Sondheim at Herbst Theater

This past Sunday was a date I’d been anticipating for months. As part of the City Arts and Lectures series here in San Francisco, Stephen Sondheim sat down with Frank Rich for a thoroughly spontaneous and entertaining hour-and-a-half discussion.

Now, I’ve read and heard so many interviews and similar Sondheim talks over the years, so there was very little new information for me, but this is my first opportunity to sit through one in person. Sondheim was upbeat, forthcoming and very funny; a true mensh.

Sondheim’s Favorite: “Someone in a Tree”

It is well known among Sondheim kooks such as myself that Stephen Sondheim’s favorite among his own songs is “Someone in a Tree” from the 1976 musical Pacific Overtures. I love this song too, but it’s never been clear to me exactly why it stands out in particular for Sondheim.

Sweeney Fatigue

Why am I so uninterested in the new Sweeney Todd movie? It’s as much a surprise to me as it is to anyone who knows me. I remember being excited about it about 15 years ago when there began to be noise about a Tim Burton adaptation, but in recent years I’ve lost interest.

The original stage version of Sweeney Todd is a masterpiece, and I’ve written before about how my first exposure to it put me on the path toward being a composer. Over many years I’ve studied the score so thoroughly and seen so many productions, some good and some bad, that I don’t think I can ever get excited about it again. It’s not just this film adaptation I’m down on; I’m normally loathe to go and see new stage productions as well. It’s also not that I don’t think the original 1979 Harold Prince production can’t be improved upon, but that happens so rarely.

Bay Area Announcement #1: D’Arc, Woman on Fire

It will be worth your while to see writer/performer Amanda Moody’s latest music theater piece D’Arc, Woman on Fire, music by Jay Cloidt, at Footloose & Shotwell Studios.

D’Arc offers a surreal inquiry into the costs of dreams, lived and unlived. Weaving the threads of the Dark Ages with our own dark times, D’Arc depicts a present-day intercession by Saint Joan of Arc. We meet Joanne. Home alone, she fixates on letters from her daughter who vanished while working abroad in a war-torn region. Raging against loss, Joanne begins to receive bizarre visions through the cold flame of her television set. It is Saint Joan, burning through the TV twilight to answer her grief. Relating tales of her own battles and trials, Joan teases and admonishes Joanne, disrupts her obsessions and challenges her to listen anew to the call of her own life.

Jay Cloidt’s haunting music drives this D’Arc night of the soul. Integrating Moody’s mercurial vocalizations with acoustic and processed cello, the composition features original songs, underscoring, and sound design. His composition spans 14th century hymns, post-Romanticism, aggressive electronic music and heart-thumping gospel to evoke the strange dream of Joanne and Joan’s collision-course.

I haven’t seen it yet, but I can vouch for Amanda as a really interesting dramatic writer, and a powerful performer.

Revisiting the Trunk: “You Must Learn”

Throughout the year I’ve been occasionally posting recordings of songs from my earlier musical The Ghost of Wu. Today’s installment is the song “You Must Learn”, in which an ambitious mother lectures her naïve daughter, a concubine, in the ways of the Emperor’s court.

This song is probably the most Sondheim-derivative thing I’ve ever written. When I was a student, all of my music was completely derivative, and over the years I learned how to avoid that to some degree. This is a rare case where I was not only being openly derivative, but I actually knew what I was doing. If you know your Sondheim, you will surely recognize the influence.

The lyrics are mine too, by the way. You can follow them and the score if you’d like on this dedicated page.

By the way, there’s a running index of all the songs I’ve posted so far on this page.

A New Book on American Opera

Sometime last year I struck up an email correspondence via this blog with poet/librettist Karren Alenier, whose opera with composer William Banfield Gertrude Stein Invents a Jump Early On was premiered in 2005 in New York by Encompass New Opera Theatre. Karren has written a very entertaining book about what it takes to see an opera project through from concept to production.

Vintage Musical Theater Footage

Blue Gobo has an addictive collection of footage from original Broadway productions dating at least as far back as Rogers and Hart’s Jumbo (1935). Most of the footage that interests me is of scenes excerpted on the Ed Sullivan Show in the 50′s and 60′s.

Back to the Trunk: “Welcome Home”

Time to roll out another song from The Ghost of Wu.

Composed in the summer or fall of 2002, Welcome Home is probably my favorite song from Wu; certainly the one I’m most proud of for both music and lyrics. It’s an ensemble number for womens chorus.

Following a tumultuous journey from her village to the Emperor’s court, Wu is met by gentle chorus of concubines welcoming her into the Emperor’s harem. During the course of the song, they transform her from a simple country girl into an elegant member of their circle.

Approaching the Harp

In advance of the upcoming premiere of his harp concerto, Mark Adamo (seen below in a recent photo, pre-haircut) has written a fascinating description of the challenges involved in writing such a thing, and how he approached it. How do you get beyond the clichés and build something where the harp isn’t just adding some attack to the clarinets or providing noodledy-noodley filigree? How can the harp “own” the material?

Sneak Peak: A scene from EROS AT BREAKFAST

As mentioned in my last post, the opening song from Eros at Breakfast was performed a couple of weeks ago, launching what I hope will be a series of similar informal performances as the pieces start coming together.

It has occurred to me that it’s relatively easy to also document this work-in-progress on video, and so we got back together over the weekend to shoot this scene for that purpose. The result is a very tight, energetic and musically accurate performance. On the other hand, this particular scene calls for a lot going on onstage, and all we have is our main character (the only one who actually sings here), so you need to use your imagination to some degree.

Thanks again to Loren Nordlund, praised in my last post, and to wonder-pianist Jennifer Peringer, who, it turns out, has five hands.

Without further ado, please have a look at “Routine”. Video and a very brief synopsis are on a dedicated page.