short recap of my journey, including a choice selection of the 650 photos I took.

I didn’t go skiing; I didn’t get to the far east of the country, where they speak Romansch; and I didn’t take advantage of the country’s many summer activities (for obvious reasons).  Other than that, I did pretty much everything else, hitting Zurich, Basel, Bern, Lucerne (/Luzern), Geneva, Lausanne, and Locarno, plus Zermatt (the town at the base of the Matterhorn), Montreux (home of the famous Château de Chillon), and Gruyères, a region that includes a cheese factory, a chocolate factory, and a beautiful castle.  I went to at least a dozen museums of all kinds, the highlight being two visits to the Transportation Museum in Luzern – once with my friend Nick, and once with my brother Brandon a week later.  With our Swiss Passes, which allow unlimited rail travel throughout the country, we took trains every day, many of which offered unbelievable views, mostly featuring the Alps.  I also ate an astounding amount of cheese, chocolate, and pastries of all kinds.  The first thing I did when I got back to Scotland was buy vegetables to make up for all that delicious unhealthiness.

And while I was doing all of that, I learned an awful lot about Switzerland, such as:

- The train system is fantastic.  Reliable and frequent service every day to everywhere.  Pick any destination in the country, walk to the train station, and you’ll probably be on your way in 15-20 minutes, an hour maximum.  The public tram systems within the cities are just as good, and everything’s very clean.

- They really know how to do Christmas lights.  I thought the lights in Merchant City at Glasgow were amazing; Switzerland tops that tenfold.  Every city sparkled after sunset.

- They REALLY know how to build on inclines.  Hilly is the flattest it gets throughout the country, and they’ve found very creative solutions, from stair-sidewalks to cable-cars and funiculars (diagonal trains).  I got quite the workout walking around!

- Everyone speaks at least two languages, though three or even four is typical.  In the French area, I generally survived without English, but in the German and Italian areas, this was a lifesaver.  I wish we learned languages that well in the US.

- Because I’m a skier, I thought that Switzerland was primarily a winter tourist destination.  That’s true for skiers, but the country actually sees most of its activity from May-September.  I’d love to come back then, because as beautiful as the mountains were, there were so many hikes, water activities, and cogwheel railways up the mountains that were closed.  Plus, many museums were shut for the holiday the whole time I was in the country.  Someday, I’ll go back in the warmer months, revisit the museums, and see the countryside in its green, sunny glory.  Not to say it isn’t perfectly beautiful in the winter as well.

And now, the pictures:

Christmas lights on Bahnhofstrasse in Zurich. My pictures of Christmas lights didn’t turn out very well, but you can still tell how they blanket the whole street.

Fondue atop Mt. Pilatus near Luzern. They used a unique (and super delicious) blend of cheeses.

The view from Mt. Pilatus, at 2,132 m above sea level. The most breathtaking view of the trip in every direction.

At the cheese factory in Gruyères. The cheese is mixed on the right, then is poured into the wheels on the left, where it is put under pressure.

Raclette, another traditional Swiss dish involving melted cheese. For these individual servers, the cheese is heated from the top, and you use your knife to scrape it onto bread and potatoes. Raclette vendors scrape the cheese vertically with special scrapers. Pickled onions and tiny pickles are the traditional accompaniment.

The city of Bern. Every city had an “old town” neighborhood like this, with narrow cobblestone streets and pretty, often centuries-old buildings. This view was one of my favourites.

The Château de Chillon in Montreux.

We took a cogwheel train from Montreux to Rochers-de-Naye, a ski resort. It was snowing at the top, so we couldn’t see anything, but we got this amazing view across the lake on the ways up and down.