Category: music

Creating something every day for 365 days: the music

Day in the Moonlight (Day 290/365)

Posted on by Dale

This morning I finally re-read Mike Funt’s A Day in the Moonlight and took my first steps towards turning it into a play with music. That’s not the same as a musical, and we’ll discuss that in a moment.

Mike wrote this play in his junior year of college, and it was produced his senior year as part of Valdosta State’s regular season. It’s a resetting of Rostand’s The Romancers as a Marx Brothers vehicle, and quite clever and silly it is, too. Groucho is one of the parents on one side of the wall, and Margaret Dumont is on the other side. Their children are in love with each other, and as in the original the parents have built the wall and pretended to feud in order to provoke just that. The added twist is that Groucho and Margaret are themselves a couple, hiding that fact from their children.

Harpo and Chico are the two actors that Groucho hires to adbuct the girl so that the boy can be a hero and the wall can come down, as it does right on schedule at the end of Act I. Etc., etc.

So a couple or three or four years ago Mike asked me to write some songs to insert into the action, since he had a couple of theatres waiting for the show if it were a musical. Needless to say, I haven’t gotten around to it. But now, with William Blake on hiatus for an indefinite period, I’ll be tackling this project.

It will not a be a musical. It will be a play with music, i.e., the songs are just sort of inserted into the action rather than swelling from the action itself and moving the plot along. This is partly because the original Marx Brothers movies were themselves structured like this, and partly because the action is so slight that we would have to rewrite a lot of the script in order to make it a true musical.

So step one was to re-read the entire script this morning and decide where might be good places to stop the play cold in its tracks and stick in a song.

Preliminary research indicates twelve such songs:

“Sheer Poetry,” wherein Garrison, our hero, sings one of “his” poems to Elizabeth, our heroine. It is in fact made up of snippets of famous verse: “Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?/Let me count the ways.” That kind of thing. Bouncy 1930s leading man flirting song.

“Rationale for a Wall,” sung sequentially by both Thurgood/Groucho and Alexandra/Dumont, explaining to their respective children why they hate each other. Needless to say, the reasons are completely bogus and completely different.

“The Love Song of Thurgood [whatever whatever],” the slightly creepy/loony wooing song from Thurgood to Dumont.

“We’ll Run Away,” in which the children sing of their plan to elope and how beautiful their married life will be away from home.

“Catalog,” in which Fedallini/Chico catalogs all the ways that Pinke/Harpo can actually play a death scene. This is in response to Thurgood’s query. Think the Player’s catalog from Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead set to music. Fake saltarello.

“What Could Go Wrong?,” maybe, in which Thurgood and Fedallini plan the abduction. If we can work it right, maybe the plan in each verse can end in disaster and they have to start all over.

“Tear Down That Wall!,” Act I finale.

I think the obvious opener for Act II is a song about the party, but the script specifically refers to how no one is there and how dead it is. Maybe that’s our song.

“Novelty Song I” and “Novelty Song II,” the inevitable Chico-plays-piano song. The first one is the Kitty Carlisle song, i.e., Elizabeth sings a cute song about nothing. The second one is our “Lydia, the Tattooed Lady” for Thurgood.

“Florida!,” in which Fedallini convinces Garrison, who’s leaving for adventure, to go with him to Florida for excitement. That’s the idea; what they’re actually singing about, I have no clue.

“Where Did We Go Wrong?,” for Thurgood and Alexandra. Maybe a reprise of “What Could Go Wrong?”

“P-I-N-K-E,” in which Elizabeth sings about how much fun Pinke is, who’s stayed behind as part of Fedallini’s plan to keep her from marrying in Garrison’s absence.

“Back With You,” or something like that: the lovers’ reunion song. We can throw in Thurgood & Alexandra and Fedallini & Pinke for good measure.

“Act III,” the finale, in which the cast sings of what the audience will be missing in the mythical Act III. I’m thinking falling chandeliers and helicopters, myself.

75 days to go.

Some thoughts (Day 284/365)

Posted on by Dale

Here’s a quote from a recent article:

“Any show, however classic,” Mr. Warchus said, “is just a document of where the creators got to in the time they had , after which the process stopped, they crossed their fingers and waited for the reviews. If the response was good, that was it. If not, the process continued. As here.”

Mr. Warchus, unfortunately, is the director of The Lord of the Rings, the musical, which flopped in Toronto for $25 million, and is now in previews in London, for another $25 million. Bless his heart.

Still, his point is valid. In my recent post about what we did and did not accomplish for the backers audition, that was my main point: we ran out of time and assistance. We didn’t finish, we just stopped.

And I know that’s the truth no matter what. It won’t be any different even with the fabulously funded world premiere version. At some point we will simply run out of time to accomplish our ideas, even if they were fundamental to the vision.

The difference between us and Mr. Warchus is that none of us are going to lose $50 million and be revealed as ludicrous visionaries to the theatre world.

81 days to go.

More cleaning (Day 283/365)

Posted on by Dale

Today was the study: sorting into piles, shelving, filing, archiving. Clearing off surfaces. Realigning possibilities.

One thing I archived was all the William Blake stuff. This is very strange, not looking at any work coming up that has to do with William Blake. On the one hand, there’s no point in doing any more thinking or creating or orchestrating until we are sure there’s a definite leader for the WBOC. (Which we are not at this point.) On the other hand, it’s a little unnerving to think that all that could start up again, perhaps immediately, perhaps later in the summer.

Still, I have other things to do. I pulled up my Day in the Moonlight folder and took a look at the very little there is in there: the script, some notes from Mike, some midi files from Mike, a couple of lyrics I’ve started. Not a lot at all.

I had decided to sit down and reread the script for Moonlight, but if I ever printed it out, I cannot find it. Add it to my list for tomorrow.

I know I need to make Moonlight next on my list. After all, Mike has theatres waiting for the musical version of the play. Still, I have that orchestral texture running through my head, and it’s pulling me toward the symphony next. Moonlight requires actual songwriting, music and lyrics, and that’s a whole different brain. What’s a busy quasi-composer to do?

Musings (Day 282/365)

Posted on by Dale

Happy birthday to me. In celebration, I only cleaned up the backyard. The bulk of the William Blake stuff, still in the basement, will have to wait until some other time.

I also read: Unspun, and part of Thinking in Circles, and now I’m delving back into Out of Our Minds. A quote from a research consultant has struck me. Speaking of the characteristics of a creative organization, David Liddle says:

“It is first and foremost a place that gives people freedom to take risks; second it is a place that allows people to discover and develop their own natural intelligence; third, it is a place where there are no ‘stupid’ questions and no ‘right’ answers; and fourth, it is a place that values irreverence, the lively, the dynamic, the surprising, the playful.”

Well, I think he just described the Lacuna workshop group. There were only six of us who were there week after week, Marc, Molly, Melissa, Laura, Carol Lee, and me, and I think we did an incredible job of creating the two pieces we staged from nothing. We all contributed, we all took off in different directions, we all built on what the others brought. We took essentially in each case a plotless poem and created a visual staging that I think intrigued and delighted our audience.

Since that was our goal, to surprise and delight our audience, we succeeded wildly. As usual, though, we succeeded beyond anything our audience could expect. It’s like the fact in biology that animals are hardwired to respond to stimuli that go beyond anything they encounter in nature, e.g., a certain butterfly will be attracted to a shade of blue that is brighter/more vivid than any potential mate he might encounter in the real world. Our audience may have been delighted, but there was actually more there to delight them than they were even aware. (Did I just get my analogies inside out?)

The kinds of things we invented, Toast Heads, Ice Sprites, dancing hedgehogs, puppet walls, snowdrifts that turn into banks of flowers, a troupe of traveling sunflowers, stained-glass tortoises pulled by an angel, are truly and totally wonderful. A more polished version of them all will only amaze an audience even further.

This richness is due entirely to the six creative minds who cobbled it all together (with thanks to the other minds who joined in from time to time: Mary Frances, Kevin, Galen.) This bodes extremely well for the workshopping of the entire show, if and when we begin that process.

As Carol Lee said at one point, “This is hard, so much harder than just buying a script and doing that.” But as she also pointed out, what an incredibly enriching experience!

83 days to go.

A logo (Day 280/365)

Posted on by Dale

Mindful of the issues of using the complete title of A Visit to William Blake’s Inn, I began playing with ideas today in PhotoShop. (Yesterday I downloaded four or five new fonts to play with as well, although this particular font is one I already had called Fifteen36.)

That’s one solution, although I would want a much fatter (though still elegant) background font.

Looking at it now, here’s an idea: make the A Visit to lengthened, stretched into the distance, like William Blake’s Inn‘s shadow.

I downloaded the video that Jonathan shot last week. The sound is not the best, but our two staged works come across quite well. The music actually stands up to inspection. I can’t wait to hear it for real, one way or the other, with a chorus that has been rehearsed by someone who knows what they’re doing. (Dragging on “never part day from night” there… tsk, tsk…)

Small cleanup (Day 279/365)

Posted on by Dale

Just small stuff tonight: I went through my piano/vocal score that I used in January and last week and made all the corrections in the files that I’d been marking in the score. This included things like the missing word “boots” in the soprano line in Milky Way, or the inexplicable use of the word “mouse” instead of “cat” who guards my doors in Postcard. Others were more subtle, like using a Finale plug-in to add courtesy accidentals throughout Milky Way. (You’re welcome, chorus.)

Otherwise, nothing really strenuous tonight. There are some details from the Arts Commission meeting that I want to track down before discussing them here, but that was about it for the day.

Workshop, 5/8 (Day 278/365)

Posted on by Dale

We met to debrief the backers audition, congratulate ourselves, and prepare for the next phase.

We discussed whether to call the production A Visit to William Blake’s Inn or, as I had printed out in various fonts on the wall, William Blake’s Inn. I pointed out that we were talking three separate works here: Nancy’s book, my song cycle (both entitled A Visit...), and the stage show, the title of which was up for grabs. There was something to be said for separating the stage show from the other two.

Also, I pointed out that it’s nearly impossible to get the entire title balanced typographically. I know, since I’ve had to do it on flyers, post cards, posters, all kinds of things. There’s just no way.

However, Marc suggested making the logo such that William Blake’s Inn was the major visual component, with A Visit to not as noticeable above it. His point was that he hated to lose the idea of “a visit” in the title. We agreed with that. We also thought perhaps a professional graphic artist might have more flexible ideas.

I filled everyone in on what I knew about the Cultural Arts Commission’s role at this point, which is not much. We have a volunteer to head up the project, although whether she has volunteered to be über-producer or just the Scotland coordinator, even I am not clear. The Commission meets tomorrow, so we’ll know more then.

We defined what our role was going to be in this venture: we propose the budget; we workshop the piece and develop the script and visual materials; we work with the designer(s); we cast the show; we rehearse the show; we produce the educational materials for schools (book studies/music).

The organizing committee’s roles: produce the show; find space and resources; organize volunteers; raise money; pay bills; publicize the show; handle the Scotland connection; handle the Willard exhibit;

We think we really need to hire a technical director (TD) to supervise (and perhaps design) the sets and costume construction. We will need to pay the musical director. We should pay the director, though I blush to say it. We will need a real lighting designer and a sound engineer.

I’ve already defined the next three phases somewhere, but I’ll restate them here. During Phase 1 (Aug. 2007-May 2008), Lacuna will workshop the show and propose the budget; the Organizing Committee (WBOC) will begin organizing, raising money, lining up space and resources. During Phase 2 (Jan. 2008-Oct. 2008), Lacuna will design the educational materials and assist with the construction of costumes, etc.; WBOC will continue to raise money, begin to publicize, line up the Scotland and Willard things, start the construction process. During Phase 3 (Aug. 2008-Oct. 2008), Lacuna will audition and rehearse the show; WBOC will publicize and organize whatever needs to be done leading up to opening night.

All of this is a grand, fuzzy outline which we’ll have to clarify in many, many conversations with the WBOC. So off into Limbo we go!

88 days to go.

Still regrouping (Day 277/365)

Posted on by Dale

Now that last week has settled down, although it’s not completely, still, I’m finding it difficult to stop and think about what we did and did not accomplish.

Clearly, we accomplished our main goal, which was to interest someone, anyone, on the Cultural Arts Commission in heading up the organizing committee. And several people told me that they now understood what the possibilities were in creating a stage work from my song cycle.

On a personal level, I was able to impress quite a lot of people with my music. That’s not unimportant. When we set out on this journey, Marc wondered whether my pushing William Blake’s Inn as I was doing would be indelicate. Previously in my life, I would have agreed with him. (Yes, I was actually quite insecure about my music, and we could politely call it modesty.)

But I have come to the realization that self-promotion is what artists do, if they’re smart. All kinds of examples spring to mind: Beethoven’s mammoth concert in which he premiered his 5th and 6th Symphonies and the 5th Piano Concerto; or Schubert a few years later, finally putting some of his stuff into a concert after friends exhorted him to, but not daring to attend the concert himself; or, God help us, Wagner, terrorizing everyone in a 500-mile radius into doing his music exactly as he wanted it. “Art isn’t easy,” Sondheim reminds us in exactly this context.

So one accomplishment is a healthy self-confidence on my part. (It helps when your singers are complaining a week later that they can’t get the music out of their heads. Of course, the same complaint could be made about “I Want a Hippopotamus for Christmas” or “At the Copacabana.”)

A very interesting thing I learned about our process, and I don’t know that this is an accomplishment or a failure, is how wasteful it can be. We wanted eight Toast Heads (three banners, two pennants, and three band members); we built six (ditching the pennants, the fabric for which had been bought); we used three. We made the band instruments, but didn’t get them finished and didn’t use them, or didn’t use them and so didn’t finish them. We replaced the wooden poles at the last minute because of their weight. The angel’s gown went unused, although we worked with it several ways. The turtle lights didn’t really work, and might have if I had thought of the much cheaper battery-powered tealights rather than the Radio Shack-inspired lights/wires/switches.

Have we learned enough in doing this to control more tightly the expenditures associated with the experimentation? Or is this something we just need to build into the budget?

Another thing I learned was that we have to decide how to handle the actual design and construction process. We brainstormed very well, and we came up with all kinds of visual prompts. But when it comes time to build everything, we will have to hand over to someone working drawings, costume plates, blueprints, all those things which will allow someone else to build our vision.

Do we have designers take our visual prompts and turn them into the drawings for the tech crew? Do we do it ourselves? Or is it going to be more fluid than that?

Those are all the thoughts I can force to the front of my head at the moment. I’m sure I’ll come back to this forum soon with more.

88 days to go.

Regrouping (Day 276/365)

Posted on by Dale

When an event like the William Blake’s Inn backers audition roars through one’s life, it’s like the disruptive force of the Marmalade Man: everything is turned upside down with no time nor energy nor focus to set it right.

So for the past week, the house has gone uncleaned, meals uncooked, items untidied. My life has been disrupted, broken apart by one evening, an important one, but just one evening. Now it’s time to put it back together.

I’ve spent some of yesterday and some of today packing away the Inn stuff: Toast Heads, sunflowers, brushes, hardware, etc. Some stuff has to go back to school. Books need to be shelved. Reference clippings need to be put into the scrapbook.

In some way, it’s like the music to the Epilogue: we’ve reached the end of the journey and need to sort it all out, looking back and cleaning away. And that’s part of the creative process as well, just tidying up and thinking about it all, before beginning the next project.

Not that this one is over, by a long shot. Now the hard part begins, taking it all forward to the world premiere. How many ideas will fall by the wayside? How many compromises will we have to make? How many concepts will be executed in ways that do not match our dream?

That’s tomorrow. Today, I clean up.

89 days to go.

The backers audition (Day 273/365)

Posted on by Dale

tThings went well. I’ll post a full report Saturday night after I get through Relay for Life.

update: It’s Sunday morning and my brain is just now emerging from the sludge. Later.

Finally posted Monday night!

First of all, the backers audition tonight was a success. I thought the chorus sounded as good in parts as they’ve ever done, and I think they’d agree with me that we just fell apart on some spots, especially the first number. I have come to hate computerized accompaniment.

Solos were all spot on, mostly because we could follow the accompaniment by ourselves. Coordinating the whole gang was more of an issue.

I thought Denise and Marc set a wonderful tone with A Rabbit Reveals My Room. Marc’s Bear was wonderfully comfortable.

Our staging for The Man in the Marmalade Hat Arrives worked, although I would love to see it on video. We had a lot of pieces to move around and I’d like to see if it looked cluttered or if it looked intriguing. From the still photos I have, I think it looked as if we knew what we were doing. And of course, the hedgehogs were adorable.

The King of Cats Orders an Early Breakfast and The King of Cats Sends a Postcard to His Wife were solid hits. I was actually accused of enjoying myself a little too much, but the songs are incredibly fun to sing, and present plenty of opportunities for characterization.

Anne’s voice is such an incredible instrument. I’ve told her that every time I write a soprano solo, I’m thinking of her. The Wise Cow Enjoys a Cloud and The Wise Cow Makes Way, Room, and Believe show her off to perfection.

Two Sunflowers Move into the Yellow Room was a huge hit. First of all, the song is quite lovely in and of itself, and I think our staging astonished everyone. Melissa and Denise sounded quite lovely together. The sunflowers themselves were a clever idea, and the sunflower waltz was a wicked combination of parody of and homage to classical ballet.

All the comments I’ve gotten indicate that Blake Leads a Walk on the Milky Way is the crowd favorite. It’s a gorgeous piece, of course, but I’m sort of surprised: it’s nearly seven minutes long, with long sections where there’s no singing. Formally, it’s in modified sonata form, but that’s not going to register with 98% of the listeners. I can’t explain its appeal, other than people just thrill to its ultra-romantic stylings.

The rest of the work went well: Malcolm’s Marmalade Man, Mary Frances’s Tiger, and Marc’s Tailor, all hit the mark.

Most importantly, the performance impressed an awful lot of people and opened their eyes to what we’ve been talking about. We have a coordinator from the Cultural Arts Commission who’s willing to take on the project, more about which later. That was our major goal in staging the evening, so whatever weaknesses qua weaknesses were evident, they are completely irrelevant.

92 days to go.