Georgia Stitt Official Blog

Album Essays

2012-01-15T16:13:00.000-08:00

After "My Lifelong Love" came out (about six weeks ago), I realized that the only people who were actually getting to see the fantastic digital booklet that Derek Bishop and I made were the people who downloaded the thing from iTunes. And we spent a lot of time on it! I'm going to upload it to my website next week, but in the meantime, here are the two essays that friends of mine wrote for the record. I love them. The friends, I mean. (But also the essays.) Enjoy.

from composer ERIC WHITACRE:

Georgia and I have been friends for nearly twenty years, ever since she and I spent a glorious summer together working summer stock theatre at Cape Cod’s ageless College Light Opera Company. She was an accompanist, I was an assistant conductor. We spent our days rehearsing singers and our nights playing raucous four-hand piano at parties. Georgia was always the brilliant one, able to play anything; I was always the assistant, which, if memory serves, meant that I spent most of the time getting both of us fresh drinks.

Even back then it was obvious that Georgia had ‘the gift’; music just flooded out of her, effortlessly. Soon she began composing her own music, and the songs she wrote were a perfect reflection of who she is: warm, passionate, funny, effervescent, and wicked smart. To know her music is to know her, every intimate emotional secret right there on the surface. Delicate, precious gems given with an open heart.

As a fellow composer - seriously, you should hear the two of us geek out about composing - I’m always most impressed with her strong sense of musical architecture. She somehow manages to blend a musical theater composer’s natural storytelling prowess with sophisticated ‘classical’ forms, a powerful hybrid that allows her pieces to blossom on multiple levels. She makes my favorite kind of music, seductive on the surface and infinitely richer as you peel away the layers, the kind of music that rewards you for digging deep. I find I can listen to the songs over and over again and always find something new, something surprising.

It has been one of my life’s great joys to know Georgia; I consider her not only a colleague and an inspiration but one of my best friends. As long as we are both around she can rest assured that I’ll be right beside her, fresh drinks in hand, glowing with love.

from Broadway star SUSAN EGAN:

Experts say we encounter an astronomical number of people in our daily lives – that because we now move so fast, the sheer numbers are astounding. I’m not impressed. Who cares how many jump in and out of our worlds? I am amazed by who stays – and moreover, who becomes a treasured traveling companion.

Georgia and I met in 2000, when I was still working on Broadway. I was researching material to record for my album, “Coffee House,” and hers was one of many demo CDs I had been given by Michael Kerker of ASCAP. I listened to hours and hours of new music that never seemed new, and then I popped in Georgia’s CD. Her song, “This Ordinary Thursday,” struck me on so many levels: the melody caught me right off, the structure was great, and the unfolding of the story captivated me – it still does. In the song, the singer has been viewing other people’s lives through the fishbowl-like windows of NYC, and now, because she is loved, her life is finally worth displaying, too.

I loved it. Georgia’s experiences as a single girl living in NY mirrored mine, so immediately I could relate, but Georgia’s point of view was distinctive. How, with the millions of love songs in existence, did she write one so completely unique? Michael set up a meeting, and Georgia spent an afternoon playing me her music. I ended up recording “Sing Me A Happy Song” on that album. [Shoshana’s version on this CD is spectacular!]

Once I understood who the “Jason” was in “This Ordinary Thursday” (no, I didn’t know), I thought she should keep that one for her album; lucky me that I got to sing it on that debut CD! About a year later, fate somehow brought us both to Los Angeles then played her part again when Georgia (really, a profes- sional acquaintance at the time) called me up one August, during her eighth month of pregnancy, to see if she might float in my swimming pool for an hour or two. She did. And that was that.

I am not really certain how or when we became such dear friends. I can look back at the incremental steps, but the whole of our friendship is so much greater than the profes- sional meetings, the moves out West, the friendly coffees, the synchronistic pregnancies (2nd time around), the mommy world, the concerts, the travel, the glamour and the goop. Georgia and I have not just shared a road on our individual journeys these last few years, we have literally at times linked arms, leapt over potholes, penned the traveling music, and more than once, gotten behind the other and pushed. Somewhere along the way, I actually think we influenced each other’s paths....

From my vantage point, I have seen Georgia in her many roles: mom, wife, blogger, busi- ness woman, producer, chef, and of course, composer. I am proud to know her – for- tunate to have borne witness to the creation of so much of the music you hear on this collection and even to recognize where some kernels of those song ideas sprouted from in her mind. I have heard first drafts through final mixes. I know her well, and still, the mu- sic surprises me, lifts me and takes me on unexpected journeys. Her singular and inspired point of view, I now know, is simply how Georgia sees the world. How lucky for us that she has the ability to articulate it so eloquently in music and lyrics. It’s everywhere here; enjoy it. Her Lifelong Love is now yours.

Why Are You A Writer?

2012-01-04T16:50:00.000-08:00

I got asked to write a little blurb for The Dramatist Magazine. The Dramatists Guild is one of my very favorite organizations because they exist to support writers. Many of the people I respect most in this business are the people who are on the DG Council, the great playwrights and composers and lyricists of our time. Getting to write for the magazine felt very much to me like finally getting to sit at the grown-ups table.

The assignment was to choose one of these three questions and answer it.

1) Was there a play/theatrical experience that changed your life?
2) Why are you a writer?
3) Who would you choose to write the dramatization/musicalization of your life?

I chose number 2. Here ya go.

WHY ARE YOU A WRITER?
By Georgia Stitt

My high school yearbook says that I’m going to go to Northwestern and major in Economics. (I did neither.) I guess when I was asked about my plans for the future, the question came during the period of about four weeks in my senior year when I was trying to avoid the inevitable.

At age seven I asked my mother if I could take piano lessons. In middle school I signed up to learn the clarinet, and over the course of the next few years I taught myself every instrument in the marching band. People always knew about me that I was going to be a musician. I remember my parents saying, “It’s so easy for you. You don’t have to decide what you want to be when you grow up.”

They thought I was going to be a band director, and for a while, I did too, because that’s what musical kids in Tennessee grew up to be. At music camp one summer (yes, I went to music camp), a teacher suggested that since I knew how to play so many instruments, maybe I’d enjoy studying composition. His class was the first time I remember getting excited about a musical idea that came from me. I was fifteen years old, and I spent the summer writing a duet for my violist roommate and me to play on our recital. We performed it; the audience clapped. It was my first composition, my biggest hit.

Back in my hometown I became the music girl. I had a gift; I could do something nobody else did. And while that distinction was admired by adults, it also distanced me from other kids. So I read a lot of books. I practiced a lot of piano, especially Bach, which soothed my anguish. I wrote in my journal about how much I was growing to hate this small Tennessee town where nobody understood me.

The teenage years played themselves out. The scholarship (for music, not economics) arrived (to Vanderbilt, not Northwestern). While in college, I figured out that the poems I wrote in my journal and the music I wrote at my piano were all trying to express the same ideas. I became a songwriter. I played my songs for people and felt like I had found a way to be known. New York followed, then Los Angeles, where I now sit, once again trying to put words together on a page in an effort to make you understand me.

Now a writer of musical theater, I tell my stories through the points of views of other characters, but I’m still always hoping that by connecting to them, you’ll be connecting to me. When I am moved by a piece of theater, or a piece of music, or a great novel or an exquisite photograph, I feel like I understand something deeper about how the world works. I come back to my desk inspired to create something of my own. I write to be understood.

TodoMusicales Interview

2011-12-07T16:12:00.001-08:00

I just did an interview with a journalist in Barcelona at TodoMusicales. Reprinted here, in English.

‘My Lifelong Love’ is the name of the third album of the American composer and lyricist Georgia Stitt,a collection of songs about love performed by different Broadway stars, such as Heidi Blickenstaff, Susan Egan, Brian d’Arcy James, Michael Arden, Anika Noni Rose, Laura Osnes, Shoshana Bean and Kate Baldwin. The album was released on the 29th November 2011 by Sh-K-Boom Records.

Georgia Stitt - who is married to composer and lyricist Jason Robert Brown - has written musical theatre shows such as THE WATER or MOSAIC, and has also developed her career as a musical director, arranger, pianist and vocal coach. Her body of work includes: assistant conductor of LITTLE SHOP OF HORRORS on Broadway; musical director and arranger/orchestrator for ‘The Broadway Divas’ concerts in New York, California and Australia; and vocal coach for the 2008 season of the NBC hit show ‘America´s Got Talent’; to name a few.

Georgia Stitt tells us about her recent album, about her current projects and about her points of view regarding contemporary musical theatre.

HOW WOULD YOU INTRODUCE YOUR NEW ALBUM ‘MY LIFELONG LOVE’?
This album, my third (after “This Ordinary Thursday” and “Alphabet City Cycle”), is a collection of songs about love in its many incarnations: first love, lost love, love of music, love of children, and ultimately, love of self. I have been very lucky that many of my friends are Broadway’s greatest singers, and they bring incredible depth and style to their varied performances. It’s a deeply personal album for me, a collection of many small stories that add up to one big story.

WHY DID YOU DECIDE TO FOCUS IT ON LOVE?
It’s not so much that I chose to focus it on love. I write many songs, and part of the process of making this album was matching the right singer with the right song. Once the songs were chosen and the recording was done, I listened to it over and over again, trying to discern what this particular collection of songs had to say. It’s important to me that an album doesn’t feel like a random collection of tunes. It has to have a point of view; there has to be a reason for this particular collection to exist. The title track, “My Lifelong Love,” is about looking back on your life and recalling the moment when you discovered your passion. And it’s about thinking you’re in pursuit of something and realizing, instead, that you have found something even better. To me, that was the metaphor for the whole record.

HOW DO YOU DECIDE ON WHICH ARTISTS TO TAKE PART OF YOUR ALBUM AND WHICH SONGS THEY WILL SING?
In some cases, there are just singers that I want to work with over and over in whatever capacity possible. Susan Egan knows almost everything I have ever written and she could likely have sung the whole record by herself. (We just released her album, “The Secret Of Happiness,” which I produced, a few weeks ago.) I have wanted to collaborate with Brian d’Arcy James for years, and the timing just didn’t work out until now. Kate Baldwin and I have recorded several other things together; Heidi Blickenstaff created the role in MOSAIC and I asked her to archive it here. In other cases, I thought about the essence of the song and tried to imagine the singer who most embodied the same characteristics. It took a very long time to line up all of the right people, but I think the payoff is that the singers each bring so much of themselves to the performances of the songs.

YOU WERE ONE OF THE FIRST MUSICAL THEATRE COMPOSERS IN RELEASING AN ALBUM WITH A COMPILATION OF YOUR SONGS PERFORMED BY DIFFERENT BROADWAY STARS. HOW DID THE IDEA COME UP?
Oh, I don’t think I was one of the first – was I? I always loved John Bucchino’s record “Grateful,” which came out in 1999 and has some astounding voices singing his glorious songs. And I remember really enjoying the “Unsung Sondheim” album from the early 90s on the Varese Sarabande label, though I suppose that one was curated a bit differently. Believe me, if I were a strong enough singer, I’d have done it all myself. But in a way I think I’m lucky that I have to ask singers to help me, because they bring so much more to the songs than I even knew was there.

HOW HAS THE AUDIENCE REACTION TO YOUR ALBUMS AND CONCERTS BEEN SO FAR?
I’m always amazed when there are people in my audiences that I don’t know. I mean, I expect my friends and family to be there, cheering me on. But when there are complete strangers at my concerts or posting their reviews of my albums online, it still astounds me. People seem to respond to the storytelling nature of my songs. They like to go on the journeys with the singers. I write very theatrical material, songs that require acting instead of just singing. And I love it when you can tell that an actor has totally captivated the audience. I am always looking for universal truths. What are the things that connect us all, make us the same in spite of our many differences? I try to identify that in both music and lyric.

YOU HAVE ALSO WRITTEN SONGS FOR DIFFERENT WEST END PERFORMER´S ALBUMS, AS DANIEL BOYS, CAROLINE SHEEN OR STUART MATTHEW PRICE… HOW DID YOU GET TO WORK WITH THEM?
I’ve been lucky enough to travel to the UK and Australia to do concerts and teach master classes. A few years ago in London a group called Contempo Theatre Company in conjunction with Alastair Lindsay-Renton, my UK agent, put together a concert and treated it like one of my albums – with a different singer on each song and me at the piano. I met many of my UK performer friends there and continued to stay in touch with them and follow their work. Last year the same thing happened in Australia with some of the finest performers that country offers. Over the years, our paths have crossed in many different ways – both physically and online – and those friendships have blossomed into many different kinds of opportunities, including the albums of the three fantastic performers you listed above. I’m planning to come back to the UK in 2012, and you can bet I’ll be asking those performers to concertize with me again!

WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO YOU WHEN YOU LISTEN TO ONE OF YOUR SONGS PERFORMED BY DIFFERENT PEOPLE ALL AROUND THE WORLD?
It’s very moving to me, very emotional. When I’m working in an English-speaking country (outside of the US), I ask the singers to use their home accents instead of trying to replicate an American accent. What’s most interesting to me is finding the place where singer and song meet in truth, and that’s easier to find when a singer isn’t hiding behind an inauthentic accent. Everywhere I travel I learn something new about my songs, something I didn’t know was there before. Learning that these songs are bigger than just my own interpretation of them is fascinating and absolutely energizing.

YOUR MUSICAL ´HELLO! MY BABY´ WAS PRESENTED IN THE FESTIVAL OF NEW MUSICALS IN WASHINGTON. HOW IMPORTANT ARE THESE KIND OF FESTIVALS FOR DEVELOPING NEW PIECES?
All of the festivals have their strengths and their weaknesses, but the truth is that musicals are huge and expensive and very few people know how to produce them well. For a theatre to invest their trust and their staff and their money into your piece is a huge show of support. In many cases, the only reason that I finished a rewrite was because there was a theatre waiting to start rehearsal. At every incarnation of your show you learn something about how it works – what the actors need, what the musicians need, what the audience needs. And then, at some point, it’s also necessary to step beyond the staged readings and the festivals and see your show realized in full production. That’s the biggest value of all.

WHAT DO YOU THINK ABOUT CONTEMPORARY MUSICAL THEATRE? ARE THERE ANY YOUNG COMPOSER YOU SPECIALLY LIKE?
I like that there are so many individual voices coming up through the ranks. I’m a huge fan of Adam Guettel, who has such a unique voice and such a depth of musical sophistication. I like Michael John LaChiusa’s energy and the craft of his songwriting. I think Lin-Manuel Miranda is shaping the Broadway landscape and making it seem like his turf, saying things in ways they have never been said in commercial theatre. I also think there are some younger songwriters who get away with lazy songwriting, but I see actors respond to their material with hunger and vigor. There is such a need for new, good, relevant musical theatre. I applaud anyone who does it well.

AND WHAT DO YOU THINK ABOUT THE CURRENT SITUATION OF BROADWAY MUSICALS? IS YOUR AIM OPENING A SHOW ON BROADWAY? OR THERE’S A BETTER LIFE BEYOND BROADWAY?
I would love the chance to have a show on Broadway. I hope I write several shows that make it to Broadway and into markets beyond. But I also hope I keep having the opportunity to write music in many different genres. I very much like writing choral music and I have several published octavos. I like setting other people’s poetry, and I like recording albums. I would not be opposed to writing songs that get placed in movies and on TV shows, but yes, Broadway is definitely a goal.

COULD YOU COMMENT ON YOUR CURRENT PROJECTS?
I just closed a production of my show “Hello! My Baby” at Goodspeed Musicals in Connecticut. That one was written with Cheri Steinkellner (Sister Act), and she and I also wrote the one-act musical “Mosaic.” I have another book musical, “Big Red Sun,” that I wrote with John Jiler, and my friend Jamie Pachino and I are putting together a contemporary musical revue that I’ll develop at Sundance early next year. And there are a lot of new ideas floating around right now, including another song cycle (to accompany “Alphabet City Cycle”), a few new book musicals, and a big studio movie that I’d love to get the rights to adapt into a big Broadway show. Check back into www.georgiastitt.com in a few months and see which one I actually finished!

My Lifelong Love - November 29th Release!

2011-11-28T18:53:00.001-08:00

My album comes out tomorrow! Click here for all of the information, and I'll post an update as soon as I have a hard copy in my hand! (If you've pre-ordered the album from Sh-K-Boom.com, I'm told it already shipped!)

Blog Radio interview with Trish Causey

2011-11-22T10:54:00.000-08:00

Loved doing this interview with Trish Causey, who asked me really musical questions. Also hear song clips from my songs KITES AND CHILDREN and SONNET 29, with shout-outs to Brian d'Arcy James, Anika Noni Rose, and Shoshana Bean. Your 30-minute distraction!

Behind the Scenes "Nina Doesn't Care"

2011-11-11T14:33:00.000-08:00

Susan Egan has an album coming out on November 15th, and I produced it! Watch this behind-the-scenes movie as she takes you through the "making of" the music video. And if you watch closely, you'll see not just me, but someone little who looks an awful lot like me.

COMING SOON

2011-10-24T20:38:00.001-07:00

MY LIFELONG LOVE, my new album, will be available on November 29th.

I Can't Believe It's Been Ten Years

2011-09-11T13:47:00.000-07:00

I can't believe it's been ten years. I don't want to write one of those maudlin essays about September 11th, because everywhere you look you can find someone who has written one of those. The emotion in them is overwhelming, and I'm not really ready to go there. Not yet. I know there are deep feelings of grief just barely under the surface of my skin, but it feels indulgent to succumb to them. I didn't know anyone who died on 9/11. It was not my personal tragedy. And yet, I lived in Manhattan at the time, in the West Village, and I experienced the attack on the city in an extremely visceral way. It changed me. It changed us. It was just yesterday and a lifetime ago. I can't believe it's been ten years.

My apartment was on West 11th Street, and our block was set up as the headquarters for information about survivors. All the streets downtown were closed to traffic, and if you needed to find out if your missing friend or family member had been taken to one of the nearby hospitals, they sent you to my block. Tables lined the street, like the press tables temporarily set up for picking up tickets at an opening night event. On one side of the tables sat weary officials behind huge stacks of paper. If your person had made it out of the Towers and had been taken to St. Vincent's Hospital, a few blocks away, you came here to find that out. On the other side of the table stood rows and rows of the most worried faces I have ever seen. And the brownstone steps, for blocks in either direction, were lined with people who didn't yet know anything. It was a place for waiting.

That was the view from my apartment.

On the actual morning of September 11th, however, I woke up in Jason's apartment on the Upper West Side. His phone rang, early. It was his mother, frantic, telling us the world was ending and we should turn on the TV. We turned it on and watched the second plane hit. I remember wondering if my 3 pm coaching was going to happen that afternoon. (It was Alyssa Van Gorder. Funny what you don't forget.) I didn't understand the magnitude of what I was seeing. I had this surreal experience of watching something on TV that was happening only a few miles away. I felt removed from it, like it was a movie, a fictionalized Hollywood horror story. But by the afternoon, the smell in the air made it clear how close we actually were. New York was acrid and pungent for months. You kind of got used to it, which was horrifying in its own way.

A few weeks later, in early October, Jason and I flew to Japan with our friends and colleagues Sally Wilfert and Keith Byron Kirk. We were doing concerts of our own music for the 2001 Tono American Music Festival, created and hosted by my college friend Kevin Simmonds. The plane was empty enough that we spread out and each slept in our own row. When we arrived, the Japanese people seemed more grateful than ever that we had made the trip. They wanted to touch us, to feel that we were okay. We had anticipated being ambassadors of music; we wound up being ambassadors of New York and of America.

That November, my best friend Lisa's daughter Annie had her first birthday, and I tried to write a song to honor the occasion. The lyric was meant to be a celebration of this innocent young life, and instead it wound up being about September 11th. I never wrote the music. I couldn't find it. I put it in a file on my computer where I put lyrics that I intend to come back to later, when I'm ready. I've never gone back to it. I looked at it this week, in anticipation of today. I certainly see how I could edit this thing, fix it, make the words more original, the ideas less cliche. But I still don't hear any music. Ten years later, and I guess I'm still not ready.

I can't believe it's been ten years.

GROWING TO DO
for Annalise Francis Cole on her first birthday, November 17, 2001
Words and Music (?) by Georgia Stitt
©2001 Geocate Music (ASCAP)

Annie was born in November,

A bundle of warmth to a city of snow.

And the world changed

'Cause a baby had started to cry.

Wrapped in pink and all geared up to grow–

That’s how little Annalise said hi.

She giggles, she squeals, she drools,

And she laughs at cootchie-coo.

We’ve all got some growing to do.

Annie could crawl by September.

Pull herself up with her miniature hands.

But the world changed.

When the city outside tumbled down.

Lives and buildings snapped like rubber bands.

Annie didn’t even know to frown.

We struggle, we doubt, we mourn.

And we grieve until we’re blue.

We’ve all got some growing to do.

Sometimes a plane can fall out of the sky.

A war can break out in the wink of an eye,

And people who didn’t do anything wrong can die.

We ask, unanswered,

Why?

Annie was one this November –

A child full of warmth for a city in fright.

And the world changed.

When Annie revealed she could walk.

Baby steps and holding on too tight.

Maybe little Annie’s got it right.

And maybe all the rest of it is talk.

We stumble. We stretch. We cry,

But in time, we will renew.

Baby steps and holding on too tight.

We’ve all got some growing to do.

We’ve all got some growing to do.

HELLO! MY BABY at the Village Theatre in Seattle

2011-08-10T21:08:00.000-07:00

It's super exciting to have a show in a festival of new musicals, and Cheri Steinkellner and I are lucky enough to have had that experience a few times now. After having had readings at CAP21 and Goodspeed and a youth theater production at the Rubicon Theatre, this week we are at the Village Theatre Festival of New Musicals in Issaquah, Washington, just outside of Seattle. Here's the view from where I sit right now.

That's the end of the first act, where Frances and Junior realize they might be falling in love. But as usual, shenanigans will conspire to keep them apart until the end of the second act. I hope you all get a chance to see the show eventually. We've got a lot of development opportunities coming up, and I'll blog about them as they materialize. I can't announce (ahem...) until the theaters announce... but it's looking more and more like there will be things to announce very soon. How's that for cryptic?

Set on the sidewalks of New York in the 19teens, Hello! My Baby is a riotous new-fashioned musical-comedy chronicling the beginnings of that original all-American art-form: Popular Music. A new take on the classic songbook musical, H!MB updates the greatest hits of Berlin, Gershwin, Kern, Cohan, and a score of others, weaving them into a timely romantic farce that sings to all ages.

HELLO! MY BABY
Book and New Lyrics by Cheri Steinkellner
New Music and Arrangements by Georgia Stitt
Directed by Rich Gray
Music Directed by RJ Tancioco

Sunday night, August 14th, 7 pm
More info here

Follow HELLO! MY BABY on Facebook or on Twitter.

Songwriting Master Class in North Hollywood

2011-07-22T08:51:00.001-07:00

Everyone's process is different, and we all know something about how to write or else we wouldn't be here. But how do we write on a deadline? What does it mean to have technique? How much do we depend on our collaborators, and how much do we push them? In this two-day workshop, we will tackle a number of songwriting challenges. Exercises (depending on the desires of the group) could include writing a simple and clear 32-bar song, writing a song based on someone else's experience, writing a (not boring!) list song, writing comedy, writing a song for a character in a found photograph, setting a piece of poetry, and/or writing lyrics to a pre-existing melody or writing music to a pre-existing lyric. Ideally, we will do some small group collaborating and assuredly we will have some overnight homework. Writers must be willing to attempt to write both lyric and melody even if experience is more significant in one area than the other. (Participants need not be pianists but must have some way (sing? guitar? demo?) to present original music.) Think 'theater games' for the writer. Class needs a minimum of four participants.

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SONGWRITING MASTERCLASS with Georgia Stitt
Instructor: Georgia Stitt

Saturday/Sunday 2pm to 6pm
July 23 & 24
Course Fee: $195 (Early Bird/ANMT Member Fee: $150)

CLICK HERE TO REGISTER

Censorship in Texas

2011-06-20T10:36:00.001-07:00

I received this letter from my friend Kaitlin Hopkins, who is the head of the musical theater department at Texas State University. I am sharing it here. Regardless of your thoughts on religion or gay rights, these are issues of censorship, hatred, bigotry, and misinformation. If you are in a position to support Kaitlin and her student, I encourage you to do so. Thanks. G.

Dear Friends in San Antonio and Austin (and a few in New York/LA too),

One of my students is working at the San Perdro Playhouse in San Antonio, Texas where they are doing Terrance McNally's play Corpus Christi.

It was greatly upsetting to hear that protestors were showing up every night of the run (thru July 10th) due to the subject matter. If you are not familiar with the play, it depicts Jesus and the Apostles as gay men living in modern-day Texas. See photos of the protests.

My student Joe (who is in the production of Dirty Rotten Scoundrels in other theater space there) was squirted with holy water by a Catholic woman in the crowd last night trying to get into the theater. I am not sure if she thought it might melt him like the Wicked Witch, ensure he not burn in hell or just give him some relief from the heat in Texas right now but regardless of her reasons, I am asking friends to help in whatever way you can to show support for this play, the theater and this company of actors and director who are going through this. Last night the casts were not allowed to leave the theater once they were in the building.

Those of you that are in the area, please go support the production and let your friends know about it. I am notifying the two student organizations on the Texas Sate campus that support the gay student community here, LAMBDA and the Bobcat Equality Alliance so they can lend their support and stand in solidarity with this company. This breaks my heart, I have many gay young men and woman students here who need to know they are not alone and can be who they are and not be humiliated or punished for it.

Those of you in New York: if you have blogs or in any way can let people know, I would greatly appreciate it. Last night the protest crowd was about 30 strong, some with signs that were just awful. My guess is the numbers will increase next week. I am hoping to get this company some support.

Internet Piracy of Sheet Music Panel at the Dramatists Guild Conference

2011-06-11T22:04:00.000-07:00

Watch live streaming video from newplay at livestream.com

How To Treat Your Pianist

2011-06-07T11:48:00.000-07:00

Oh my goodness she makes me laugh. I do not have issue with point number 6, though. Do you?

Making A Record

2011-05-27T23:07:00.000-07:00

Of all the things I do, I think being in the recording studio is my favorite. Of course, it's also the most expensive thing I do, so I don't get to do it as often as I'd like. One of the things that has most surprised me about being a grown-up professional musician is how little of your time is actually spent making music. But when I DO get to sit at a piano and play -- either into a microphone or for an audience or just for the pleasure of playing -- it's the best part.

Several months ago this musical theater friend of mine, Robert Creighton (who goes by Bobby, so I'll now start calling him Bobby), asked me if I might like to help him make his first solo album. Bobby has been in six Broadway shows (currently ANYTHING GOES) and he's written a show about Jimmy Cagney (called CAGNEY) that's getting a lot of attention. Bobby felt like if he made a record of old-fashioned songs, people would buy it. Only he didn't want the album to feel old fashioned. He wanted fresh, new arrangements of the songs that were suited to the kind of singing he most enjoys. Bobby knew that that kind of arranging is exactly what I did on my musical HELLO! MY BABY, so he asked if I'd like to do it for him, as well.

I've recorded my own debut album, and I've played on and written for a lot of other people's albums, but Bobby and I were starting from scratch. He'd say, "What if we recorded 'You Are My Sunshine?" and I'd say, "How do you hear it? Is it a ballad? Is it an uptempo? Is it a solo? A duet? Is it guitar-driven, piano-driven, rhythmic, lyrical? Is it happy? Are you singing all of the verses? What's the right key for you? Do you like the intro or should we skip it?" We did this over and over again until we had a master list of songs we liked and a template for how each of the songs might go so that the album was diverse and interesting but still felt like it all came from the same source.

It's interesting to consider that people don't really listen to records the way they used to. In 2007 when I released "This Ordinary Thursday" my record producer told me that I was the first album on their label (PSClassics) that sold more song downloads than physical copies. It used to be that you could have a hit single on one side of the vinyl and then you could put some less-good "filler" song on the B-side knowing that people would buy it just to get the hit. Nowadays, people can sample the 30-second preview of the song on iTunes, and if it's not as good as the rest of the album, they'll just skip it.

As we've been recording, I've asked Bobby to consider the order of these songs. I remember putting on a record in my room and listening to it from top to bottom. But now we listen to music in our cars, on our iPods, while we work out, and there are many more things to consider. Your first track still has to be fantastic, or people don't listen to the second track. But people who listen in their cars often get four or five songs in and then they've arrived at their destination. They might not ever get to the end of the album. And so many people just pick their favorite tunes and put them in shuffle play, so maybe it doesn't matter at all, anyway.

Unless it does. Sometimes a person will still put on a record and listen to the whole thing consecutively. Maybe they just want to sit and experience your music, top to bottom, in the order you intended. And for those people, we try to keep in mind that the best albums have flow. They have balance. The tempo, energy, key, and style of one song will lead you appropriately into the next. Great albums are conceived as great albums.

So, back in January Bobby and I recorded five songs. And last week, in late May, we recorded seven more. I flew to New York on Sunday. On Monday, we rehearsed all day, making sure we had communicated about all the ideas for the arrangements, making sure we'd thought through the performances. We talked about how singing on mic is so different from singing on stage. On the microphone, I can hear whether or not the singer is smiling. Joy can be captured in an audio performance. We rehearsed Bobby's guest singers. (They are unbelievable... but I won't spoil the announcement for him.) On Tuesday, we recorded the rhythm section - piano (me), bass, drums, and guitar. We recorded most of these things to click track (metronome) so the time would be unwavering. On Wednesday, we brought in a horn section (trumpet, trombone, sax) and recorded them as overdubs to the rhtyhm tracks we'd already recorded. On Thursday Bobby did most of his solo vocals as overdubs over the rhythm and horn charts. And on Friday, we brought in the guest vocalists and recorded them in duets (and in one case, in a barbershop quartet) with Bobby. We spent a lot of time on Thursday and Friday doing rough edits, comping together what we call a "rough mix," which means all of the layers are there, but they are not yet balanced against themselves.

So what we have now is like raw footage for a film, and now the editing begins. Next week we start mixing, or balancing the sounds. After that, there's mastering, which is the final post-production step that evens out the levels and keeps you from having to turn the volume up for one track and down for the next. And then Bobby will have photos made and a cover and a CD jacket designed. And then we'll have made a record. Simple as that.

(photo l to r is Eric Davis (guitar), Bobby Creighton, me, Larry Lelli (drums) and Randy Landau (bass))

College MT Programs?

2011-04-28T12:34:00.000-07:00

I've been asked to compile a list of colleges that have prominent Musical Theater programs. Basically the list should include any school that would have enough kids studying musical theater that they would book master classes, have a library of sheet music, produce a non-student-run musical, etc. Here's what I've come up with so far. What am I missing? Leave comments! Thanks!

US

Abilene Christian University (TX)
AMDA (NYC, LA)
American University (DC)
Arkansas State University (AR)
Avila University, Kansas City (MO)
Baldwin-Wallace College (Ohio)
Ball State (IN)
Bates College (ME)
Belhaven University, Jackson (MS)
Belmont University (TN)
Berklee College of Music (MA)
Birmingham Souther University (AL)
Boston Conservatory (MA)
Bowling Green State University (OH)
Brigham Young University (UT)
Brown University (RI)
CalArts (CA)
CalPoly (CA)
Cal State Fullerton (CA)
California State University Chico (CA)
CAP 21 (NY)
Capital University, Colombus (OH)
Carnegie Mellon (PA)
Catholic University (DC)
Catawba College (NC)
Central Michigan University (CMU) (MI)
Chicago College of the Performing Arts (CCPA) at Roosevelt U. (IL)
Cincinnatti Conservatory (CCM) (OH)
Clarion University (PA)
Coastal Carolina University (SC)
College of the Canyons (California)
Colombia College, Chicago (IL)
Cornerstone University, Grand Rapids (MI)
Cornish College Of The Arts (WA)
Covina Center for the Performing Arts (California)
East Carolina University (NC)
Drake University, Des Moines (IA)
Drew University (Madison, NJ)
Eastern Michigan University, Ypsilanti (MI)
Elon University (NC)
Emerson College (MA)
Fairleigh Dickinson University, Madison (NJ)
Florida Atlantic University (West Palm Beach, FL)
Florida State University (FL)
Florida International University (FL)
Harrison School for the Visual and Performing Arts (Lakeland, FL)
Hartt School of Music (CT)
Hollins University, Roanoak (VA)
Hofstra (NY)
Howard University (DC)
Hunter College (NY)
Illinois Wesleyan University (IL)
Indiana University (IN)
Ithaca College (NY)
James Madison University, Harrisonburg (VA)
The Juilliard School (NY)
Lees-McRae College (close to Boone, NC)
Liberty University (Lynchburg,VA)
Loyola University, Chicago (IL)
Manhattanville College
Marymount Manhattan (NY)
Milliken University (IL)
Middle Tennessee State Univ (TN)
Missouri State Univeersity (Springfield, MO)
Montclair State University (NJ)
Muhlenberg College (Allentown, PA)
New World School of the Arts (FL)
New York Film Academy (NY)
New York School of Film and TV (NY)
Northwestern (IL)
North Carolina School of the Arts (NC)
North Dakota State University, Fargo (ND)
Nova Southeastern Univeristy, Ft. Lauderdale (FL)
NYU (Tisch, Playwrights, Steinhardt) (NYC)
Oakland University (Rochester, Michigan)
Ohio Northern University (OH)
Oklahoma City University, OKCU (Oklahoma)
Oral Roberts University (OK)
Otterbein University (OH)
Ouchita Baptist College (AR)
Pace University (NY)
Pacific Conservatory of the Performing Arts at Allan Hancock College (CA)
Patel Conservatory, Straz Center for the PA (Tampa, FL)
Pepperdine University (Malibu, CA)
Penn State (PA)
Plymouth State University, Plymouth (NH)
Point Park University (PA)
Rockford College (IL)
Rowan University, Glassboro (NJ)
Samford Univeristy (AL)
Sam Houston State University (Texas)
San Diego State Univ (CA)
Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD) (GA)
Seton Hill University, Greensburg (PA)
Shenandoah Conservatory (VA)
Shorter College (Rome, Georgia)
Southern Methodist University (Dallas, TX)
Suffolk University, Boston (MA)
Syracuse University (NY)
Temple (Philadelphia, PA)
Texas Chrisitian University (TX)
Texas State University (San Marcos, TX) new program
Troy University (Troy, AL)
Tulane Univ. (New Orleans, LA)
UCLA (CA)
The University of Alabama (Tuscaloosa, AL)
The University of Arizona at Tuscon (AZ)
The University of the Arts (PA)
The University of California, Irvine (CA)
The University of Central Florida (FL)
The University of Central Oklahoma (OK)
The University of Cincinnati (OH)
The University of Colorado Boulder (CO)
The University of Findlay (OH)
The University of Florida Gainesville (FL)
The University of Georgia Athens (GA)
The University of Oklahoma (OK)
The Unviersity of Maryland, College Park (MD)
The University of Memphis (TN)
The Univeristy of Miami (FL)
The University of Michigan (Ann Arbor, Michigan)
The University of Minnesota (Duluth, MN)
The University of Mississippi (MS)
The University of Missouri, Kansas City (MO)
The University of Montevallo (Montevallo, AL)
The University of N. Carolina at Chapel Hill (NC)
The University of N. Carolina Greensboro (NC)
The University of Nebraska, Lincoln (NE)
The University of North Carolina at Pembroke (NC)
The University of Northern Colorado (CO)
The University of South Florida (Tampa, FL)
The University of Southern California (USC) (CA)
The University of Southern Colorado (CO)
The University of Southern Illinois (Carbondale, IL)
The University of Southern Maine (ME)
The University of Tampa (FL)
The University of Tennessee (TN)
The University of Texas (TX)
The University of Tulsa (OK)
The University of Wisconsin at Steven's Point (Steven's Point, WI)
Valdosta State University (Valdosta, GA)
Vanderbilt University (TN)
Virginia Commonwealth University (Richmond, VA)
Viterbo College (WI)
Vassar College (Poughkeepsie, NY)
Wagner College (NY)
Weber State University (Ogden, Utah)
Webster University (MO)
West Texas A & M University, Amarillo (TX)
Western Carolina University (Cullowhee, NC)
Western Illinois University (IL)
Western Michigan University (MI)
Westminster College of the Arts at Rider University (NJ)
Wichita State University (KS)
Wright State University (OH)
Yale University (CT)

PROMINENT HIGH SCHOOLS
Booker T. Washington- Dallas
Campolindo HS- Moraga (CA)
Dreyfoos School of the Arts- Palm Beach, Fl
The Duke Ellington School (Baltimore)
Episcopal High School- Houston
Hamilton Academy of Music - Los Angeles, CA
High School of Visual and Performing Arts- Houston
Humphrey's School-TUTS- Houston, Tx
Interlochen Academy Interlochen Michigan
LACHSA - Los Angeles, CA
LaGuardia High School (NY)
NC School of the Arts High School Division- Winston-Salem, NC
New World School of the Arts- Miami
NOCCA (New Orleans Creative Center for the Arts)- New Orleans
North Carolina Theatre School Raleigh, NC
Orange County High School of the Arts (California)
Pebblebrook High School (Atlanta)
Pinellas Center for the Arts at Gibbs High School- St. Pete Fla
Stratford High School- Houston
Virginia Governor's School of the Arts- Norfolk,Va
Walnut Hill School for the Arts - Natick, MA

INTERNATIONAL SCHOOLS
The Arts Educational Schools (ArtsEd) (London) (UK)
The Australia Institute of Music (Australia)
Bird College, London (UK)
The Brit School (London) (UK)
Canadian College of Performing Arts (Victoria, Canada)
Central School of Speech and Drama (UK)
Concordia University (Montreal, Canada)
Danske Musicla Akademi (Denmark)
Dudley College (West Midlands, UK)
Griffith University (Australia)
Guildford School for Acting (UK)
Italia Conti Academy, London (UK)
Knightswood, The Danse School of Scotland (Scotland)
Laine Theatre Arts (UK)
Liverpool Institute for Performing Arts (LIPA) (UK)
London Studio Centre (London, UK)
Monash University (Australia)
Mountview Academy of Theatre Arts (London)
National Institute of Dramatic Art (NIDA) Sydney (Australia)
Performers College (London)
Randolph (Toronto, Canada)
Royal Academy of Music (London)
Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama (UK)
Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama (UK)
Sheridan (Ontario, Canada)
St. Lawrence College Brockville (Ontario, Canada)
Trinity Laban College of Music and Dance (UK)
The University of Ballarat (Ballarat Victoria) (Australia)
The University of British Columbia (Vancouver, Canada)
The University of Gothenburg, Academy of Music and Drama (Sweden)
The University of Toronto (Canada)
The University of Western Ontario (Canada)
The Urdang Academy (UK)
Victoria College of the Arts (Australia)
Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts (WAAPA) (Australia)

Musical Theatre Talk Radio Interview

2011-03-30T16:21:00.000-07:00

Listen here to today's radio interview. Trish Causey and I talked a lot about writing, music directing, TV work, balancing motherhood and career, and plans for the future. (My part of the program starts at about 8:50.)

Coachings: Pop/Rock

2011-03-24T20:03:00.000-07:00

I give several private coachings each week to actors and singers who book an hour of one-on-one time in my studio. I work from the piano and guide the actors through song interpretation or vocal technique or audition prep. Each coaching is its own unique little thing, but today an actor was specifically looking for a pop/rock song. Ah, yes. That again.

Musical theater actor/singer/dancer types are being asked more and more to sing pop/rock, and often they have no idea what to do. They've spent years tap dancing and singing Rodgers and Hammerstein, Sondheim, Charles Strouse, and Ahrens and Flaherty and now they've got a big audition for one of the more pop/rock shows. (Think Spring Awakening, Next To Normal, Rent, Rock of Ages, Jersey Boys, Mamma Mia.... etc.) Actors want you to believe they can do everything, that they are malleable, versatile, skilled chameleons. Sometimes this is actually true.

But the actors who have for years relied on, well, acting, are freaked out at the idea that they will be required to stand in the middle of an audition room and sing a pop song. Here's why.

The big difference between musical theater songs and pop (radio) songs is they way they function. For the most part, a musical theater song exists to get a character from point A to point B. Over the course of the song, a character will have a realization, make a discovery, choose a direction or solve a problem, leading us from one dramatic scene to the next, keeping the show moving forward. If a musical theater song does not have direction to it, an actor has nothing to play and the show stalls. We audience members don't want that. We are sitting in the seats of the theater, waiting to see what's going to happen to our character. We are listening. We are invested. We do not want to be here all night.

A pop song, however, is usually more of an elaboration of a feeling. Pop songs are designed to be sung along with. They make you smile or they make you ache or they make you dance. If you can't sing along to the chorus by the second time you've heard it, it's probably not going to stick. So if you try to act your way through a pop song, it's likely going to be pretty awkward.

I remember one coaching where the actor asked, with earnest sincerity, "Won't you take me to... Funky Town?"

So here's the challenge. You've got to find a song that lets you rock out like a superstar on stage at Madison Square Garden, but you've also got to convince the panel that you can hold your own in a role in a musical.

I'm going to jump ahead and tell you that the answer is, and always is, you've got to figure out who YOU are when you're wearing this particular costume. In the same way that you'd expect to dig deep into your personal experience to figure out where you and Nathan Detroit meet, you've also got to find your inner rock star.

Here's what I think. I think the casting directors and the creative teams are asking you to show them what you look like when nobody else is looking. How do you sound when you're in the shower? What's on your iPod at the gym? What's in your car on a road trip? What is the music that you feel, deep in your soul? In today's coaching I asked my singer what pop music (recorded in the last ten years please, and five is better) he belted out in his car. His first two answers were Maroon 5 and Kings of Leon. So we spent some time on YouTube watching the videos of their songs, critically asking ourselves these questions.

1. Does this song have enough music in it? Is there an actual melody for me to sing? Is it going to sound decent when it's played on just a piano? Is it in my vocal range? (Or could it be if I raised or lowered it a step or two?) Is it as satisfying to sing as it is to listen to?

2. Once I cut the guitar/keyboard/bagpipe solo out of the middle, is there enough song left for me to use? Is there an obvious place to end? Is there a full song here or just a really great 16-bar cut? (Both are useful.)

3. Is the sheet music available? (Everything we found today was available for $5.25 at www.musicnotes.com.) Important: Is it in the same key as the recording? Or perhaps better still: Is it transposable into a key that's better suited for me?

4. Are any of these lyrics going to make the panel cringe? Do I believe what I'm saying? Will I be able to be authentically me when I am standing in that room, singing this song?

5. Can I sing this song without just imitating the original recording artist? Or if I DO imitate the original recording artist, do I sound awesome? (God forbid you sound like a pale imitation of the only other person we've ever heard sing this song.)

Ultimately, my client and I found a few songs today that he is going to learn, and once we've worked on them a bit he'll choose what's the most effective for him. His goal was to find the thing that would not make him feel like an idiot in the "I-don't-really riff/sing-gospel/rock/improvise" category. If we find that song -- or ideally, two contrasting songs -- we will put them in his book, right after Rodgers and Hammerstein's "If I Loved You."

And my client sings a mean "If I Loved You."

Disney Social Media Moms Celebration 2011

2011-03-19T16:24:00.001-07:00

I spent Thursday and Friday participating in an amazing event. My pal Susan Egan and I were asked to be the closing event at the Disney Social Media Moms Celebration. Susan and I perform together often, and she has a longstanding relationship with Disney dating back to the 90s when she was the original Belle in the Broadway production of Disney's BEAUTY AND THE BEAST. (Look how gorgeous she is!) The convention was a gathering of extremely media savvy mom bloggers, and we were asked to put together an hour-long set that incorporated singing and talking on the topics of motherhood, social media, and balancing home and career. (I feel like I am both expert and novice at all of those things!)

Susan and I wondered, what on earth qualifies us to talk to this group of women? And as we sat down to build our show, here are some of the things we remembered. Susan had one of the very first websites for a Broadway actress, and I have been blogging since 2006. We are both active on Facebook and I have a busy Twitter account. (Susan now has one, as well, as the result of meeting so many inspiring women this week!) And we've done entire shows about motherhood before. (Remember our "All Knocked Up" show? Here's an interview we did as we were putting it together two years ago.)

So Sus and I put together a show that consisted of a lot of my tunes but also a lot of found material, and we yammered on quite a bit between tunes.

1. THE ME OF THE MOMENT (music and lyrics by Georgia Stitt)
Brand new song of mine, written specifically for Susan Egan about the many roles (wife, mother, performer) real women are required to play. (To be released on my next album, with Susan singing.)

2. MY LIFELONG LOVE (music and lyrics by Georgia Stitt)
A woman recounts the story of falling in love with Adam, a boy who played the clarinet. (Released on Lauren Kennedy's album "Here and Now" on PSClassics.)

3. I WON'T SAY I'M IN LOVE (from Disney's HERCULES) (music by Alan Menken, lyrics by David Zippel)
Susan's song from Hercules that her character Meg sings, sung here with the movie's animation projected on a screen behind her.

4. THIS ORDINARY THURSDAY (music and lyrics by Georgia Stitt)
Title song of my CD, about falling in love with a city and falling in love with an extraordinary man.

5. I NEVER EXPECTED THAT (music by Georgia Stitt, lyrics by David Kirshenbaum and Georgia Stitt)
Social Media song -- "The things the internet says about you/ Are there forever whatever you do..."

6. CHILDREN WILL LISTEN (music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim)
Relevant in a new way in the context of bloggers. "Careful the things you say. Children will listen."

7. I GET TO SHOW YOU THE OCEAN (music and lyrics by Georgia Stitt)
The Cape Cod song I wrote for my daughter Molly on her first birthday. Recorded on "This Ordinary Thursday" by Faith Prince.

8. NINA DOESN'T CARE (music and lyrics by Susan Egan and Brian Haner)
Susan's original tune about how playing a princess on Broadway was a little bit different from raising a princess.

9. DEFYING GRAVITY (music and lyrics by Stephen Schwartz)
Because isn't that what we're all trying to do?

10. BEAUTY AND THE BEAST MEDLEY (music by Alan Menken, lyrics by Tim Rice)
Susan's signature Disney song, supported with backstage video from the original production.

11. MOMSENSE (based on the William Tell Overture, music by Rossini, lyrics by Anita Renfroe)
Seriously the best encore ever written.

WHILE I was on stage, I got nearly 50 new followers on Twitter, and in the days following the network continues to grow. I'm just beginning to learn about all of it, but I've got to believe that social networking like this can only contribute to sales on iTunes and www.musicnotes.com. Plus, it was great for my ego. FASCINATING.

If you're searching, my songs can be found on iTunes and the sheet music is available on www.musicnotes.com. Details for easy downloads HERE.

Thanks to all of the women (and some men, too) who made this week possible. What a treat to be included!

Australia, CAP21 Gala, March Update!

2011-03-15T00:08:00.000-07:00

So... I went to Australia.

It's kind of a crazy thing that every now and then I get to put on a dress and do a concert in a foreign country, but two weeks ago Australia got to see me do exactly that. In beautiful Brisbane (which they call Bris-Vegas for no obvious reason), I co-hosted an evening with my fantastically talented fellow songwriter JOHN BUCCHINO, featuring the song stylings of singers MARIKA AUBREY, ANDREW CONAGHAN, MADELINE CAIN, ANGELA HARDING, LUKE KENNEDY and TOD STRIKE. And then, less than a week (and a few master classes) later, I had a solo concert in Melbourne, adding the vocal talents of SOPHIE CARTER, AVIGAIL HERMAN, and CHRISTINA O'NEILL. My husband Jason was also on tour in Australia, and so our kids were able to come with us. Kangaroos were seen; it was a great time! Thanks to everyone who made that trip possible, especially JEREMY YOUETT of Your Management International and MEL ROBERTSON, stage manager extraordinaire.

The past few months have been jam-packed, keeping me the best kind of busy. In January HELLO! MY BABY was presented at the Goodspeed Festival of New Voices in Connecticut, and the show was a big success. We had some incredible actors from the senior classes of the Hartt School of Music (Hartford) and the Boston Conservatory, and they brought real joy and fun to the presentation. This past weekend we did a backer's audition in Santa Barbara, CA (see photo), and we're considering a number of possibilities for the world premiere of the show, hopefully next season. I'll certainly keep you posted here if there are announcements to be made, but if you'd like to see pictures of the show and read about its progress, find our "HELLO! MY BABY" fan page on Facebook!

In February, writing partner JOHN JILER flew out to LA and we began a major rewrite on our show BIG RED SUN. For those of you who don't live in this particular hell, writing a musical means writing a first draft and then rewriting it over and over again. The more opportunities you get to work on a show, the more you learn about it. And after the NAMT Festival last fall, we learned quite a bit. So BIG RED SUN is getting a bit of a facelift and will hopefully be ready to show off her (his? her?) fancy new smile again by the end of the summer.

And FINALLY, right around President's Day, I had an original piece of music featured on NPR. Take a look.

UPCOMING:
On April 11th, JASON ROBERT BROWN and GEORGIA STITT (that's me!) will be honored in a gala concert for CAP21 at the Kaye Playhouse at Hunter College in NYC. Special guests will include (this is good stuff, y'all): DAVIS GAINES, AISHA DE HAAS, CHRISTOPHER JACKSON, BRIAN d'ARCY JAMES, LAUREN KENNEDY, JESSICA MOLASKEY, KELLI O'HARA, a 30-voice choir and a nine-piece band. OH YES.

Details here:
http://www.cap21.org/gala.html

and here:
http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=203567582992942

Jason and I don't perform together often. This is going to be a good one. Hope to see you there!

I'm off this weekend to be the guest speaker at Disneyworld for a Celebration of SOCIAL MEDIA MOMS. I'm singing original songs (with SUSAN EGAN) and talking about Twitter. Help me look more impressive by joining Twitter just to follow me!

Thanks for reading, you guys. I remain so grateful that you are listening.

BEWARE THE IDES OF MARCH!

XO
Georgia

2011-03-10T16:31:00.000-08:00

Performance Practices

2011-02-13T00:44:00.000-08:00

My friend and fellow musician Bruce Mayhall interviewed me for a lecture on performance practices. I was so interested in the intelligence and specificity of his questions that I really took my time answering them. Read and take note, kids.

So, first: what would you say are the most significant tasks of conductors/performers in transferring your notation to realization? Do you regard the score as rather proscriptive, carefully notating what you want and expect adherence to it, or do you view it more as a skeleton to which re-creative artists add the flesh and dress? What about rhythmic or pitch ornamentation (do you permit, want it?)

A lot of my writing is style writing, meaning it's the job of the performer(s) to identify the style of the piece and adhere to the performance strictures of that style. I often write in my scores tempo and expression marking that give clues -- "in strict time" or "freely" or "with growing urgency" -- but it really does demand a lot of the performers to know whether or not this is piece that has room for embellishment. I always say to singers that if you feel the need to add notes to the ones that are already there (pitch ornamentation, riffing) you'd better have a strong acting reason that supports it. If I want the singer to riff, I use slash notation and say "vocal improvisation." Because most of my work is for the musical theater, I will always embrace the strong acting choice over the strict adherence to a detail in my score, so long as the intention of the musical gesture is intact and the style is consistent.

Do you prefer to have conductors consult you about questions they may have about interpreting your work (by either collaboration on the project, or discussions with you about specific concerns) or do you want them to bring their own best skill to the process?

I try to be accessible for questions and comments that come in through my website, but I'll confess that I'm not always able to answer every email in a timely manner. If I get the same question more than a few times I'll answer it in a post on my blog, so I recommend at least a google search before asking. Every now and then I'll hear a performance of my own material that doesn't match my intentions, and I'll wonder if I was unclear in the score or if my notations have just been ignored. I always go back to see what's actually on the page and then I try to imagine how the performer (conductor, pianist, etc.) could possibly have misinterpreted me. If I can think of a better way to express myself, I'll change the score. I am always amazed that people cannot just read my mind.

Secondly, how does vocal quality differ in Broadway performers from say, pop singers or operatic/oratorio style singing? What are the most important skills for a vocalist to develop to appropriately present your work?

Musical theater is all about the storytelling. We musical dramatists focus on expressing an idea to an audience through the use of music and lyrics. I will use a less perfect singer before I will use an unclear actor. I know in other performance styles more emphasis is put on the goal of singing something perfectly. I will emphasize singing it honestly. I'm more interested in WHY you sang that note that whether or not you approached it flawlessly. That said, if your acting choice is getting in the way of your vocal technique, that's not acceptable, either. The baseline is that you have to be able to sing well -- in tune, with accurate notes and rhythms, with intelligent musical phrasing. If you can't do that, even great acting skills won't save you. I can't bear it when a singer sings through punctuation. Trying to prove to me that you can sing a long phrase is useless if it means you've sung through two separate ideas without contemplating why there's a comma between them. I tend to direct singers often to "speak sing" a bit more, to "sing conversationally." And the key to that is knowing when to sing conversationally (in wordier, notier sections which are usually less melodic and more densely populated with lyrics, often the verse intro) and when to sing lyrically (the more melodic sections, the places that have longer notes, sweeping musical lines, climactic lyrical statements). The contrast of those two singing styles in the same piece is captivating to me. Finally, while musical theater does demand singers use their belt voices, I don't really care how high you can belt. I just need the thrilling notes to be thrilling, the loud places to be loud, and the moments with the highest stakes to be supported. Usually that's a belt, but if you can convince me of it otherwise, go for it. But make sure you're singing musically and that belt has a contrast somewhere else in the song. You do not want your audience to be fatigued because you're singing loud and high the whole song. Boring.

What instrumental combinations are best for your work? Live players and acoustic, traditional instruments - and/or synthesized, programmed computerized sound, and/or electrified instruments? Do you orchestrate your own work?

I write for acoustic instruments, with only a very few exceptions. I do orchestrate my own work but I have also worked with other orchestrators. The size of the pit orchestra is determined in balance by the needs of the show (is it a rock & roll score? a swing big band? a contemporary guitar-based pop sound?) and the budget of the producers. At the Broadway level there are union rules determining the minimum number of musicians you can use in a show. I tend to believe the more musicians you can get, the better. I have played synth in pit orchestras and yet I'd still rather have a live harp than a synthesized one any day. I'm a bit of a traditionalist.

Tempo: do you mark M. M. = ; or do you use objective/subjective words to convey your tempos? Is tempo fluctuation desireable (according to emotional content of the text? or other factors?), or do you (again) specify in your score and expect conformity?

Both. I do use M.M = and I often couple it with descriptive words. Tempo fluctuation, again, completely depends on the style of the piece. A lot of theater and pop writing is groove-driven. If that's the case, then no, tempo variation is awful. Often in master classes my first wish is that I could turn on a metronome and make the pianist keep better time. The pianist's job is to provide a bed of support for the singers, and if the pianist isn't keeping steady time, how can the singer possibly make appropriate choices, sing syncopations accurately, or put an accent on a downbeat? But then if the piece calls for rubato playing, I very much want the performers to make expressive and musical choices. I try to notate the difference as often as possible but I also expect the performers to understand the style of music they have chosen to perform.

Rhythms: do you notate "swung" rhythm or would you expect (as in pop and jazz notations) performers to understand what is appropriate to your style?

In theater it is standard to notate swing rhythms as eighth notes and then write a parenthetical comment ("swung eighths") at the beginning of the section. I have also seen dotted rhythms (dotted eighth/sixteenth) used to denote "swing" time, but rarely do I see swung things written out in 12/8, as would be most accurate. I usually prefer to notate the rhythms as straight eighths with written commentary, and I try to be consistent in style for the entire piece.

What are any other aspects of performance practice are of concern to you?

Vibrato should be natural. Dynamics are not arbitrary. And finally, the most thrilling performances of my pieces are the ones that teach me something I didn't know about the song. Find the place where the truth of the song and the truth of the performer meet. If it feels false to you, it probably is.

I'm Coming To Australia!

2011-02-04T18:00:00.000-08:00

Mister President

2011-02-02T20:49:00.000-08:00

Thanks for purchasing sheet music!

2011-01-24T10:00:00.000-08:00

Hey, guys. I just wanted to take a moment to thank those of you who have made the effort to find and purchase sheet music instead of downloading it illegally. I know it's a question of ethics and many of you are making a huge difference in the lives of the composers and lyricists you support. This report is very encouraging. Thanks!!

Australia Concerts in March

2011-01-24T08:53:00.001-08:00

GEORGIA STITT CONCERT DATES:
BRISBANE - John Bucchino, Georgia Stitt and Friends in Concert
Brisbane (with John Bucchino) - Wednesday March 2
QLD Conservatorium Theatre
7.30pm
in association with Harvest Rain
Info/Tickets:
http://www.qtix.com.au/

MELBOURNE - Georgia Stitt and Friends in Concert
With Andrew Conaghan, Tod Strike, Madeline Cain, Sophie Carter, Chrissy O'Neill and Avigail Herman
Melbourne - Sunday March 6
Bennetts Lane
7.30pm
Info/Tickets:
$35 Advance Sales / $40 At the door
Moshtix
W: www.moshtix.com.au
Ph: 1300 GET TIX (438 849)

Visit:
www.yourmanagement.biz
for more information!

A Master Class for the Writer

2010-12-13T15:50:00.000-08:00

A few months ago I was teaching a musical theater master class in New York City, and one of my actors said, "I hope it's okay -- I'd like to sing one of YOUR songs."

Members of my family have asked me what a master class is, and for those of you who don't regularly make a practice of studying musical theater, I'll fill you in. A master class is an organized class where a "master" teacher (in this case, me... yes, I know... ) works one-on-one with an individual student while the rest of the students (and often, faculty) watch. The process is obviously beneficial to the guinea pig student getting the private attention, but it's also helpful to the crowd of onlookers, most of whom are able to absorb some bit of advice or wisdom from watching the process happen in front of them.

I teach master classes at colleges pretty regularly, and usually the students bring in standard musical theater repertoire. I work mostly on song interpretation. I ask a lot of questions. (What does this lyric mean? Who are you talking to? What are you trying to accomplish? Why do you think there's suddenly a minor chord on that particular word? What does the ascending line of the melody tell you about your character's emotional life? What happens if you sing that entire line in one breath?) Because I'm a writer, I try to make the actors question why the composers and lyricists made the decisions they made, and I encourage the actors to make musical and dramatic choices to support their understanding of the text.

Every once in a while, I'll get asked to teach a master class in which the students all have to sing music that I wrote. I love the classics, but I have to admit that my ego and I really like it when the songs are mine. Never have I made it through a class without learning something about one of my songs from the insight and individuality of the actor singing it.

So, on this particular day, an actor put down in front of the pianist a piece of music that I've never released to the public. As you know, I sell a lot of my sheet music, in both hard copy and digital formats, but this guy had a photocopy of a piece of music that I had used in an early reading of my show THE WATER. And that music isn't for sale anywhere. So immediately I knew that the music was a bootleg. I have to assume that one of the actors or stage managers or musicians from one of the early readings of my show made a copy of that score and, without my permission, circulated it.

So.. you know me. I launched into my copyright speech. And the actor was shocked. He had no idea I would be upset. He had just gotten this music from his coach and he'd gone and memorized it. He had really meant to honor me by choosing this song. It was totally not his fault. So I allowed him to work on it -- and that's where the trouble really started.

You see, this music was so old that it didn't reflect the changes we'd made to the second act, where this very song occurs. In the version of the song this guy had, his character proposed to his girlfriend, and at the end of the song, she turned him down. But in the rewrite of the show, the girlfriend now says yes. There's a whole new ending to the song, because we discovered in that first reading that the sad version didn't work. And now here this actor was, in my master class, asking me to help him make sense of a song that actually doesn't even exist anymore.

So first of all, I was embarrassed. Because there my name is on the title page of the song, and I'm watching all these details go by and I'm thinking, "Yeah, we fixed that." "Whew, that was a bad lyric." "Oh, I forgot about those extra bars there because we cut them." And so on. But second of all, and more importantly, I was annoyed that this piece of music is out in the world. Because I didn't release it. That's exactly why I wait until things are finished to make them available to the public. And sometimes it takes a very long time for a song to be finished.

There is a novelty, especially among students and collectors, to having early drafts of works. It's fun to see the notepads where lyricists wrote their first drafts of now-famous lyrics. But what's good for a collector is not necessarily good for an actor. I may not have known in my first draft of that song that it was a bad idea. That's the process of writing and rewriting, which is what writers spend all day every day trying to get right. It is to your best advantage, as the performer, to have the version of the song that actually works.

Actors must have the ability to be critical thinkers. In master classes, I often tell students that trying to find the song that nobody else is singing isn't necessarily a great idea. The best songs -- both contemporary and traditional -- are the ones that have withstood the test of time. They have survived the scrutiny of many different kinds of singers. Uncovering the song that nobody knows may not set you apart because of your incredible research. It may set you apart because you sang something -- maybe even something of mine -- that wasn't any good.

BIG RED SUN prepares for NAMT

2010-09-24T09:53:00.000-07:00

I'm pretty excited to announce that my show BIG RED SUN has been chosen to be featured in the National Alliance for Musical Theater's Festival of New Musicals this fall. I'm told that about four hundred shows applied and they chose eight, so I'm thrilled. That was bragging, wasn't it? Whoops. Sorry.

Regular readers of this blog (both of you -- Hi, Mom and Dad) will recall that a year and a half ago BIG RED SUN was part of the Oklahoma City University festival called OCUStripped. And that's the last time I wrote about it. Since then we've made new demos (all featured here on the show's website), edited down a 45-minute version of the show for the festival, hired a fantastic cast, director, & music director, and now I'm orchestrating the whole darn thing for piano, bass, drums, and a reed player. Rehearsals start in a few weeks and we have two presentations at the end of October. If you're INDUSTRY (defined as: “someone who is an entertainment professional who can aid in the advancement of the musicals being presented or the writer’s careers”) you can get a ticket here. And if you're interested in the show, you can write my manager Bruce Miller to get all the materials (script/demo/production specs) for your consideration. Everyone else, please enjoy the demos and watch this space for information about what comes next.

Click here to hear the closing number, cleverly titled: "Big Red Sun."

BIG RED SUN (Harry, Helen, Eddie and ensemble)
Singers: Daniel Tatar, Melissa Lyons, Jason Robert Brown, Katie Von Till, Lizzie Weiss, Dan Callaway, Jay Donnell
Piano: Georgia Stitt; Bass: Tim Christensen; Drums: Tom Walsh; Guitars: George Doering and Kevin Dukes

Notes from the Great American Songbook

2010-08-16T21:35:00.001-07:00

(an interview with the Rubicon Theatre Company, Ventura, California, August 13, 2010.)

Hello! My Baby's Composer and Arranger Georgia Stitt speaks to Rubicon on composing for theatre and the human condition.

It's a timeless alliance, Words and Music, a pairing behind every great musical since the first, and it's the same with RTC's current crowd-pleasing production Hello! My Baby. Last week we introduced you to Cheri Steinkellner, the mind behind the words of our standout musical; this week we're proud to introduce Georgia Stitt, H!MB's talented composer.   Georgia received her M.F.A. in Musical Theater Writing from New York University and her B.Mus. in Music Theory and Composition from Vanderbilt University, where she graduated magna cum laude. She is a recipient of the ASCAP Frederick Loewe Fellowship, the Harold Arlen Award, and the Sue Brewer Award for excellence in music composition. Georgia lives in Los Angeles (and sometimes New York) with her husband, composer/lyricist Jason Robert Brown, and their two daughters.

________________________

RTC: I overheard you calling Hello! My Baby a “new-fashioned musical,” and I think it’s most apt. My teenagers saw the show and absolutely loved it.   

GS: Thanks! At one of our early performances I sat behind a row of women in their seventies, and I spent most of the show watching their reactions. It was just thrilling to me. When the introduction of a song would start, they would all look at each other and smile and nod; they knew what was coming. They seemed to really enjoy the songs and how they were used in the context of the show. I spoke to them afterwards, introduced myself, and asked, ‘So did you know all the songs?’ and they said, ‘Every single one. This is our music. This is the music from our era.’ So I know it worked on that level, but also to be discovering that teenagers are responding to it -- what other piece do you know of that can speak to both of those generations at the same time? So that was the goal with this show, to take the catalogue of music that’s literally a hundred years old and re-purpose it, really, so that it has a resonance for all audiences today.  

RTC: Great music transcending generational boundaries - it gives me hope for this latest generation!   

GS: One of the boys in the cast sang to his girlfriend, in all sincerity, “If you were the only girl in the world.” I thought ‘how amazing is that? That’s the song he thinks of, that best expresses what he wants to say to her.’ He’s adopted it into his vocabulary. It’s part of the roster of songs in his head now, music that he can relate to, that express his feelings.  

RTC: This is the second time you’ve worked together with Cheri Steinkellner -- you’re making quite a team. You must be developing a real working shorthand by now?  

GS: The two pieces couldn’t be more different, of course -- but a shorthand sure, and more than that, a trust. I think that trust is what develops over time. I know that her work is going to be good and creative, and she’s going to inspire me and I’m going to come up with ideas and she’s going to respond to them. That kind of collaboration is fabulous. The other piece we wrote together is called “Mosaic,” a contemporary story that deals with a woman on a computer keeping a video blog -- there’s nothing Irving Berlin about it. But that’s the thing -- the job of a theatrical composer is to be able to write music that tells stories in many different styles. I have to be well-versed in a broad spectrum of music, so understanding the songbook of the early 1900s is just as important as trying to find the voice of this character who is sitting in pajamas on her MacBook in 2010. That’s the thrill and challenge of writing music for the theatre -- depending on the project, it just sends you to very different worlds.  

RTC: The more things change, the more they stay the same -- authentic expression of the human condition.   

GS: The goal is to try to find something that’s specific to the character, but thematically universal. So the audience can be watching and say ‘That’s nothing like my life, except that it’s exactly like my life.’  

RTC: I see you have created a CD of original music.   

GS: Yes! I’m going to make some copies available at the shows this weekend-- I want to donate a portion of the sales back to the Rubicon Educational Outreach program, my little thank you to them for supporting our piece. The thing about writing theatre is that it takes so long to develop a piece. You know, you have an idea and you write it and then you have a reading and then you do a workshop and then you get these out of town productions or these youth theatre productions where you see things --- Cheri and I have already made a number of changes, things we could only learn by watching it with an audience and seeing what lands and what doesn’t, questions they might have, that kind of thing. So it just takes years to get from “I have an idea for a musical’ to ‘Here is my musical.’ In the meantime I wanted to get these other songs out-- character-driven songs that weren’t written in the context of a musical. One of the nice things that’s happened is that it’s made its way to parts of the world that I would not have been able to go. I get emails from people from many other countries who say ‘I love this song,’ or ‘May I use this song’ in places I wouldn’t otherwise have been able to reach. The goal, of course, is to write something like ‘New York, New York,’ a song that just becomes part of the lexicon, that’s so resonant to people it just becomes something that everybody knows.

Radio Show Goodness

2010-07-30T21:33:00.001-07:00

APPLAUSE RADIO SHOW with Cheri Steinkellner, talking about the upcoming production of HELLO! MY BABY. Thanks to AM1490 in Santa Barbara!

HELLO! MY BABY

2010-07-24T07:22:00.000-07:00

Right around Christmas time, 2009, I got a call to come in as a composer and arranger on a new musical. My friend Cheri Steinkellner (with whom I was writing "Mosaic" at the time) had a working draft of a show that used a bunch of Tin-Pan Alley era songs as the score for a fast-paced and funny story about kids in the early days of the sheet-music publishing industry. Because of our collaboration on the other project, I had heard Cheri talking about "HELLO! MY BABY" and it sounded exciting. She did a reading of the piece on the east coast and was told (by Alan Menken, among others) that the thing that would take the show to the next level was making the music drive the score, and in order to do that, she needed a composer to overhaul the music. Michael Kosarin (Alan Menken's music director and arranger, among other things), suggested to Cheri that maybe I was the gal for the job.

Only problem: they were doing a reading of the show in NYC in March. I had three months to write the entire score. And we had our production of "Mosaic" rehearsing at Primary Stages in the meantime.

Daunting though it was, it's not every day that someone plops a great script for musical into my lap, so I figured it would be three months of hell and at the end of it I would have two shows. And that's pretty much what happened.

While in New York City for the month of March, I camped out at my friend Sam Davis's apartment for several hours a day because he was out on the road conducting Dreamgirls. And, honestly, much of the score was written on his piano. (So, thanks, Sam!) The score has 21 songs in it. We did a reading of "Hello! My Baby" at CAP 21 on March 29 and then opened "Mosaic" four days later. I did not accomplish a whole lot in the month of April.

So now "Hello! My Baby" is getting its first production at the Rubicon Theatre in Ventura, CA, as part of their fantastic Youth Theatre Program. It's amazing to watch the kids (ages 14-22) claim these songs that were written 100 years ago as their own. The arrangements are new, the context is new, but the songs are chestnuts, and it's my hope that audiences young and old will be thrilled to hear them. Performances start August 6th and ticket info is here. Hope you can make it!

Alternatives: The Legal Way to Find Sheet Music

2010-07-05T22:31:00.000-07:00

One of the most important factors in the fight against copyright infringement is making sure that the people who do legally want to buy sheet music know where to find it. Since I started talking about this issue, two fantastic new sites have appeared and I want to make sure you all know about them.

1. www.newmusicaltheatre.com

Originally created by Brian Lowdermilk and Kait Kerrigan as a way to launch their own self-published sheet music, this site is blowing up to include a huge database of musical theater material written in the last few years by a number of young (or not-so-young, like me), up-and-coming songwriters, and they're adding more songs and more writers on a regular basis. The site is great and has several search features (genre, voice type, style) and many links to YouTube videos so you can hear and see the song being performed before you purchase. It's my belief that the music available here is among the most prevalent on the "trade" sites, so if you're looking for something REALLY REALLY CONTEMPORARY, this is where you should go first. (Determining which are the good songs and which are not is up to you.)

2. www.musicaltheatrearts.com

I just found out about this site today, and I'm pretty sure it's brand new. One of the things we writers have said we need is a centralized "clearing house" site that helps potential sheet music consumers figure out where to go to purchase sheet music or read bios or watch videos for their favorite composers. And here it is -- a way to navigate through all of the information and browse the websites of theatrical composers, both contemporary and classic. If I taught a class in musical theater, this would be my number one digital resource.

You all know that I love www.musicnotes.com but I'm aware of several other sites out there, including www.sheetmusicplus.com and www.sheetmusicdirect.com and www.freehand.com. What others do you use? And how about those of you who aren't in America? Anything to add?

Thanks!

The Copyright Debate Continues

2010-07-02T09:37:00.001-07:00

A little over a year ago I posted this blog entry about the rampant abuse of sheet music trading online and how it was affecting me personally. It's an issue that has had me riled up, and if you've encountered me in the last year (in a master class or concert, anywhere I've been given a microphone and an audience) you've likely heard me talk about why it's important to download music legally instead of stealing it.

Then a few days ago, my husband wrote this blog, called "Fighting With Teenagers: A Copyright Story." It's a very real conversation he had with a very real teenager after he asked her directly please to stop giving away his music. It's a fascinating narrative, but even more enthralling is the number of passionate comments it has generated. If you're interested in this issue, I encourage you to read through the sea of comments in both locations (his and mine). People gots some opinions, y'all.

So it's clear: artists, publishers, lawyers, writers and musicians all seem to believe copyright law is in place for a reason. Tekkies, teenagers and philosophers seem to think "information should be free." Obviously I'm making a generalization but I have been shocked at the number of people who are not just misinformed but feel extremely entitled to a product they had nothing to do with generating.

Quoting one of my own comments this morning: "Just because everyone is doing it does not make it right, or even legal. When the law changes to agree with you I will give up my rant. Until then, consider also the law of supply and demand. If demand for a product disappears, said product will cease to exist. If no one wants to buy music, how will anyone ever be able to afford to make music? There has been lots of talk about "giving it away for free" or that "information wants to be free." When you can convince my copyists, musicians, actors, directors, orchestrators, record producers, graphic designers, photographers, managers, lawyers and music publishers to work for free, let me know. Until then, it takes money to run my business because I have to hire people to participate in generating the product."

If you don't WANT the product, that's a different issue, and I'll go back to college and learn how to do something else for a living. But that's not the issue, is it? The demand is there, just not the willingness to pay.

So fine, we disagree. We will always disagree. That's why there are laws in place. If everyone agreed, we wouldn't need any system of arbitration. But for those of you who are on my side, I'm moving on to the next question.

Now what?

It's so obvious that we need an "iTunes" for sheet music. I've got my music listed in two locations. 1. Musicnotes.com (which is a huge distributor of digital sheet music including millions of titles in a vast number of genres) and 2. Newmusicaltheatre.com (which is a boutique seller of digital sheet music geared towards people seeking titles from the next generation of musical theater songwriters). Both have their merits, but neither is (yet?) as global in scope as we all want it to be.

Here are my questions, and I'm specifically interested in hearing from The Dramatists Guild, the Music Publishers Association, ASCAP, BMI, MTI, Hal Leonard, and other organizations as to how they're addressing the problems at hand. I know they're trying, as I've heard from several of them directly. But I'm looking for progress, people. The scary thing for me is when an entire industry gets fired up and then nothing comes of it but talk.

Could iTunes carry a sheet music division? Who's got a connection there and can start THAT conversation?

What is the ideal price point for a piece of sheet music? Most people don't think twice about paying $.99 to iTunes for an mp3 of a song, yet sheet music is priced anywhere from $4 to $15. Would more people be inclined to participate in the process if we weren't pricing ourselves out of the market?

Aside from printing those nearly invisible notices on each piece of music (mine all say ©Geocate Music (ASCAP), ALL RIGHTS RESERVED), what can be done to educate our market about copyright and its laws?

Worth noting: Fair Use allows that yes, you can photocopy that music out of the songbook and use it in your class, in your talent show, in your voice lesson, in your audition, in your home. It may even be okay to photocopy a song and give it to your friend, though I'll leave that one up to the lawyers to debate. But it is absolutely not okay when you make something available online for either one or one thousand strangers to devour. It's different. That's no longer "fair use," legally or morally. How do morals guide people when they're alone in their homes and there is little possibility that they'll be busted for bad behavior? To what lengths are we willing to go to enforce the law? (Consider Napster.) And if we're talking about litigation, who's paying for that?

and finally,

Has no one been able to take down pianofiles.com? Don't we all agree that that's the place to begin? I know there are a gazillion sites like this, but taking down the worst offender is perhaps one way to start.

Thanks for engaging in the debate.

PPC Benefit

2010-06-09T22:57:00.000-07:00

June 12, 2010

7:30 PM

Pasadena Presbyterian Church

585 E. Colorado Blvd.

Pasadena, CA 91101

626-793-2191

Broadway comes to PPC for one night only, when husband and wife musical theater composers JASON ROBERT BROWN and GEORGIA STITT share the stage with their talented friends.

JASON ROBERT BROWN has been hailed as “one of Broadway's smartest and most sophisticated songwriters since Stephen Sondheim” (Philadelphia Inquirer), and his “extraordinary, jubilant theater music “ (Chicago Tribune) has been heard all over the world, whether in one of the hundreds of productions of his musicals every year or in his own incendiary live performances.

GEORGIA STITT has been called "a songwriter with a truly distinctive writing voice; a voice that blends theater, pop and classical flavors into a sound all her own" (Craig Carnelia). Her music is "highly recommended. Reflective and personal, but with the intelligence and craft of good theatre songs" (National Public Radio).

JASON ROBERT BROWN
and
GEORGIA STITT

in concert TOGETHER

with TY TAYLOR, ALLIE TRIMM, AMY RYDER, LARA PULVER, DAN CALLAWAY and TRACY NICOLE CHAPMAN!

and in the CHOIR:
Francesca Baer, Christopher Carothers, Robyn Clark, Will Collyer, Cat Davis, Jay Donnell, Scott Douglas, Jesse Einstein, Graham Fenton, Julie Garnye, Lori Jaroslow, Nicole Kaplan, Chil Kong, Tyler Mann, Ashley Marks, Baraka May, Megan McDermott, Eileen Cherry O'Donnell, Erin Quill, James Leo Ryan, Jennifer Shelton, Ali Stroker, Elissa Weinzimmer, Lizzie Weiss, Robert Yacko, Penelope Yates, David Zack

Tickets ($35 general admission)
http://www.tix.com/Event.asp?Event=272187

For church members: $15 tickets available at PPC

Pasadena Presbyterian Church offers sacred space for the city, building a worshipping community whose foundation is the inclusive love of God. Through the hospitality of Jesus and the guidance of the Holy Spirit, we witness to our oneness in Christ by bridging boundaries of age, language, race, class, culture, gender and sexual identity. We welcome all people to serve as Christ's disciples for our diverse multicultural city and world. By nurturing the mind and spirit, celebrating the creative arts and engaging in local and global mission, we proclaim hope.

www.ppc.net

PPC Benefit

2010-05-21T22:55:00.000-07:00

SATURDAY, JUNE 12

Pasadena Presbyterian Church

BENEFIT CONCERT

7:30 p.m. in the Sanctuary

Broadway comes to PPC for one night when

husband and wife musical theater composers

JASON ROBERT BROWN and GEORGIA STITT

share the stage with their talented friends in a concert to benefit

Pasadena Presbyterian Church.

Tickets ($15 for PPC members; $35 for nonmembers)

will be on sale beginning Sunday, May 30.

MARK YOUR CALENDARS AND BE HERE FOR THIS SPECIAL EVENING

www.ppc.net

626-793-2191

Angels 4 Ana Concert June 7th

2010-05-21T09:26:00.000-07:00

How often have you felt like you would do something to help, but you just didn't know what to do?

I am inspired by my friend Daniel Tatar. A friend of his, Ana Adame, was diagnosed with late-stage lymphoma this last February, and according to Daniel, "her fears were not for herself, but for her son and his future. The cancer treatments have been extensive and intense, keeping her away from work and family."

It's heartbreaking to hear about anyone struggling with the burden of medical expenses (even with health insurance, thank you America), but as a mother I am especially moved by her concern for her child. And so was Daniel, who took the "how can I help?" question and provided an answer.

Daniel called me a few months ago and said he wanted to put together a benefit to raise money for Ana to help offset her medical expenses and provide her some financial relief. If he just gathered all his friends in the same place and had them perform, and sold tickets, surely that would amount to something. We've all talked about doing it for this cause or that cause. Daniel actually did it, and it's turned into a beautifully produced, highly professional benefit.

So, I'm performing, and I roped my husband (Jason Robert Brown) into coming, too, as well as my gal pal Susan Egan. And we're on the same bill as Ana Ortiz (from Ugly Betty) and Megan Hilty (Wicked) and Steve Kazee (Spamalot) and Luke Menard (American Idol) and Valerie Perri (Evita) and Michelle Duffy (Can-Can). Cuz Daniel has some fancy friends.

It's going to be a great evening of showbiz, but what's especially unique about this evening is the extremely personal way it came to be. I don't yet know Ana, but I know Daniel, and I'm amazed at what he's managed to pull together in such a short time. If I were in need, I hope someone would be so committed about figuring out how to help me.

If you can make it, please come. It's in Pasadena on June 7th. Details here. There's a silent auction (7 pm) and a concert (8 pm). (I'm singing one of my own songs and performing with Susan.) But if you can't make it, maybe you can make a donation. For Daniel. For Ana.

The Making of MOSAIC

2010-05-20T12:56:00.000-07:00

About a year ago I got a phone call from Paulette Haupt, a producer in New York who runs the O'Neill National Musical Theatre Conference. She asked me if I would be interested in writing a piece for a new series she was creating called INNER VOICES. She described the project as kind of a musical version of Alan Bennett's "Talking Heads," saying she wondered what would happen if she commissioned writers to write musical monologues. One actor, alone on stage for 30-40 minutes. One or two musicians. Those were the parameters. Go.

Paulette suggested I might want to meet Cheri Steinkellner, a writer based on the west coast (as I am). Cheri's credits are impressive: in addition to having SISTER ACT currently running on London's West End, she wrote a musical called PRINCESSES, a movie called TEACHER'S PET and a little TV show called CHEERS. Yeah, okay, I'll meet her. We had coffee and she pitched me an idea about a woman keeping a video blog. As the woman talked into the computer, the images she saw on her screen would be projected onto an upstage wall. The woman would be archiving her life and at a certain point in the show we'd realize she was pregnant, and she was archiving for her unborn child with the fear that she might not be there to watch the child grow up. It was a great start and it made me excited to think about working with her.

This idea ultimately became MOSAIC, and we spent the fall of 2009 writing it. The first draft Cheri sent me was about seven pages long... this happens, then this happens, then there's a song, then this happens, etc. And we carved away at it, adding lyrics and music and reshaping the dialogue until we had a version that was about 35 minutes long. We flew to New York, and with Cheri at her computer and me at the piano, we played it for Paulette, who cried at the end. Success.

Paulette was pulling all the details together for the Off-Broadway production, and the other piece she'd commissioned was written by composer Josh Schmidt and playwright David Simpatico. (Their piece is called WHIDA PERU.) Director Jonathan Butterell was examining both pieces, trying to find things about them that linked them together. If you know me, and you know Josh, you can see what a challenge that might have been. I have really gotten to know Josh and his work through this process, and I think he's an astounding musician and an inspiring composer, but as he said to me during the rehearsal process, "We don't even breathe the same musical air."

Cheri and I, along with Paulette and Jonathan, began talking about casting and all came to the conclusion that the piece would be a natural fit for Heidi Blickenstaff. We made an offer and hoped she'd say yes. Thrillingly, she did. Steve Marzullo, a friend and colleague I respect and admire but had never worked with, agreed to music direct. We found Simon Kafka to play the guitar parts, which then meant I had to write guitar parts. We were off and running.

Creative team in place, we rehearsed in New York for the month of March and ran for sixteen performances in April at Primary Stages, housed in 59 East 59th Street Theater. The rehearsal process was pretty standard, I suppose, except it was exhausting for Heidi never having anyone else as a scene partner. And the piece asked her to get very emotional and very personal. She's a total rock star, because she did it all, sometimes crying her way through rehearsal (often making everyone else in the room cry, too), sometimes screaming, trying things, rejecting them, keeping them, elaborating on them, challenging us to make our work specific and correct. Meanwhile, our director Jonathan had such a respect for the writing, for the actor's process, for making the rehearsal room a safe space where risks can be taken and process can grow. He is musical. He is thoughtful. He is organized. Cheri and I have made a few small changes at his request, but really the overall sense in the room has been that the script has something to say and it's everyone's job to honor it and bring it to life. Ooooohhhhhh what a treat it is to have so much space to grow.

And then we teched, and then we opened, and then we got reviewed, and then we closed. It was a quick chapter, the birth of this little piece. My very favorite thing about the process, and what I say when anyone asks me, is that it was a thrill to be commissioned to write a piece and then get to see it come to life. We didn't get stuck in development. We didn't have seven hundred readings. We didn't have to fire anyone. There were no legal battles or personality conflicts. We just wrote it, and Paulette just did it. For giving me THAT experience on my first Off-Broadway show, I will always be grateful. Thanks, all.

P.S. In the works... We plan to write a companion piece to MOSAIC: our own second act. We've recorded three of the songs with Heidi, which I hope to release on my next album. And the sheet music to those three songs is available here ("Not Yet") and here ("You Never Know") and here ("Lullaby").

MOSAIC (part of INNER VOICES)
written by CHERI STEINKELLNER and GEORGIA STITT
starring HEIDI BLICKENSTAFF
directed by JONATHAN BUTTERELL
music direction and piano STEVE MARZULLO
guitar SIMON KAFKA

produced by PAULETTE HAUPT and PRIMARY STAGES at 59 East 59th Street
producing associate SUSAN ELLIOT
stage manager BOB BENNETT
assistant stage manager AARON GONZALES
costume and set design DANE LAFFREY
lighting design JENNIFER SCHRIEVER
sound design TOBY ALGYA
video design ROCCO DISANTI

TWEETS

2010-05-18T23:18:00.001-07:00

As if there weren't enough ways to promote yourself online, I have now succumbed to Twitter. If you TWEET like a TWEETY-BIRD, then please follow me. I'm georgiastitt. But you knew that. Thanks. Just trying to keep up with the kids.

WORDS AND MUSIC master class

2010-05-18T23:11:00.001-07:00

Academy II: HOW TO CREATE A MUSICAL

Sunday May 23rd 
Barnsdall Gallery Theatre

Festival Training for Young Composers, Lyricists and Writers

Here's a chance for high school and college students to spend a day working with some of the great theater writers of today learning what the pros know about how to write a musical, how to compose a score, write lyrics, conceive the book. If you're interested, let us know right away. We've booked the theater at Barnsdall Art Park for Sunday, May 23 from 9:30am-3pm. You will also have the opportunity to present your musical idea and/or perform for the panel’s feedback. Please let us know in advance if you wish to do so or simply take it all in.

Our faculty includes: Jeff Marx (Avenue Q), Georgia Stitt (Sing Me a Happy Song) and Michael Weiner and Alan Zachary (First Date). This is the chance of a lifetime to learn from the pros. The cost of participating will only be $25 per person. Limit of 50 people. We need to know right away if you're interested. Just email us at: info@lafestival.org and we'll follow up.

Angels 4 Ana Cabaret

2010-05-14T09:38:00.000-07:00

2010-04-13T08:27:00.000-07:00

HELLO! MY BABY

2010-03-28T13:06:00.000-07:00

Monday, March 29, 7:30PM

The Theatre Company at CAP21 presents:

Hello! My Baby

Book by Cheri Steinkellner

Music Supervision and Arrangements by Georgia Stitt

Musical Direction by Aron Accurso

Directed by Cheri Steinkellner and Janet Brenner

Cast Featuring: Harrison Brian Fuchs, Charlotte Maltby, Ashley Mortensen, Emma Steinkellner, Ashley Kane, Matt Gibson, Howard McGillin, Nick Austin, Kevin Metzger, Adam Mosebach, Robbie Metzbower, Jacob Hoffman, Julie Halston, and Robert Creighton

HELLO! MY BABY weaves an updated Tin Pan Alley score into a new-fashioned story of teen song-pluggers, gangsters, immigrants, and debutantes on the Lower East Side of New York, as they fall in love, peddle tunes, gender-swap, and two-step over society to make their dreams come true via the brand-new art form they're making up as they go along: American Popular Music.

Monday, March 29th at 7:30PM

The Shop @ CAP21

18 West 18th Street, 6th Floor

FREE to the public. Reservations Recommended.

Click here for Free TICKETS or call 212-352-3101

LET ONE CHILD SEE

2010-03-06T21:12:00.000-08:00

LET ONE CHILD SEE
Music by Georgia Stitt
Lyrics by Bil Wright
©2000 Geocate Music (ASCAP) All Rights Reserved

Cole Burden, singer

You've made me see
that life is still around here living,
that in the wind somewhere,
a child may be singing.
Please speak to me, Earth.
Tell me that I can be.
Of all the things that God has made,
He's just as proud of me.
Let one child see.

You've made me see
that from the darkness may come learning.
That in the night somewhere
a lifefire may be burning.
Please speak to me, Earth.
Tell me that I can be.
Of all the things my God has made,
He's just as proud of me.
Let one child see.
You've made me see.
Let one child see.

And should someone ask, "Was there love here?"
I'll say that it shone through the rain.
And if they should ask about giving,
I'll look through my memory and see
someone who got so much from living
and gave it all day by day to me.
Let one child see.

You've made me see
that lives are still around here living,
that on these streets somewhere
my own child may be praying.
Please speak to me, Earth.
Tell me that I can be.
Is Is this a place where I'll find grace,
and stumbling blocks become the rocks
on which my on which my life can stand?
Now hear me, God!
As you've shown me, please let just one child see!
Let one child see.

The Human Heart: Helping Haiti's Children

2010-02-26T10:04:00.000-08:00

First the facts. I have a song to be included in this benefit on March 1st. It's called "THE HUMAN HEART: HELPING HAITI'S CHILDREN." It's at Joe's Pub. You can buy tickets here. ($40 general admission, $100 premium.) Lynn Ahrens and Stephen Flaherty are presenting, and Randy Redd is directing. There's a star-studded cast and a band. You would probably want to go even if it wasn't a benefit.

Now, the backstory. Randy Redd is an amazing man. I met him ten years ago when we were both on the tour of PARADE. He was an actor; I was a pianist. We became really great friends and over the years he's done readings and demo recordings for me. In the time since, he's become a music director, himself, and he's a great vocal coach, too. And he's a composer. (Talented, much?) But, perhaps most relevant to this evening's theme, he's become quite the producer of humanitarian entertainment, too. (Is that the right way to say it? He uses entertainment to do really good, really important work.)

In the fall of 2005, in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, Randy (who is from Mississippi) co-created an organization called AFTER THE STORM. It's hard for me to put words into their mouths, but as I understand it, the initial goal of the organization was to use the arts (particularly musical theater) to bring aid to the post-traumatic youth of New Orleans. The first thing they did was to mount a production of Ahrens and Flaherty's ONCE ON THIS ISLAND using local kids, survivors, many of whom had never before been involved in musicals. The second thing they did was make a documentary about it. Go to THIS PAGE and view the trailer to be inspired by the work they are doing.

Their work in New Orleans continues, but this month it expands as Lynn, Steve, and Randy put together this benefit to provide some relief to the children of Haiti. I am thrilled to be a part of it and I hope you'll do what you can to support their efforts, as well. (My song is called "Let One Child See." Bil Wright wrote the lyrics and it will be performed by Cole Burden and a choir of backup singers.)

Lynn Ahrens, Stephen Flaherty and After The Storm present
The Human Heart: Helping Haiti's Children
Monday, March 1st at 7 PM
Joe's Pub
425 Lafayette
New York

Tickets
$40 (General)
$100 (Premium - includes Preferred Seating, Meet & Greet and more!)

www.joespub.com

Starring: Farah Alvin (Chess, The Look Of Love, Nine, I Love You Because), Betty Buckley (Triumph of Love, Sunset Boulevard, Carrie, Song & Dance, The Mystery of Edwin Drood, Cats, 1776), Tituss Burgess (Guys And Dolls, The Little Mermaid, Jersey Boys), Quentin Darrington (Ragtime), Gregg Edelman (A Tale Of Two Cities, Wonderful Town, Into The Woods, City Of Angels), Kecia Lewis-Evans (The Drowsy Chaperone, Once On This Island, Chicago), Rachel Bay Jones (Hair), Janine LaManna (The Drowsy Chaperone, Seussical, Ragtime), One Life To Live's Mark Lawson, James Lecesne, Michael McElroy (Big River, The Wild Party, Rent, The Who's Tommy), Gerry McIntyre (Once On This Island), Jill Paice (The 39 Steps, Curtains, The Woman In White), Billy Porter (Smokey Joe's Cafe, Grease), Christy Romano (Avenue Q, Parade), Robin Skye (Parade, Cyrano), Stephanie Umoh (Ragtime), Lynne Wintersteller (A Grand Night For Singing, Closer Than Ever) and Andrea Frierson (Once On This Island, Marie Christine, Juan Darien, The Lion King). This fundraiser will also feature new songs by Brooke Sunny Moriber, Bill Schermerhorn and Michael Feinstein and Georgia Stitt and Bil Wright and special appearances by Lynn Ahrens, Stephen Flaherty and more. Directed by Randy Redd, Aaron Jodoin musical directs and leads a 5 piece band with vocalists Cole Burden, Mary Catherine McDonald, Caroline Dooner, Justin Lopez and Matt Dengler. All proceeds go through After The Storm directly to SOS Children’s Villages.

SOS Children's Villages is assessing the most immediate needs of the thousands of victims of the disaster in Haiti and will provide medical supplies, drinking water and basic food supplies. In the days and weeks to come, SOS Children's Villages Haiti will provide temporary care for children who are not accompanied by adults or even long-term care for children who have lost their parents in this terrible catastrophe.

www.sos-childrensvillages.org

30,000 Songwriters In The Making (Paul Williams)

2010-02-10T11:04:00.000-08:00

Important stuff, and how exciting to be fighting the same fight as Paul Williams! From the Huffington Post. 30,000 Songwriters In The Making.

I'm a songwriter. I've also been an actor, a performer, a public speaker, a husband, a dad and -- currently -- the president and chairman of the board of ASCAP (the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers). But I'll always be a songwriter, because creating music is a big part of how I know I'm alive.

I'm worried for the future of this craft. People who create music have more tools, technology and options at their disposal than ever before. Yet the question of how they can and will make a living from their art has become a flash-point for attack, particularly online. An "attack mentality" has taken root, springing up at any mention of how creators should be compensated when their works are used in digital channels. And speaking frankly, it's strangling the real dialogue that's sorely needed.

Click HERE to read the rest of the article.

AUSTRALIA

2010-02-06T20:57:00.000-08:00

Anyone in Melbourne reading this? There's a concert of my music coming up on the 22nd of February (8 pm) that includes the Australian premiere of "Alphabet City Cycle." Click here for details!

The Sam Davis collaboration

2010-01-30T08:56:00.000-08:00

Several years ago, back in the days when I was a part of the New Voices Collective (Let's all sigh with sadness that those concerts no longer exist. SIIIIGGGGHHH.), my friend and artistic director Joel Fram gave me a call and told me that our mutual friend Sam Davis was looking for a lyricist for a few songs. There was a quick deadline but I had time, so I said, sure, why not? Usually I get asked to be the composer for other lyricists but I thought this sounded like a fun challenge.

Sam is a beautiful composer and as much as anything, he is a great melodist. So for the first step, he handed me lead sheets of his lush melodies with the chord symbols above them. The songs were titled things like "New Ballad" or "Duet" or "Political Song" and it was up to me to figure out what they should be about. We wrote several songs this way before life and its extenuating circumstances got in our way.

The two most popular of these songs are on my album, "This Ordinary Thursday." Sam wrote music and I wrote lyrics for the song AIR (sung by Will Chase) and PERFECT SUMMER (sung by Kelli O'Hara). But there were several others we wrote and just didn't record. The sheet music for two of those songs has just been made available at my favorite digital sheet music store, Musicnotes. (Click HERE to view my sheet music catalog there.)

The first of the two is a song called "Invested In You." (Sheet music HERE.) It's a duet, and I was playing around with the lyric, trying to write a love song using a whole lot of financial jargon. (Sondheim has a song called "Love's a Bond" from the show SATURDAY NIGHT which was probably my inspiration.) At my last Birdland concert in NY, I had Kate Baldwin and Graham Rowat sing it together. They're actually married, so it was extra-cute. (And I was pregnant, so I was not.)

The second song is a tune called "If I Could." And it's your pretty old-school musical theater ballad (for a tenor) that is both romantic and tinged with melancholy. An actable love song - that was the goal. I don't have video footage of it, but you can listen to Dan Reichard sing the song (its premiere, at the New Voices Collective, SIIIGGGGHHHHH) HERE. My friend Kevin Odekirk has just recorded the song with a full orchestra (!), so as soon as that's released I'll let you all know.

Sam is on the road these days as the conductor of DREAMGIRLS. So if you happen to go see the show, head down to the orchestra pit, say hello, and tell him you heard his songs!

JRB's Songwriting Blog

2010-01-23T11:20:00.001-08:00

Okay, I know I'm biased, but I want to share with you guys the latest blog entry at jasonrobertbrown.com. Jason has started teaching a songwriting class at USC and he's blogging about it. I never got to take a songwriting class, but this is the one I would have wanted to take had the option been available to me. One of the many reasons I love this man is because he's so passionate and eloquent about the craft of musical theater. Whether you're a writer or a performer, there is much to appreciate here. Chalk it up to another set of words I wish I'd written.

Click here: Songwriting for The Theater, Week 1 (by Jason Robert Brown)

End Of Year Quiz (even though it's January)

2010-01-05T14:26:00.000-08:00

I surf the web a lot. It's the thing I do to clear my head when I'm writing. I write for a while, then check Facebook, then write for a while, then read someone's blog, then write for a while, then actually get out of my chair and walk around. I find that when I come back to the work, even if it's only been a few minutes, I'm often able to see with fresh eyes.

So anyway, in surfing along, I found this end-of-the-year quiz and it seemed like a pretty good one as far as these things go. Fun. Distracting. Maybe even a little bit informing in a reflective kind of way. And totally self-indulgent, so I forgive you if you skip this particular entry. It's probably more for me than for you.

Thanks to "All & Sundry" for the questionnaire. (Apparently she lifted it from someone else originally, too. Such is the internet.)

1. What did you do in 2009 that you’d never done before?
Got a manager. Wrote for four saxophones. Gave in to having a fake Christmas tree.

2. Did you keep your new year’s resolutions, and will you make more for next year?
Not even remotely. In recent years I've tried just to make one resolution and to make it something totally reasonable. I think this year's resolution was to call my parents more regularly. And there was one stretch where I think I went about two months without calling my dad. So I didn't make one for this year.

3. Did anyone close to you give birth?
REALLY close. Me. Also several girlfriends.

4. Did anyone close to you die?
I'm afraid to answer this question. But no.

5. What countries did you visit?
Denmark. Germany.

6. What would you like to have in 2010 that you lacked in 2009?
A production of one of my shows. Patience. A waistline.

7. What dates from 2009 will remain etched upon your memory, and why?
The birthdate of my second daughter.

8. What was your biggest achievement of the year?
Having a baby. Sorry, I'm sensing a theme here.

9. What was your biggest failure?
The end of a collaboration, kind of breaking up with a partner and letting go of a piece. Also, sometimes I was really bad at returning phone calls. And note the above new year's resolution fail.

10. Did you suffer illness or injury?
Hand infection that required surgery in October.

11. What was the best thing you bought?
A new house. Also, Ugg boots. I love them. But I really love the house more.

12. Whose behavior merited celebration?
Molly gets the big sister award of all time.

13. Whose behavior made you appalled and depressed?
People who trade (upload, download, re-sell) copyrighted sheet music and prevent the copyright holders from being able to sell their product. (See "Georgia's 2009 Soapbox.")

14. Where did most of your money go?
Babysitters.

15. What did you get really excited about?
Family. Commissions. New projects on the horizon, new collaborators.

16. What song will always remind you of 2009?
Single Ladies

17. Compared to this time last year, are you:
– happier or sadder? happier, fuller
– thinner or fatter? fatter, but it's post-baby so I have an excuse for a few months at least
– richer or poorer? poorer. more mouths to feed, less work

18. What do you wish you’d done more of?
exercise, cooking, sleeping, writing (always writing)

19. What do you wish you’d done less of?
Facebook, procrastinating, wishing for things instead of making them happen

20. How did you spend Christmas?
In NYC two weeks before, on Christmas day it was family and close friends at home. I cooked a rib roast.

21. Did you fall in love in 2009?
I am constantly in love with my husband and newly in love with our baby.

22. What was your favorite TV program?
Lost

23. Do you hate anyone now that you didn’t hate this time last year?
Hate is too strong a word. I don't hate. I really don't. I'm disappointed. I'm annoyed. But I don't hate.

24. What was the best book you read?
Thornton Wilder, THE EIGHTH DAY

25. What was your greatest musical discovery?
Fauré Requiem. I didn't know it before.

26. What did you want and get?
A new house, a second child, good reviews for ALPHABET CITY CYCLE

27. What did you want and not get?
Back into my skinny clothes, a production of my show, a finished second album, Hawaii

28. What was your favorite film of this year?
Up

29. What did you do on your birthday, and how old were you?
I went to dinner with some of my best girlfriends in LA. And then my husband and I went away for the weekend.

30. What one thing would have made your year immeasurably more satisfying?
More time with extended family, less barking dog

31. How would you describe your personal fashion concept in 2009?
Functional maternity

32. What kept you sane?
Jamie. Rita. Elizabeth. Susan. Ali. Bruce. Alastair. Kevin.

33. Which celebrity/public figure did you fancy the most?
My crushes tend to be on real people. I can count three that I had this year.

34. What political issue stirred you the most?
It's the year of Health Care, isn't it? The recession has been going on for a while but this is the year it hit home. I wish I had unbelievable amounts of money so I could support the non-profits and charities that are struggling.

35. Who did you miss?
Always miss Grandpa Stuart. Miss friends in NY when I'm in LA, friends in LA when I'm in NY. Now I'm missing the Friskes, who moved across the country.

36. Who was the best new person you met?
Bruce. Jean Owen. Cheri.

37. Tell us a valuable life lesson you learned in 2009.
Do not overpack. I hope I can remember it.

38. Quote a song lyric that sums up your year.
All Things In Time.

I'm BAAAACCCK.

2010-01-04T22:22:00.000-08:00

Happy New Year, everyone! I've been on self-imposed maternity leave for almost three months and I've missed you people! I'm going to ease my way back into this blogging thing and am hoping that 2010 brings me many exciting things to write about.

First of all, yes, she's here, and her name is Susannah. For the privacy of my family I'm trying not to print too many details about either of my kids this year, but I will give you this one photo. (Proud momma can't resist.) She's almost ten weeks old and we're just getting into the new rhythms of our larger family. I may not be sleeping much but I'm having a most wonderful time. Molly is a dream of a big sister. I know I'm gonna have a hard time when they're both teenagers, but for now, I'm in pink heaven.

So. Back to it. Professionally, I realize there are a lot of things I missed in the time when I was hibernating. The biggest, most important thing I want to tell you about is the release of my friend Kate Baldwin's album, Let's See What Happens (PS Classics). It came out in late October (I was kind of busy with other things that week), and it's a dreamy collection of golden-era songs written by Yip Harburg and Burton Lane, separately and together. I mention this album for two reasons. 1. I wrote the orchestration to one of the songs, a tune called "Moments Like This." It's track #3, a torchy ballad that I scored for four saxophones, piano, bass, and drums. The band said it sounded like Lawrence Welk and I took that as a compliment. Also, 2. Kate Baldwin is the singer on the recording of my "Alphabet City Cycle" and I think she can do no wrong. Beautiful woman, beautiful voice, beautiful spirit. You should check out her website (www.kate-baldwin.com), order or download her record, and keep your fingers crossed that you get to see her on stage. (You've got about two weeks to catch her in the Broadway revival of Finian's Rainbow before it closes.)

Okay, that's enough for tonight. Thanks for reading! Woo-hoo -- I got a whole thing completed without a peep from that sleeping baby. Will wonders never cease?

On the Brink of Baby

2009-10-15T16:23:00.000-07:00

I wanted to write a little update and let you all know why I haven't been blogging as frequently lately. You see, any day now I'm going to have a baby. This little person will be the second child in our family, and in addition to the usual getting-ready-for-baby activities that precede a birth (buying and cleaning baby gear, stocking up on bottles, checking out the latest model of stroller, sorting hand-me-downs, etc.), we've also got our hands full preparing our four-year old for the changes that are about to come into her life.

I think we're all set. I mean you don't know until you're doing it, but I think everyone's as prepared as possible for the crying, sleeping, nursing mushball that's about to arrive. Unless we're not, and I guess we'll find that out soon enough, too.

In terms of all the mommy stuff that's coming, I feel like I've got it under control. After all, I've done it before. What makes me nervous is the professional stuff that's about to change, and that's the subject of this lone blog entry for the month of October. I remember when Molly was born I was overwhelmed with the sense that I had given up my professional life and my creative life in exchange for family, and though I loved being a mom, I was terrified that I was never going to figure out again how to be a writer. I remember the first several months being a blur of day and night (I wasn't sleeping through either so they felt the same) and that my emotional life was so wrapped up in the few rooms of our house that I simply didn't have the energy to care about anything else. I didn't read the news. I didn't listen to music, and I for sure couldn't concentrate on anything for more than about ten minutes at a time.

The amount of concentration and commitment it takes to write a song that's anything other than gibberish is pretty major, and months into this mommy thing I remember fearing that it might never come back. I know lots of moms happily re-define themselves and their careers after their kids are born, but I didn't want to re-define myself. I wanted to get back to caring about music, and I had no idea when (or how) that was going to happen.

What I can say now is that it did eventually happen, that it happened gradually, and that it required unbelievable amounts of juggling and negotiating and learning to get back to something that feels like normal. Everyone figures things out differently, but for me it meant letting go of the bad-mommy guilt and paying for a babysitter for a few hours so I could sit in front of a piano, answer my emails, return my calls, and try to string together coherent sentences. (In a few cases I even made those sentences rhyme.)

Maybe it's good that I have all this foresight this time around, or maybe it's terrifying. I'm staring at the unfinished things on my to-do list knowing that it'll be months before I get back to them. I'm already starting to feel like a person who used to play the piano, as it's been nearly a month since I did any significant work on the instrument, and the baby isn't even here yet. But I'm choosing to trust that the piano isn't going anywhere, and Broadway isn't going anywhere, and even if you people go away for a while, you'll come back when the time comes and I have something new to say.

And in the meantime, I've got a baby to raise.

See you on the other side. Thanks for being here.

September Song

2009-09-23T22:24:00.000-07:00

It's September, and I'm trying to stick to my goal of releasing one new piece of sheet music each month. This month's release is my setting of Shakespeare's Sonnet 29. Like so many of my pieces that aren't from shows, I wrote this one at the behest of my friend Joel Fram for one of the New Voices Collective concerts in New York many, many years ago. The first person to perform it was George Dvorsky, who sang it beautifully at that NVC concert at Symphony Space. And then my friend Damian Humbley sang it in a concert in London and knocked my socks off. Most recently, Tituss Burgess sang it in one of my concerts at Birdland. (Tituss transposed it up a fourth, because he's super-human.) In my master plan, this song will be fully orchestrated and released on my next album, which I'm hoping to finish in 2010. In the meantime, though, the sheet music is finally available, and you can get it here. And just for fun, here's video of Tituss being amazing.

Good Enough is Not Good Enough

2009-08-24T23:56:00.000-07:00

Sometimes you see a performance of a piece of theater or a piece of music and it's so inspiring that it makes you want to work harder so that you can be as good at your craft as those performers are at theirs.

And sometimes you don't.

I've had a number of frustrating experiences lately where I went to an event and was completely underwhelmed by what I was seeing. I'm not talking about watching a high school play where the actors are still learning their craft, or a youth piano recital or anything like that. I'm talking about attending full on professional performances that charge a lot of money for the tickets, and I came home thinking that the pianist hadn't bothered to learn the notes or the singer hadn't given any thought to the words in his/her song. And it doesn't make me want to work harder. It makes me want to give up music and open a bakery.

I know nobody's perfect. And, just so you don't think this is a self-inflating kind of essay, I can't think of the last time I performed something in public that didn't have numerous mistakes in it. But I get the sense that a lot of times, people work on material until it's "good enough." And knowing the difference between "good" and "good enough" is what makes an artist great, I think.

I recently heard a song that was a simple little ballad written to be the intimate and subtle opening of show about a complex and heartbreaking love triangle, and the male singer had transposed it into a key so that he could belt a big ole D-flat (!) at the end. He was passionate and overwrought and, actually, he sang it pretty well, technically. But, emotionally, I thought, "WHY???" I felt like he completely missed the point of the song and was basically just singing it to show me he had really high notes. I came home and told Jason about it, disappointedly, and I said, "You know those hot-dog eating contests where someone can eat like 41 hotdogs in 60 seconds? Well, even if I could do that, I'm not sure I would ever feel it necessary to prove it to you."

(Thank goodness.)

It's a question of taste. I'd be happy to hear that guy sing a high D-flat if he picked material that demanded it. Another concert I attended required the pianist to play an entire evening of one composer's work, and that composer was in the audience. And number after number went by, songs I've known for years, and the pianist proceeded to botch one after the other. The composer had his game face on, smiling and nodding, but I thought it must feel like torture to him. And that poor pianist. Why on earth would he accept this job and then not LEARN THE MUSIC? What's the story there? Did he really think nobody could tell the difference? Did he think what he was playing was good enough?

Good enough is not good enough. Not in cases like this. I'll close with this story.

The most life-changing job I ever had, both professionally and personally, was working as the assistant conductor of the national tour of PARADE. It was on that tour that I met Jason, my husband, and it was the first job I ever had at the Broadway level. Legendary director (who has 20 Tony Awards in his office) Hal Prince was in the room, and I was the pianist. Now, I'm a really good sight reader and I've gotten by for a lot of years by sight reading my way through things and learning them as I go. But PARADE is a really hard score -- harder than any show I'd ever played before -- and I deceived myself into thinking I didn't have to practice it as much as I would have practiced my classical music for my juries back at Vanderbilt.

So one day I saw on the schedule that I was playing a rehearsal for a number I'd never played before, and I thought, oh, I'll be fine. I glanced it over and sat down at the piano. Hal Prince was staging the actors. Jason was conducting. I was at the piano, and on one page turn I failed to notice a meter change leading into the next page. I turned the page, missed the meter change, and the rehearsal ground to a halt because nobody could figure out where the downbeat was. My fault entirely. Hal glared at Jason. Jason glared at me. I felt like the sky had fallen on my head, and I knew exactly what had happened.

That night I called Jason on the phone and said, "I think maybe I'm out of my league. I think maybe I'm not a good enough pianist. I wasn't prepared. I let you down. I'm so sorry." And he said something to me like, "Stop apologizing, go practice, and don't let it happen again." And I didn't. That "teachable moment" changed my life.

Good enough is not good enough. Let's not all beat ourselves up at the things we can't get right. Let's just work on them until we can.

Two New Songs on musicnotes.com

2009-08-07T11:50:00.000-07:00

As you know by now, I've now got a deal with musicnotes.com for digital downloads of my sheet music. This relationship came about because of the proliferation of unauthorized trade of sheet music (mine and others) on the internet, and I needed a way to make sure that the music you guys were looking for was out in the world, accessible, legal, and affordable. Musicnotes.com came to my rescue, and I'm trying to return the favor by launching a new piece of sheet music there every month.

Here's July and August. Author and lyricist Bil Wright and I wrote several songs for a musical called LIZAN. The piece never came to fruition and he and I eventually stopped writing it together. (It's my understanding that he's now writing it with another composer.) But before we parted ways we came up with a few songs that I really love, and I managed to get a few demos made with performers whom I also love.

Here are two songs that I thought had the strongest chance of surviving outside of the world of the show. The first, called "Someday A Man" is performed here by NaTasha Yvette Williams. She's been in a gazillion Broadway shows (Gone With The Wind, The Color Purple, Cinderella, Suessical, and Parade) and she has a whole career as a gospel singer, too. Read her bio, y'all. This is a girl who majored in MATH.

The second song is called "At This Turn In The Road Again" and is sung here by Keith Byron Kirk. If I've ever had a muse, Keith is it. I met him at the stage door after his performance in A NEW BRAIN and told him that his voice moved me so much I felt like I knew him already. I hope it didn't sound as corny then as it does now. But he seemed to like that, and eventually we became friends. His other show credits include Elegies, The Civil War, The Color Purple, King David, Miss Saigon, and, naturally, Parade. He's learned almost everything I've ever written for the male voice, he's done readings of several of my shows, concerts of my music, and he sang in my wedding. And currently, he's getting a Ph.D. in Interdisciplinary Studies in Theatre and Drama at Northwestern. So he's smart, too. I adore him.

Anyway, you can listen to the songs below, and then you can find the sheet music here. Bil wrote all the lyrics, I wrote all the music, and that's me playing the piano. Enjoy.

Georgia Stitt and Bil Wright

All KNOCKED UP photos and future bookings

2009-08-05T15:52:00.000-07:00

Susan Egan and I had a blast playing the Metropolitan Room in New York City on August 1st and 2nd! In case you missed our show, we've got several more dates coming up.

"All Knocked Up! (again)"
From Tony Nominations and major Film & TV credits to critically acclaimed CDs and world concert tours, these two talented ladies are, today, ENORMOUS figures in the Entertainment Industry. Come join these gal pals for a raucous evening as they sing their own tunes and others amidst juicy gossip and the occasional pee break.

August 29th, Orange County, CA
August 30th, Catalina's, Hollywood, CA
September 11th, Pasadena, CA

and we're making small appearances (one song only) at the following concerts:

August 17th, Ryan Black's 88's Cabaret: A Tribute to Stephen Sondheim, Los Angeles, CA
August 22nd, Festival of New American Musicals celebrates Stephen Schwartz, Brentwood, CA

Click here to get info on all the shows.

Kid Stuff

2009-07-17T09:46:00.000-07:00

Those of you who read this blog for the musical theater might want to take a break this week. I'm a little bit distracted by the six-month old baby bump that has stolen my midriff.

I had a little panic last week, 24 weeks into my second pregnancy, because a friend of mine said she wanted to get me a gift and she asked me what I needed. I smiled politely and said, oh no, we're all set. We kept everything from the first baby and so we don't need anything.

"You don't need ANYTHING?" she asked. "Not bottles, not diapers, not burp cloths, not bibs, nothing?"

And then my heart started palpitating. Because though I had really gotten excited about being pregnant again, I hadn't yet given a whole lot of thought to the fact that we were actually going to HAVE ANOTHER BABY.

My mom flew in. We went through all the baby clothes that had been stored in the basement, washed them, sorted them, organized them. We moved furniture so the baby now actually will have a place to sleep. And I started a list of what we still have and what we need to replace. I had forgotten how much STUFF a baby requires.

Truth is, we're in really good shape, and I feel much more prepared now that I've started "nesting." I'm just organized enough that I can get back to work and maybe even be productive for three more months before all hell breaks loose. But since we've been thinking about it, I wanted to share with you some of the amazing kid things that have been helpful for us. THIS IS NOT A REQUEST FOR GIFTS. We already HAVE these things. I just wanted you to know about them because they have made our lives better.

1. The Alarm Clock
I know this isn't a BABY item. But as soon as my daughter started sleeping in the "big girl bed" we realized that she could get OUT of the big girl bed whenever she wanted, and that was usually much earlier than we were ready for her to be up. This alarm clock changes colors at the pre-set time, and you just teach your kid not to get out of bed until it's green. The clock glows yellow all night -- a lovely nightlight -- and then when the "alarm" goes off, it changes to green. If the kid sleeps through it, so be it. But if the kid wakes up early, she knows to stay in bed (or in our case, at least in her room) until it turns green. My daughter's first words of the day are usually "IT'S GREEN, MOMMY! IT'S GREEN!" (I'm told there is an actual alarm function, but we've never needed it. Kids wake up early, y'all.)

2. The Mesh Feeder
Okay, a toddler item. I was surprised everyone in the world didn't have these. When your kid is transitioning from baby food to solid food, you can put small bites of real food (especially fruits and vegetables) into the mesh bag and they chew on it. Good for teething, good for nutritious snacks, and you don't have to worry about choking. Every time I used one some other mom would stop me on the street and say "where did you find that?" Now I think they're everywhere. Smart invention.

3. Tickety Tock
Molly's favorite book, and mine, hands down. Okay, so we're biased. Daddy wrote it. Mary Grand Pré illustrated it. (She did the Harry Potter books, and you can recognize her style.) The story, about a tailor named Schmuel and his magical clock, comes from Jason's musical THE LAST FIVE YEARS. It's a gorgeous book, and it makes me sad that it's kind of hard to find unless you know to look for it. So look for it. Okay, shameless plug over.

If I think of anything else I'll add it to the list. But perhaps it's time to get back to work, while I actually have the opportunity to do so.

What to Read Now. And Why.

2009-07-03T07:45:00.001-07:00

Every summer there are book lists released of the 100 greatest books of all time, and I've usually read a good percentage of them already. I love the classics but I read many of them in high school and college. Since then I've been reading mostly contemporary fiction -- more trade paperbacks than disposable beach smut, more Ursula Hegi than Dan Brown -- and lately more and more non-fiction. But I look forward to these book lists in the case that they may reveal some gem that's just dying for me to read it. (In all of my free time.)

I loved the list that came out in Newsweek this week. The article is called "What to Read Now. And Why." It's a list of books that "open a window on the times we live in, whether they deal directly with the issues of today or simply help us see ourselves in new and surprising ways." The list is fascinating, and in the fifty books they mention, I've only read two. A third is on my bedside table, thanks to a birthday gift from my friend Jamie, who is apparently ahead of the curve.

Looks like I know what I'm going to be doing this summer.

Gender Bias in the Theatre

2009-06-26T11:48:00.000-07:00

I read this article in the NY Times called "Rethinking Gender Bias In The Theater," and I found it to be really surprising and provocative.

Quoting from the article (which was written by Patricia Cohen and ran in the paper on June 23, 2009):

"When more than 160 playwrights and producers, most of them female, filed into a Midtown Manhattan theater Monday night, they expected to hear some concrete evidence that women who are authors have a tougher time getting their work staged than men. And they did. But they also heard that women who are artistic directors and literary managers are the ones to blame."

Read the article for more details. And then, if you're really interested, read the comments, which are also fascinating.

I expected to feel haughty and defensive about the article, but that's not what happened. I now feel conflicted. The writer in me feels angry. The woman in me kind of understands. I think in many ways women are more critical of other women than men are. I'm just surprised it shows up so blatantly in this research. I'll admit, knowing I'm braving dangerous territory here, that I'm guilty, even as a female conductor, of being slightly disappointed to sit in the audience, open a program, and learn that a woman is conducting. And even if I'm ultimately impressed with her work, I definitely wait for her to prove herself.

There is a group of us female theater conductors and composers who all know each other, and I'm not talking about these women. I know their work and I am excited and proud when they are on the podium ... or at the piano... or writing the score or the orchestrations. But if I'm at a performance and I've never heard of the conductor, one of two things happens. If it's a man, I don't think twice about it. If it's a woman, I go, "Hmm. This will be interesting."

What is that?

We have a female pastor in my church and I know she has to jump through the same kinds of hoops. The first time I heard her preach I waited for her to wow me. She did. Harvard-educated, supremely intelligent, thoughtful, liberal, provocative. And yet, had she not been female, would I have been as hesitant to grant my approval, or would I have assumed he'd be great until he proved otherwise? I'm trying to imagine and I can't quite figure it out.

So the obvious next question is, how does this apply to my work? I recently applied for something and was encouraged to include the words "as a woman..." in the essay. I resisted, not because I have any problem with being a woman, obviously, but because I don't need to be the Gloria Steinem of musical theater writers. Like my work or don't, but none of it should be simply because I'm a woman.

Food for thought.

ALL KNOCKED UP

2009-06-24T09:02:00.000-07:00

From Tony Nominations and major Film & TV credits to critically acclaimed CDs and world concert tours, these two talented ladies are, today, ENORMOUS figures in the Entertainment Industry. Come join these gal pals for a raucous evening as they sing their own tunes and others amidst juicy gossip and the occasional pee break.

Susan's website:
www.susanegan.net
Georgia's website:
www.georgiastitt.com

in NEW YORK
Saturday, August 1st at 9:45 pm
Sunday, August 2nd at 9:30 pm
The Metropolitan Room, 34 West 22nd
New York, NY 10010
(212) 206-0440

in LOS ANGELES
Sunday, August 30th at 7:30 pm
Catalina Jazz Club
6725 Sunset Boulevard
Hollywood, CA 90028
(323) 466-2210

Music Geekdom: Absolute Pitch

2009-06-10T22:28:00.000-07:00

One of the greatest things about being married to another musician is that we can go way deep into music geekdom in our conversations. I'm currently re-reading a very interesting book that Jason recommended to me years ago and I started but never finished. It's called Musicophilia and it's written by Dr. Oliver Sacks, a neurologist and author who writes about some of the most fascinating medical things. (Click here to read more about him and his subjects.) This book happens to be about music and the brain.

Most of the time as I'm reading along in the book, Dr. Sacks talks about crazy musical disorders (or heightened experiences, at least) that are fascinating but completely foreign -- people who hallucinate music, people who cannot differentiate pitches, people for whom musical tonality and color are inexorably linked. And I'm reading, thinking, wow, that's so cool or so strange, but it's just a curiosity. And then I came across the chapter on "absolute pitch," and suddenly I couldn't put the book down.

Most of us talk about "absolute pitch" as "perfect pitch." I don't have it. By definition, it's a condition (state of being? state of understanding? state of awareness?) whereby a person hears (or sees) a pitch and knows absolutely what it is. If you ask a person with perfect pitch to sing you an A, he can do it, pull it out of the air, unrelated to any other sound. He can even do it if there is currently music playing in the background in a different key. An A is just an A and is always an A.

As Dr. Sacks was writing about "absolute pitch," he made reference to "the essential F-sharpness of an F-sharp." In a silent room, I started to hear a note, which I guess was suggested by the reading of that sentence. Curiously, I went to the piano to check it out. Sure enough, it was an F-sharp.

I started thinking about absolute pitch and realized that while I don't have it, I do fall closer to it on the spectrum than other musicians might. When I was music directing "Avenue X," a fascinating a cappella musical written by John Jiler and Ray Leslee, I was called on to lead the cast through an entire evening of singing in eight-part harmony with no instrumental accompaniment. We did really cool things like build pitch pipes into the set and identify the musical tone of every piece of metal on the stage, but our ears got trained really quickly to listen to each other, and I found myself more sensitive than usual to pitch and tuning. During the run of that production, I could always pull a D out of the air, because there were several places in the show where the success of a number depended on the actors starting on a D chord. To this day, if I need to find a D, I sing Virginia Woodruff's solo in the second act that starts "... There are dreams that die...." They are all Ds, and I can always find them.

When I hear something played on the piano, I can usually tell you what key it's in. I've been playing the piano for thirty years (THIRTY YEARS? OH MY GOD.) and I think the timbre of one note sounds different from the timbre of the next one. But if you played the same piece of music on string quartet or in a vocal ensemble I might not be able to tell. And my ear is not foolproof. I've just got a really good track record for guessing.

In church, sometimes they print the hymns in one key and our organist will play them in another key. It totally freaks me out, because I can tell that what I'm seeing and what I'm hearing are not the same. And yet, if you just put the piece of music in front of me and asked me to sing it, I'd get the intervals right but I'd probably be in the wrong key.

And as far as keys having colors attached to them, I've never had anything as clear as "D-major is blue" or "D-major is yellow," as Dr. Sacks explains on his website. (Watch "Bright Blue Music" here.) But to me, sharp keys are bright and flat keys are moody and C-major sounds like a blank piece of paper. In our music geek conversations, I have come to discover that my husband doesn't think of music this way at all. I choose keys because of how they sound and what they evoke. He chooses keys based on what instruments will be playing them. (Some keys are better for strings, better for guitars, better for brass, better for saxes. It just depends.) We're both right.

I'm pretty sure that I have a strong and evolved sense of relative pitch, not absolute pitch, but now I'm fascinated to hear what you think, what you experience, and how you think about pitch. I know that when I forget to put my seatbelt on in the car, it beeps thirty Gs at me. (Annoying, because I hear them in 4/4 time and it always stops mid-measure.)

How much of a music geek are you?

Highlights from Birdland

2009-06-03T22:43:00.000-07:00

I thought it would be fun to post some of the media from the Birdland concert I did back on March 30th. Just for fun.

Here's Kate Baldwin singing from "Alphabet City Cycle" with the dreamy Christian Hebel accompanying her on violin.

Tituss Burgess sings notes that are higher than the piano can play. Okay, not really, but he's ferocious.

And here's the goddess Julia Murney who can do just about anything.

My student and friend Ashley Marks from LA made her New York City debut at Birdland that night. She just found out she's going to Boston Conservatory next year. YAY ASHLEY!

And here's Graham Rowat, singing one of the more comic songs of the evening, from my revue "Sing Me A Happy Song."

Finally, presenting the opening number ("Connect") from "Sing Me A Happy Song," we have my friends Kathleen Monteleone, Jamison Stern, Laura Osnes, Kevin Greene, and Ashley Marks. I promise they were happier than they look in this picture. I think they were ACTING.

You can watch video performances from that night (as well as a bunch of other stuff) by checking out the GeorgiaStittMusic page on YouTube. Feel free to leave comments!

Thanks to Steve Sorokoff for the official photos from Jim Caruso's BROADWAY AT BIRDLAND series!

New Sheet Music available at Musicnotes.com!

2009-06-02T22:59:00.000-07:00

I've been looking for a while now for a safe and efficient way to make my sheet music available to those friends and fans who want to own it. In years past, when people wrote to me asking for sheet music, I'd usually send them a .pdf of the song, which they would then be able to print out on their own computers. In light of all the piracy issues I've been fighting, it has been suggested to me that perhaps sending out .pdfs of my copyrighted material and trusting that everyone would play by my rules has not been as effective as I'd hoped.

There are a lot of my colleagues who have on-line sheet music stores based from their websites. I toyed with setting up something like this, but I realized even if you manage to set up an effective system for selling your music directly from your website, you still have to maintain the store. I don't have the time, the inclination, or the technical savvy to do that. I'd much rather be writing lyrics. What I love about having my songbook available through Hal Leonard is that it's out in the world and I never have to think about it.

My hero arrived in the form of www.musicnotes.com. It's a completely above-board, legal sheet music downloading website with a keen interest in being a part of the Broadway scene. You find the song you want, you purchase it, you print it out instantly in your own home, using your own computer and printer. In addition to my songs, they've got lots of material from my friends and colleagues Marcy Heisler and Zina Goldrich, Jeremy Schonfeld, and tons of songs from your favorite Broadway shows and movie musicals. (Also, they sell pop songs, Christmas songs, country, folk, jazz... you name it.) I am happy to be in such great company.

You can find it all by clicking HERE. This week launched the release of sheet music for my song cycle ALPHABET CITY CYCLE (piano/vocal parts and violin parts sold separately). As early as next week I will have three more titles available, including "My Lifelong Love," "Sing Me A Happy Song" and "At Christmas." It is my goal to add at least one new piece of sheet music every month, and I'll always announce here when something new is available.

So please, take a look, and if you're shopping for sheet music, make the effort to get it the proper (translation = LEGAL) way. Thanks so much.

(If you can't find what you're looking for at musicnotes.com, you may want to try these other legal sites, as well.)
www.sheetmusicplus.com
www.sheetmusicdirect.com
Hal Leonard

Meanwhile...
Here are some other musical theater songwriters you should know. Check out their fabulous online music stores!

Deborah Abramson
Scott Alan
Jeff Blumenkrantz
Bobby Cronin
Jonathan Reid Gealt
Amanda Green
Kait Kerrigan and Brian Lowdermilk
Michael Kooman and Christopher Dimond
Dan Lipton
Benj Pasek and Justin Paul

(Who else should I be including on this list?)

Audition Feedback

2009-05-19T16:44:00.000-07:00

In the past few weeks I've gotten to witness an awful lot of musical theater auditions. I've played piano for a few, supervised a few, and taught a string of master classes that are basically "working" auditions. And while I'm in the middle of a day of auditions, I often find myself trying to understand what goes through the heads of the people auditioning. I coach enough actors to know what they're HOPING to project, and so often that's just not what comes across the table.

One day recently I came home with a list of notes about the auditions I had just seen, and I wanted to share those comments with you. (Anonymously, of course.) And then I realized I've kept every audition sheet from every set of auditions I've done in the last ten years or so, and they're filled with similar comments. So for your entertainment and, perhaps, personal growth, here are a few samples of the kinds of things we people behind-the-table write down while you're singing at us. And I'm one of the nice and supportive ones, I promise.

(Disclaimer -- these notes are from a variety of shows, auditions in both New York and Los Angeles. Sometimes a director or casting director had a completely opposite opinion from mine, which is why you might see my negative comments on someone who got a call back. What can I say? Casting is a team sport. And finally, no, I will never tell you who they are.)

First, the boys.

THIS IS WHERE A PERSON'S NAME WOULD BE. FOR NOW LET'S JUST SAY "MALE, 20s":
Good pitch. Sweet, accurate, boyish. Lovely and sad. Made a good acting adjustment. Eyes crinkle up. Plays piano. Very musical. I like him but for not right for this show.

MALE, 30s
Androgynous version of the part. Has no sexuality at all.

MALE, 20s (got a call back)
Good instincts, green, needs coaching but I like that he's real. Can't focus.

MALE, 20s (got a call back)
high voice -- is he straight? Gay? Can't tell. Very "indicate-y" audition. Not enough air to sing lyrically. stylized but he's connected and committed. Work session?

MALE, 20s
totally scary, I love him. lots of tension in his singing voice. not sure he can pull off "lyrical." RUSHING. He's the straight play version of this part. Can't do it.

MALE, 20s (got a call back)
voice just gorgeous, closed eyes all the time, really prepared, sweet part of his voice is soft but has a solid F#/G. Musical, big acting choices.

MALE, 30s
great look but as strange as anything I've ever seen. Like a male Miranda. Totally affected. Can't sing it.

MALE, 30s
A+ voice, good time, everything is perfect but he's not unique. I like him but can't tell who he is.

MALE, 20s
He is an un-singer. Boring. I'm asleep.

MALE, 30s
great musician, awesome performer but not an actor at all. Shame.

MALE, 40s (got a call back)
wildly energetic, no wonder he's famous. great, fun, sensitive read. solid G on top.

MALE, 30s
Hello Las Vegas! I would buy his CD but he can't act.

MALE, 30s (got a call back)
totally cute. Song was gorgeous. Knows how to get a laugh. I'm smitten.

MALE, 20s
one character's voice, another character's body. Now what? Might lack intensity.

MALE, 40s (got a call back)
sang down 1/2 step. Has overtones that make his voice sound higher than it is. THIS is the voice I was waiting for. Not a brilliant actor. Otherwise he'd be a star.

MALE, 20s
couldn't listen to him all night. Is there a part for a mute?

MALE, 30s
voice is big but time is questionable. Acting feels summer stocky. I think he'd be a handful.

MALE, 40s
very physical vibrato, probably a baritone voice hidden under all that raspiness. Acting okay. Ehhh.

MALE, 30s (got a call back)
Fantastic instrument, appealing look, great actor. Is he too old? this probably isn't his part. Cute dimples. Sexy in an 'I Love Lucy' kind of way. 1950s.

MALE, 40s (got a call back, got the part)
Well, he's George Clooney, isn't he? G# on top. More tenory than this part but of course he's the top contender. Needs to learn the music.

And now, the women:

FEMALE, 20s
shrill, bland -- why do I never like her?

FEMALE, 20s
pitch good but I have no idea what the song was about. elegant look, mature.

FEMALE, 20s
huge belty Evita voice. no middle ground.

FEMALE, 20s
Bea Arthur at 17. hilarious but limited.

FEMALE, 20s (got a callback)
beautiful, not so youthful, good acting choices. legit soprano -- connected. has a maturity. check her belt voice. Love her. Smart audition.

FEMALE, 30s
too old to be singing this ingenue song, working too hard. there's such better material for her.

FEMALE, 30s (got a call back)
voice of God! Can she act? Why can't I tell? She's quite a performer.

FEMALE, 20s
great, poised, smart, probably not this show

FEMALE, 20s
will be great in about a year. needs a director. good trashy look.

FEMALE, 30s
huge voice, slides off sustained notes. Seems unconnected to lyric. Sweet but unmemorable.

FEMALE, 20s
strong belt and nice mix. Probably too old for the part. Cute but maybe not spectacular. Vanilla.

FEMALE, 20s (got a call back)
she's gifted. spectacular actress, so connected. just had throat surgery. See her again in a few months.

FEMALE, 20s
Does that pop slidey thing I hate. Belted when she should have mixed. Good adjustments, though. Has a sass to her.

FEMALE, 20s
Can belt for days. Lovely, round sound. Eyes looking to the heavens. Oh, wait -- not an actress. Hate to lose the voice but she can't handle the acting. Boo hoo.

FEMALE, 20s
cute, but long notes don't go anywhere. Great Disney look. Quirky. Has a Judy Garland quality. Soprano is awkward. I want so much for her to be better. Ensemble?

FEMALE, 20s (got a call back)
glorious, tall, smart. well-connected. Made GREAT adjustments. Belted an E and it wasn't shrill! Vibrant. Has that frowny thing...

FEMALE, 20s
Not as good as I expected. Looks like a mess, got flustered. Bad dress. Acting without thinking. Welcome to New York.

FEMALE, teen (got a call back)
Glorious young voice, clear in both ranges. If we go really young, she's a great contender. Laura Benanti type.

FEMALE, teen (got a call back)
I love her. So much youth in her voice. Great actress. Director says needs more "beauty" in her sound. Work on rounding out legato lines, sustained notes.

FEMALE, 20s (got the call back, got the part. Shows what I know.)
trained, controlled, not beautiful, legit tone is pitchy at end. Tall. Time is a bit shaky. Not my favorite voice. Ensemble?

This Issue of Piracy

2009-05-02T09:22:00.000-07:00

If you've been paying close attention lately, or if you're in my inner circle or happen to have been at one of my recent master classes, you'll know a little bit about my latest soapbox issue.

A few months ago I was catching up with a friend who is currently a college student, and he was excited to share with me how popular my music was becoming at his school. "And it's not just here," he said, opening his computer. "You wouldn't believe how many people are talking about your music online." And then he proudly showed me a website where people were requesting copies of my sheet music online. I was flattered. Awww... how nice to be popular. And then he showed me the list of people who were offering to TRADE copies of my sheet music. On this website, to which you had to be a member, people were posting things like "I have a copy of ALPHABET CITY CYCLE I will trade for .... [whatever]" or "Anyone got the sheet music to BIG WINGS? I have much to trade!"

I was no longer flattered, but I let it go.

Within the next few weeks, probably because I was now paying attention, I starting noticing when google alerts mentioned websites where people could download my music for free. And then my manager wrote me a note that said "I hate that it's so easy to get your music online. Check out this website: [blah blah blah]." I looked, and within two minutes had downloaded to my own hard-drive a copy of a piece of music I had never released to the public. And now I was really getting angry.

I'll stop telling the story for just a minute to explain why I was getting angry. For starters, selling or trading copyrighted material to which you do not own the copyright is illegal. So we can start there. But further, selling or trading copyrighted material which I own and sell as part of how I make my living is totally invasive, violating, and well, illegal. If someone distributes a piece of music that I could otherwise have sold, that distributor has stolen directly from me -- taken money out of my pocket. And if that music is published (in my case by Hal Leonard), then you're stealing from them, too. When you're talking about one piece of music, $8 here or there, I suppose it's not a huge deal. But once you open up your sheet music files to the world wide web, we're talking about thousands of dollars at stake, and suddenly it matters.

Back to the story. Annoyed and miffed, I decided to write the offending website a cease and desist letter.

On Apr 9, 2009, at 2:56 PM, georgiastitt sent a message using the
contact form at http://www.pianofiles.com/contact.

Hi. I joined this website because I am a composer and it has come to my attention that my copyrighted material, which I sell as part of my income, is being traded on this website for free. No one in this web community, or ANY web community, has my permission to sell, copy, distribute, or trade any of my sheet music and by doing so is subject to legal action from my attorney. I am sending a copy of this message to both my lawyer and my manager. It is imperative that any music written by me or in any way bearing my name be removed from your site immediately. Trading copyrighted material is illegal. Thank you for your immediate attention in this matter. Georgia Stitt (www.georgiastitt.com)

And then, because that had felt like a more or less futile exercise, I wrote a letter to all my fellow composers and lyricists in New York and Los Angeles, our agents, managers, lawyers, music licensors and publishers, and explained that we had a problem. The letter went out to over 100 of the most prominent players in the musical theater industry, and the response I got was overwhelming.

"You have my support."
"What can I do?"
"This has been plaguing me forever."
"I thought we were the only ones who cared about this."

Lots of conversation has emerged, and responses came from the Dramatists Guild, MTI, Warner-Chappell, The National Music Publishers' Association, The Songwriters Guild, Jeff Marx, John Bucchino, Lucy Simon, Marsha Norman, Charles Strouse, David Shire, David Zippel, Stephen Schwartz, Mark Shaiman, young composers, rock stars, etc., etc., etc. One lyricist mentioned that she estimated she had lost nearly $50,000 due to illegal downloads of her sheet music (all of which is published and commercially available). A young composer whose music is performed every single time I give a master class at a college told me he could barely pay his rent.

I'll cut ahead to tell you that having identified the problem (music piracy is rampant and musical theater songwriters, among others, are suffering from it), the resolution seems to be two-fold.

1. Many of the people who are trading or even selling sheet music do not know that they are doing anything wrong. It is our job to educate our fans, the people WHO LOVE THE SONGS WE CREATE, about why it is important to purchase the sheet music they sing.

2. We have to make the sheet music that we write more readily available to the people who want to sing it. Just this week at a master class in Texas the students told me that they would be willing to pay $10 for a piece of sheet music written by a favorite composer but they just didn't know where to find it. If we're not reaching our fans, many of whom think it's COOL to have a brand new piece of sheet music that no one else has, they will find it elsewhere. It has been suggested that we might want to create an iTunes-like store for sheet music where everything is available in one place, composers young and old are represented, and fans know where to look to find it. I am encouraging the young people I meet to use the internet as a research tool, finding the websites of the composers they love and asking them how best to procure the music they so desire. But in this world of instant gratification, awaiting a response from a busy composer is less satisfying that pushing a few buttons and having music on your desktop. Several websites that already exist (musicnotes.com, sheetmusicplus.com and freehandmusic.com) seem to have the technology in place but are not yet representing the youngest, unpublished composers who are trying diligently to sell their music on their own websites.

These issues are complicated and large, and I am now on a committee at the Dramatists Guild to figure out how to proceed. But I wanted very much to open the discussion to you readers of this blog. Now go ahead. Tell me what you think.

Some of My Favorite YouTube Performances

2009-04-14T12:08:00.000-07:00

Alphabet City: the Back Story

2009-04-08T12:55:00.000-07:00

I know I've been posting lots of newsy things on here in the last few weeks but I haven't really taken the time to sit down and put words together in the form of a blog entry, and for goodness' sake, you people deserve that. If you're actually looking at this page, then it's the least I can do.

So I want to talk to you a little bit about ALPHABET CITY CYCLE, which, as you can see, is the thing I'm pushing pretty hard right now. First let me say that if you click HERE you will be taken to iTunes where you can download the whole thing -- five songs and a digital booklet that includes lyrics and essays and some photos -- for only $3.99.

Here's a little back story on how this song cycle came to be. Back in the fall of 2003 (oh I'm so old), Marcy Heisler and I were having coffee or dinner or whatever and we were talking about all the reasons why we should be running the world. (Marcy and I tend to do that.) We figured with all of HER gifts and all of MY gifts it just seemed silly that Broadway wasn't knocking at our door, asking for us to write the next big hit. At some point, reality appeared, and we realized that perhaps the way to start putting ourselves on the map was actually to write something together. So Marcy pulled out a file folder filled with poems she had written, and she said "You might want to take a look at these and see if there's anything you can do with them." A composer's dream.

The first thing I set to music was a poem of hers called "Sunday Light." I still have the sketch I took to the meeting at her apartment where I played it for her on her keyboard. We fleshed it out a bit more, rewriting both words and music, until we had a song that we liked. It was not entirely a theater song but not entirely an art song, either. I didn't know exactly what to do with it, but Marcy and I liked it so we wrote some more. By the time we were done (a few months? I don't remember.) we had five songs and I arranged them for piano, violin and voice.

When my friend Joel Fram chose the songs for a concert of the New Voices Collective back in 2003, he asked Kate Baldwin to learn them. I was a fan of Kate's and she'd learned pretty much everything I'd ever written, so I was excited to hear what she was going to do with them. Kate (who you might know because of her fabulous NY Times review for her starring role in the recent Encores! production of Finian's Rainbow) is a meticulous musician and a very natural actress, and I thought she brought the songs to life in a way that made them even better than they were before. I took her into the recording studio, along with my friend, violinist Victoria Paterson, and we recorded the entire cycle. That was in 2004.

For nearly five years, those songs just lived on the hard drive of my computer because I didn't know what to do with them. The whole piece, five songs, was twenty minutes long. I had two big ideas. 1. Marcy and I could write six or seven MORE songs and we could program a concert evening with a whole lot of diva singers, asking each woman to learn one of the songs. 2. I could write two MORE song cycles and release an album of song cycles, perhaps featuring three different singers. But... I don't know. I didn't want to wait for us to come up with seven more songs, and I didn't know how realistic it was to pull off an evening like that more than once. And who buys an album of song cycles? I performed the songs in a few of my concerts, posted the recordings here on my blog, and figured something would come to me one day.

Earlier this year, my friend Eric Whitacre and I were having lunch and complaining about the state of the recording industry. And the publishing industry. And the classical musical world. And the musical theater world. (Eric and I tend to do that.) And he told me that he had started releasing some of his own recordings directly to iTunes. I thought this was a brilliant idea, and it made sense to me that someone might download a twenty-minute song cycle, more sense certainly than trying to figure out how it fit onto a 70-minute album. I contacted my record producer at PS Classics, sent him the recordings, and, well, I guess you know the rest. He gave a thumbs up, we created artwork, and now the songs are out there for your downloading pleasure.

And finally, here's the thing about the sheet music. Yes, it exists. Yes, I can sell it through the website. But the more interest this piece drums up -- meaning the more people download it (instead of trading it for free on the web), the more people post positive comments here and on iTunes, and the more people blog about it and review it and tell their friends how great it is, the more likely I am to have a publisher pick it up. Because publishing 5-song folio is a little tricky, especially when I'm neither Alan Menken nor Claude Debussy. So, simply, if like the songs, drop your $3.99 for the cause. If you've read this far, it's the least you can do.

Thanks so much for listening.

THE WATER to be presented in Los Angeles

2009-04-07T22:51:00.000-07:00

The winner of the Academy for New Musical Theatre's 2008 Search for New Musicals is The Water, with book by Tim Werenko and Jeff Hylton, music by Georgia Stitt, and lyrics by Jeff Hylton. It will be presented in concert at the Colony Theatre on Monday evening April 27th at 7:30 p.m.

The Water tells the story of a small Missouri town that survives a flood and examines what it takes for a community to rebuild its buildings, its relationships, and its unique sense of home. The story and characters are fictitious, but inspired by real events which happen in the Midwest every year.

"I had been interested in writing about the ideas of home and community. What makes a place special, so special that you choose to rebuild after a tragedy rather than leaving?" says The Water composer Georgia Stitt. "Jeff and I have attempted to write a score that captures that sense of place, of belonging, and also deeply explores the passions of these people and their relationships with the water that both feeds and destroys their livelihoods. I have worked to write music that is full of both character and emotion, and I think Jeff and Tim have managed to do that in the script, as well. The show is funny, heartwarming, and achingly tragic. This is a particularly American story, and since we started writing it we have lived through September 11th in New York City and Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans. As timely as ever, The Water is a show about moving on."

'Having lived in a flood zone, the idea of people living with the possibility of disaster every day became a reality when I was personally flooded out,' says bookwriter Tim Werenko. 'The idea of potential tragedy became all too real for the whole world on September 11th. You only need to drive through your town and look at the For Sale signs to see how homes can be lost without a flood, tornado, or hurricane. Yet, when I work on this show, I see how these things can bring out the best in people. They can find a courage they might have forgotten. They come together. They inspire each other. By collectively sharing the worst of times together, they bring out the best in each other.'

First Prize in the Academy for New Musical Theatre's Search for New Musicals was the concert reading, preceded by a workshop last spring, and detailed feedback and dramaturgy.

'Our goal is to help the authors realize their musical's potential,' says Associate Artistic Director Elise Dewsberry. 'The Water deals with some big issues, and we saw in the early draft a lot of potential for a powerful, theatrical experience. We can't wait to see what they've done with the musical since we saw it last!'

Scheduled to appear in the cast are Vicki Lewis (Film: Finding Nemo; Broadway: Damn Yankees; Television: series regular on NewsRadio), Michael Arden (who appeared in the title role of the Center Theatre Group's recent production of Pippin), Jeremy Kocal (currently appearing in Wicked in San Francisco) and other Southern California musical theatre stars including Dan Callaway, Julie Garnye, Tim Gulan and Steven Hack, and members of the Academy Repertory Company.

The Water will be performed in concert at the Colony Theater in Burbank on Monday evening April 27th at 7:30. Tickets are $10 and will go on sale April 1st. Reservations can be made at www.anmt.org.

Does this mean we're famous?

2009-04-01T20:54:00.000-07:00

Drawing by Justin "Squigs" Robertson

Alphabet City Cycle on iTunes!

2009-04-01T07:35:00.001-07:00

Finian's Rainbow Star Kate Baldwin Sings "Alphabet City Cycle," Released Digitally

By Kenneth Jones

31 Mar 2009

http://www.playbill.com/news/article/127873.html

PS Classics unveils composer Georgia Stitt and lyricist Marcy Heisler's "Alphabet City Cycle," a five-song cycle for soprano, violin and piano, on March 31. It's the label's first digital-only release.

Featuring vocalist Kate Baldwin, the actress who got recent raves as Sharon in the Encores! presentation of Finian's Rainbow, "Alphabet City Cycle" is be available exclusively at iTunes.

The title refers to the East Village Manhattan neighborhood with lettered avenues. Victoria Paterson is heard on violin.

PS Classics co-founder Tommy Krasker told Playbill.com, "'Alphabet City Cycle' is a wonderful reunion. We released Georgia's album 'This Ordinary Thursday' in the spring of 2007, and just brought out Marcy's Dear Edwina last fall. Georgia's hard at work on a new album, but we don't yet have a time-line for completion or release. What she had finished, though, is this gorgeous song cycle. 'This Ordinary Thursday' has been one of our strongest digital releases to date; rather than wait for the new album to be completed, we decided to unveil the song cycle now, as a digital exclusive."

Stitt revealed in press notes, "Marcy and I became friends in New York City several years ago, back when we were both starting out as baby songwriters and were playing our respective songs all over town. I was really curious to see what Marcy and I might create if we pooled our talents. After rejecting the ideas of writing a full-length musical or a slew of cabaret songs together, Marcy pulled from her filing cabinet a stack of poems she had written and asked if I'd like to take a crack at setting them. I sifted through maybe 15 or 20 poems and picked one to put to music. Once we realized that we were on to something and that our songs sounded different from anything either of us had written before, we picked four more poems and kept going. The 20-minute song cycle here is the collection of those five musical poems; they are some kind of hybrid between musical theatre and art song."

Heisler stated, "While written at separate times in my life, the poems come together in a story maybe I was too much a part of to see clearly. While not all of the pieces are autobiographical, they all came from strolling down the streets of and near my Greenwich Village home. It was Georgia's music that gave me a new perspective on their meaning, capturing the lure and loss and ultimate inescapability of connection we cannot help but seek."

"Alphabet City Cycle" was produced by Grammy Award winner Jeffrey Lesser, who also produced "This Ordinary Thursday" and several other PS Classics recordings, including Maureen McGovern's "A Long and Winding Road" and Lauren Kennedy's two solo albums."

The track listing follows:

"The Wanting of You" (The Student on Avenue B)
"Almost Everything I Need" (The Divorcée on Avenue C)
"I Hardly Remember" (The Widow on Avenue D)
"Blanket in July" (The Jilted Actress in Tompkins Square Park)
"Sunday Light" (The Lover on Avenue A)

Stitt played all tracks except track "Blanket in July." For that, Grant Wenaus played the piano and Stitt conducted.

Music: Getting Real

2009-03-17T02:18:00.001-07:00

Georgia Stitt, BMus’94, with 4-year-old America's Got Talent contestant Kaitlyn Maher.

In show business, the saying goes, it’s not what you know but who you know. In the case of Georgia Stitt, award-winning composer and vocal coach on America’s Got Talent, it’s both.

Music: Getting Real, from VANDERBILT MAGAZINE
by Angela Fox

A Tennessee native, Stitt received her bachelor’s degree in music theory and composition from the Blair School of Music in 1994 and her M.F.A. in musical theater writing from New York University. Since then Stitt has forged a successful career as a composer, conductor, arranger and music director in musical theater, dividing her time between New York City and her home in Los Angeles. As unlikely as it sounds, it was Stitt’s classical training and Broadway experience that led to her current work in reality television.

Two years ago Stitt got a call from director/choreographer Kathleen Marshall, with whom she had worked on the Broadway revival of Little Shop of Horrors. “Our paths had crossed several times since then,” Stitt recalls. “This time she was directing and choreographing [the TV show] Grease: You’re the One That I Want, and she brought me on board as vocal coach.” On the NBC reality show, aspiring performers competed to be cast members in a revival of the musical Grease on Broadway.

Grease: You’re the One That I Want introduced Stitt to Nigel Wright, prominent British record producer and Andrew Lloyd Weber’s longtime musical director. Wright, who was musical director for the Grease reality show, was so impressed with Stitt’s vocal coaching that he brought her in as his assistant musical director on Clash of the Choirs. That musical TV reality hit pitted five amateur choirs from around the country, each led by a celebrity singer, against each other. “That went well,” Stitt says. “So when Nigel went to work on America’s Got Talent, he called me again.” Stitt worked on the 2008 season and hopes to return for the 2009 competition.

The difference with America’s Got Talent was that not all the talent was musical. “Of the 40 acts, though, 19 were musical, and one of my singers won the top prize,” Stitt says with pride. That singer is Neal E. Boyd, an insurance salesman from St. Louis who had studied classical voice and sang opera—which made his win even more impressive, says Stitt. “The show truly has Americans voting for the winner, and in this case they voted for an opera singer.” Stitt and Boyd clicked so well during the competition that Stitt continues to coach him for recordings and performances.

Reality TV work is very different from the vocal coaching Stitt does on Broadway or with private clients. “There’s a level of professionalism that’s already there, of course, when I coach singers on Broadway,” Stitt says. “On America’s Got Talent, some of the singers have never had a voice lesson. One woman who was in her 40s had never done vocal warm-ups before. When I showed her how, it was like I had taught her how to read. But that’s what teaching is about—you have to figure out where a student is and then meet them there.”

Stitt & Heisler's "Alphabet City Cycle," With Baldwin, to Get Digital Release by PS Classics

2009-03-12T09:39:00.000-07:00

By Kenneth Jones
PLAYBILL ONLINE

PS Classics will unveil composer Georgia Stitt and lyricist Marcy Heisler's "Alphabet City Cycle," a five-song cycle for soprano, violin and piano, on March 31. It is the label's first digital-only release.

Featuring vocalist Kate Baldwin, the soprano who will play Sharon in the upcoming Encores! presentation of Finian's Rainbow, "Alphabet City Cycle" will be available exclusively at iTunes. The title refers to the East Village Manhattan neighborhood with lettered avenues. Victoria Paterson is heard on violin.

PS Classics co-founder Tommy Krasker told Playbill.com, "'Alphabet City Cycle' is a wonderful reunion. We released Georgia's album 'This Ordinary Thursday' in the spring of 2007, and just brought out Marcy's Dear Edwina last fall. Georgia's hard at work on a new album, but we don't yet have a time-line for completion or release. What she had finished, though, is this gorgeous song cycle. 'This Ordinary Thursday' has been one of our strongest digital releases to date; rather than wait for the new album to be completed, we decided to unveil the song cycle now, as a digital exclusive."

Stitt revealed in press notes, "Marcy and I became friends in New York City several years ago, back when we were both starting out as baby songwriters and were playing our respective songs all over town. I was really curious to see what Marcy and I might create if we pooled our talents. After rejecting the ideas of writing a full-length musical or a slew of cabaret songs together, Marcy pulled from her filing cabinet a stack of poems she had written and asked if I'd like to take a crack at setting them. I sifted through maybe 15 or 20 poems and picked one to put to music. Once we realized that we were on to something and that our songs sounded different from anything either of us had written before, we picked four more poems and kept going. The 20-minute song cycle here is the collection of those five musical poems; they are some kind of hybrid between musical theatre and art song."

Heisler stated, "While written at separate times in my life, the poems come together in a story maybe I was too much a part of to see clearly. While not all of the pieces are autobiographical, they all came from strolling down the streets of and near my Greenwich Village home. It was Georgia's music that gave me a new perspective on their meaning, capturing the lure and loss and ultimate inescapability of connection we cannot help but seek."

"Alphabet City Cycle" was produced by Grammy Award winner Jeffrey Lesser, who also produced "This Ordinary Thursday" and several other PS Classics recordings, including Maureen McGovern's "A Long and Winding Road" and Lauren Kennedy's two solo albums."

The track listing follows:

"The Wanting of You" (The Student on Avenue B)
"Almost Everything I Need" (The Divorcée on Avenue C)
"I Hardly Remember" (The Widow on Avenue D)
"Blanket in July" (The Jilted Actress in Tompkins Square Park)
"Sunday Light" (The Lover on Avenue A)

Stitt played all tracks except track "Blanket in July." For that, Grant Wenaus played the piano and Stitt conducted.

In celebration of the release of "Alphabet City Cycle," Georgia Stitt will be performing in concert at Birdland on March 30 at 9 PM. Singers expected to appear include Julia Murney, Tituss Burgess, Kate Baldwin (performing two selections from "Alphabet City Cycle"), Graham Rowat, Laura Osnes, Kathleen Monteleone and Kevin Greene.

*

Founded in 2000 by Tommy Krasker & Philip Chaffin, and a four-time Grammy nominee (for its cast recordings of Nine-the musical, Assassins, Grey Gardens and Company), PS Classics seeks to preserve the heritage of American popular song through a variety of cast recordings, solo albums and recordings drawn from rare sound archives, including "Sondheim Sings."

Upcoming releases include Steven Pasquale's debut album "Somethin' Like Love," the Off-Broadway cast recording of Road Show (with Nonesuch Records), the Broadway cast album of The Story of My Life, and the debut album by Story of My Life star Malcolm Gets, "The Journey Home."

Visit psclassics.com.

BIG RED SUN in Oklahoma City

2009-02-03T09:12:00.000-08:00

OCUSTRIPPED: New Musical Festival
Oklahoma City University’s Student Theater Company
Just the Actors…a Piano…and the Show
February 7-8, 2009
Oklahoma City University • Burg Theatre

OCUStripped, a student organization on the campus of Oklahoma City University, the alma mater of Kristin Chenoweth, Kelli O' Hara, and Destan Owens, will be soon opening its New Musical Festival. OCUStripped will be hosting its fourth annual New Musical Theatre Project on February 7-8, 2009. OCUStripped is a student run Theatre Company on the campus of OCU that was started in 2005 under the faculty advisement of OCU’s Opera/Music Theatre Department head, Dr. David Herendeen, and sponsored by the Wanda L. Bass School of Music. It is unique because it is completely directed, produced, musically directed, and performed by OCU students. The show is done without lights, costumes, or set. It strips huge spectacle away leaving the performers vulnerable and forced to dive into the truth of the material. Each year OCUStripped does a full length musical in the fall, and in the spring we do a new musical showcase of shows that have been written or revised in the past five years.

This year’s OCUStripped will be presenting six different shows over the weekend. Three will be presented in a 40-minute one-act format, and three will be presented in their entirety. The festivals shows are:

37 Notebooks by Jeremy Schonfeld

Big Red Sun by John Jiler & Georgia Stitt

Edges by Pasek & Paul

Election Day by Ben Harell

Ordinary Days by Adam Gwon

Weird Romance by Alan Menken, David Spencer, & Alan Brennert

The students had the opportunity to workshop this new material, while still maintaining contact with the composers and authors when they had a problem or questions. John Jiler, David Spencer, and Georgia Stitt, authors, whose work will be performed at the festival, will be our special guests. They will be offering master classes in voice, composition, and acting. The festival will coincide with Oklahoma City University’s national audition weekend for the School of Music, and it is free to the public; however, donations will be accepted to help keep OCUStripped alive. If you have any questions, please contact ocustripped@yahoo.com.

OCUStripped: New Musical Festival

Oklahoma City University, Burg Theatre

Saturday, February 7, 2009

2pm-Performance master class and Q& A with Georgia Stitt

4pm-New Musical Showcase (3 one- acts)

6pm-Acting Master class with John Jiler

8pm-Big Red Sun

Sunday, February 8, 2009

2pm-New Musical Showcase (3 one-acts)

4pm-Edges

6pm-Master class with David Spencer

8pm-Weird Romance

In Service

2009-02-02T14:29:00.000-08:00

I've been thinking a lot about service lately. A big part of Obama's call to America asks us to be in service to our communities. I am fully behind this idea, but as I cheer the concept I also find that it's harder than you might think to know just what it means. What is required of us? How do we participate? Since I've moved around a lot in my adult life, I am distinctly aware that the idea of a community is much different for me now than it was when I was a kid. My community in Covington, Tennessee in the 1980s was made up of three parts. There were the people I knew from school. There were the people I knew from church. And there were the people I was related to, most of whom lived out of town. Community was easy to find. Everybody knew everybody else. Like it or not, you knew what the neighbors were up to and they knew what you were up to. Honestly, that small town all-knowingness was the first thing I was happy to leave behind when I moved to New York. But the resultant privacy came with sacrifices. My first apartment in New York City was a 4th-floor walk up. I lived there for six or seven years and only knew one other tenant by name. I went to a big city church but pretty much came and went without ever getting involved in anything. My friends, mostly actors and musicians, were scattered all over the city. We kept up with each other's lives but finding actual time to connect was a rarity indeed. Several years and several cities later, that sense of scatteredness has only gotten worse.

On his last day as a private citizen, Obama declared Feb. 19th to be a "National Day of Service," and I was excited by the challenge. I scoured a few websites to find out what activities were going on in my neighborhood, and sure enough I found out that there was going to be a community-wide parade just blocks from my house. It was called the "Double Happiness Parade," celebrating Obama's Inauguration and MLK day. Following the parade, everyone was to scatter back to their own neighborhoods and clean up trash in the area. I signed up our family and, despite the fact that we all were sick that day, we went.

It was a sight to see. Not since I was a kid have I seen such an outpouring of local support for anything. People came from all corners. Kids, dogs, wagons, signs, noisemakers. There were hundreds of people there. Families. We ran into people we kind-of know in the 'hood -- moms and kids from the park, people we knew lived nearby but hadn't yet encountered. Our favorite moment was when we fell into step with an "old lefty" (as Jason called him) carrying his banjo and leading people in singing along the great folk songs from the 60s and 70s. After several verses of "This Land Is Your Land," he launched into "We Shall Overcome," and the middle-aged black couple right next to me sang, "We shall overcome... TO-DAY." It was moving, y'all.

So, I offer you this website. www.usaservice.org. Type in your zipcode and see what's going on near you. Also, take a look at www.dosomething.org. I found one organization that is gathering used magazines for literacy. How hard is it to drop off your old magazines instead of throwing them in the recycling bin? And for those of you who aren't in America, I ask: are there similar community-based, volunteer-based websites with more global objectives? Let me know.

Finally, I came across this questionnairre in a completely unrelated source, but I think the questions are great and they might lead you to think about what it is that you can be doing to be a part of something greater than yourself. I'm still figuring it out, but I can tell you that these questions sent me thinking in really surprising directions. Have fun.

1. Name the things you did as a child that brought you greatest joy.
2. What do you do now that gives you the most energy?
3. What wears you out?
4. What are your hobbies? What do you do to restore your soul?
5. Is there something you have thought about doing for a long time? Is now the time? How do you know?
6. Is there a wall or barrier that keeps you from following your call?
7. If you could do anything in your community, what would it be?

The New and the Old

2009-01-21T17:16:00.000-08:00

It's January 21st. A big day. A new day. We have a new president and a new kind of American pride. It is an exciting time to be alive. I wrote a new choral piece yesterday called "Joyful Noise" and it just seemed fitting to finish it on a day when I was so filled with joy. I believe my colleague Jeremy Faust and the International Orange Chorale in San Francisco will premiere it, as they did with my piece De Profundis, but I will give you more details and confirmation about that in a few weeks. For now, let's bask in the way it feels to be so uniformly happy as a nation, and let's heed Obama's call to be a country of people who WORK and provide SERVICE. I am inspired.

All right, enough Obama-glowing. I have something else to be excited about. I FOUND ADAM WAGNER!!

If you've been following this blog for a while you'll remember the entry I wrote about looking for my junior high crush, Adam Wagner, who was the subject of my song "My Lifelong Love." He was a year ahead of me in school, and when I was in the fifth grade and he was in the sixth, I decided to play the clarinet in the hopes that one day I might be able to sit next to him in band. There's some truth in that song's lyric (which Lauren Kennedy recorded so BRILLIANTLY on her record HERE AND NOW), and there's some of it that I just made up, but that's the beauty of songwriting.

I really want to thank my friend Beth, who took it upon herself to find the mysterious and commonly-named Adam Wagner on the internet. I knew she was hunting him down, and one day I got a message on Facebook that said "I found Adam. He is my friend on Facebook. Look at my friends list and you will find him." So I did. And, sure enough, it was he.

Some of us abuse Facebook and post way too much information for all the world to see. Jason calls people like us "chronic over-sharers." (You know who you are.) And then there are other quiet, lurking types who post a picture and maybe an email address and little else. They sit in the background and quietly, sneakily collect friends. They do not write on people's walls. They do not post items. They do not comment. Clearly, they are not obsessed. Anyway, I am in the oversharing, obsessed category. Adam is in the lurking category. I could tell from his profile what state he lived in and that he's been at the same job for nearly 15 years. And that's about it. So, with little to go on, I wrote him.

(I am publishing these excerpts from our exchange with his permission.)

Hi, Adam --

I want to share something with you. A few years ago, as an assignment for a Valentine's Day concert, I was asked to write a song about my first love. I gave the assignment a twist and wrote about my first crush -- back in junior high -- and you must know that that was you. Back in the day. So, anyway, you were the inspiration for a song. I have to say, the truth is that I wrote a song about a girl in the 5th grade who had a crush on a boy named Adam in the 6th grade, and then I made up the rest of it. So it's not REALLY about you or about me and a lot of it is fiction. But, well, you'll see.

I hope you find this whole thing amusing. I just wanted you to know. Enjoy. Please write back if you have a minute. I sure would love to hear from you. And -- ha ha -- don't worry. I'm happily married with a beautiful 3-year old daughter.

For two days I worried that he thought I was stalking him, and then THIS lovely email showed up in my inbox.

Hi Georgia!

I love the song! You and Lauren were excellent! I can't really remember the last time I thought about the 6th grade (Wow that was 25 years ago!), but I was laughing and remembering it fondly while listening to your song. I've played it for almost everyone in my office and they all liked it. I also sent it to my parents and my sister so they could enjoy it. I remember almost everything in the song, except the clarinet lessons. Did I actually give you lessons? I was also oblivious to the fact that you had a crush on me.

OBLIVIOUS? Whew. That's a relief.

Anyway, this story has a happy ending. We're now in touch. We have reconnected about our families and what we've been doing for the last two decades. And, for the record, no, Adam, you never gave me clarinet lessons. They don't call me a lyricist for nuthin'.

Cat On The Prowl: Susan Egan and Georgia Stitt

2009-01-05T00:40:00.000-08:00

In case you're already missing the holidays: Enjoy this reminder.

Lesbian video from AfterEllen.com

Good Eats

2009-01-04T23:41:00.001-08:00

In keeping with the spirit of revealing too much (and why else would we maintain blogs?), I will let you know that I love to cook. I am a pretty decent cook, actually, though I am much better at following recipes than opening the pantry door and saying, "Wonder what I can make with Corn Flakes, Spanish olives, tomato paste and balsamic vinegar?" (Hey -- if you can do that and the result isn't disgusting, you get my full respect.) Apparently I am good at following directions, and I've now been doing it long enough that I'm getting pretty good at improvising as I go, too. (You could say the same thing about the way I play the piano, really.)

On New Year's Day I cooked up a feast. We had a party, and I had invited so many people that I didn't know who was coming. So I just cooked and cooked and cooked. For three days. And the results turned out pretty well. I find a lot of recipes in "Cooking Light" magazine. I like it because it's healthy food that's well-prepared. Not "diet" food. Real food, just lighter. (I made a beef stroganoff for dinner recently that you would never have known was low-fat. Okay, I realize I sound like Brie Van De Kamp Hodge right now. What can I say? I grew up in the South. That's my apology.)

So, take a look. Here's the menu:
Pumpkin chocolate chip bread
Ginger spice cake with an orange glaze
Mediterranean strata (eggs, mushrooms, spinach, tomatoes, Asiago and parmesan cheese, French bread)
Cranberry and wild rice salad
Winter vegetable stew (Swiss chard, butternut squash, carrots, leeks, turnips, onions) and couscous
Caramel French toast
Oat bran muffins with raisins, dates and dried cranberries
homemade fudge and almond toffee
Williams-Sonoma peppermint bark (not homemade, sorry Becky)

The irony, of course, is that I don't cook much during the year. Jason laughs at me because I read these cookbooks and these cooking magazines and then I send him out to pick up the takeout we ordered for dinner. When days are harried and rushed, as they so often are, cooking is the first thing to go. I am usually still writing, coaching, or teaching at 5 pm when most housewives are making dinner for their families. And so, we pay $19 for salmon instead of picking it up at the store and throwing it on the grill. Yet another reason why I love the holidays. More time. More family. More cooking.

I think I'm writing about this tonight because my friend Garth just sent me a recipe chain letter. It's the kind of thing, you know, where you forward it to 20 of your friends and if they ALL PARTICIPATE you get lots and lots of recipes back. And even though I hate chain letters, I love the idea of getting new recipes. Last time I participated in this kind of thing, years ago, I forwarded the chain letter to all my friends in the South (because how many of you New Yorkers really cook? I mean, really?), and the recipes I got back were things like cheese logs and cream of mushroom pie. (I can guarantee you no one in this house will eat a cream of mushroom pie.)

So I'm going out on a limb here. I know this isn't a cooking blog, and I really don't want it to be. But if you want to play along, I'll post a recipe here every now and then, and if you've got something you like, you can post it in the comments. So we'll have our own little recipe chain letter and no one has to annoy their friends. I'll go first.

When my grandmother died, my dad and I scanned a lot of her recipes into the computer so we'd always have them. I can't say I've made too many of her dishes. (OMG the butter! The cream! The handwriting!) But there's something warm and comforting about seeing a handwritten recipe from sixty years ago that has so many stains on it that you know it must have been yummy.

This recipe -- for "Peanut Butt Drops" -- makes me laugh. Flossie was my grandmother's aunt. Which would make her my great, great aunt. Who knew they had Corn Flakes back then?

Nuts could be added, indeed.

DE PROFUNDIS at Grace Cathedral

2009-01-01T23:57:00.000-08:00

Dear International Orange Chorale Friends and Supporters,

Please join us on Wednesday, January 7th at 7:30pm as we sing at San Francisco’s landmark Grace Cathedral with the Yale Glee Club. Under the direction of Jeffrey Douma, Yale’s 80-member ensemble will sing a wonderful concert including music recently commissioned by the Glee Club by Pulitzer Prize and Grammy Award winning composer Ned Rorem. We have been invited to sing a set of our own and to combine forces for a few pieces including our own Georgia Stitt’s De Profundis (an IOCSF commission from 2004), Randall Thompson’s well-loved Alleluia, and Gerald Finzi’s God Is Gone Up. In the setting of Grace Cathedral, this will be a spectacular occasion.

About the Yale Glee Club: For nearly a century and a half, the Yale Glee Club has represented the best in collegiate singing-from its earliest days as a group of thirteen men from the class of 1863 to its current incarnation as an eighty-voice chorus of men and women.

It’s a privilege for us to welcome the Yale Glee Club to San Francisco!

For tickets, please click here:

(415)-392-4400
$10 General Admission
$8 Students and Seniors

WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 7TH, 7:30PM
GRACE CATHEDRAL
1110 CALIFORNIA STREET
SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94108

Visit us on the web for maps and more information.
See you on January 7th!

To a Happy New Year,
Jeremy Faust

2008: The Year I Read The Bible

2008-12-28T00:03:00.001-08:00

Everyone has year-end resolutions. In the past, mine have always been things like losing weight, going to the gym, being a better correspondent with my friends and family, and so on. Predictably, those resolutions usually last about two months and then I slip back into my old habits. It's the American way. I do tend to be good about my commitments, but they've gotta MEAN something. I managed to lose lots of weight right before my wedding because I bought my wedding dress a size too small and was bound and determined it would fit. (It did.) I stuck to my fitness goals the year I hired a personal trainer and had to show up for the appointments or pay anyway. And, of course, Facebook completely changed the way I keep in touch with my friends. The times they are a'changin'.

In 2008, however, I made a goal and stuck with it. I read The Bible. Cover to cover. The whole thing. It took me twelve months.

You may not know about me that I am a church-going kind of girl. I have been a member of Presbyterian churches in every city I've lived in since I first joined at age 13 in my hometown of Covington, Tennessee. It's really important for me to say upfront that my relationship to church is as much about family history and heritage and community and ritual as it is about religion. I take comfort in the regularity of church. I love church people. (Especially Presbyterians, but you know, I'm biased.) I love the smell of old church buildings and they way they sing the same hymns wherever you go. I love pipe organs and choirs. When September 11th happened and I lived in New York City, I went and sat in my church and cried, because I wasn't sure where else to go.

On New Year's Day a year ago, one of my friends gave me a copy of a book called The One Year Bible. I read a lot, anyway -- usually contemporary fiction and classics -- and the idea of reading The Bible was one of those things that had always been on my radar. I remember once in junior high I tried to do it and I barely made it out of Genesis. It was certainly on my "someday before I die..." list, but there were lots of other things I figured I'd tackle first. But this gift felt to me like a challenge, and the book was structured in a way that seemed do-able. Fifteen minutes a day for 365 days. I thought I'd give it a shot, and I sent a copy to my 87-year old grandmother to see if she might take the challenge on with me. She agreed. We started reading.

I approached reading The Bible as literature. I figured I'd just read it so that I could be a person who had read The Bible. I had no idea how revelatory it would be in terms of comprehending current world events, how emotional it would be to synthesize the stories I'd heard for more than thirty years, and how accomplished it would feel to finish something that took an entire year to do. Reading the Bible in public places elicited surprising responses. On a plane, a woman struck up a conversation with me that I'm sure she wouldn't have started had she not noticed what I was reading. In a darkened theater, during tech rehearsals, I got a few looks of disbelief. In the month of October, I got about three weeks behind, and I spent the rest of the year catching up. Because I was reading double-duty, I actually finished on December 22nd-- just in time for Christmas. You can imagine how my perception of the holiday was extremely different this year.

Here's the thing. I'm not here to proselytize. My husband is Jewish. Our extended and culturally mixed family has lots of variations in what we all believe, and it's all fine with me. Believe or don't believe as your life requires. But if you're curious about what's actually in that book, I highly recommend reading it this way. I know I've got more questions about it all than I did a year ago, and I wouldn't be surprised if this year has me reading some of it again. (In the midst of all that blood and gore and hellfire and damnation I probably missed some of the nuance in the Old Testament. Man, there was a lot of killing going on for a very, very, very long time.) But as I look back on the best and the worst that 2008 had to offer, I think maybe this was the greatest thing I accomplished.

Thanksgiving

2008-11-16T22:10:00.000-08:00

It's mid-November and I am taking advantage of yet another cross-country plane ride to send out a little update. I'd like to make a crack about how my family is single handedly keeping the airline industry in the skies, but, you know, perhaps it's not the greatest time to be making jokes about the airline industry. Or for that matter, any industry. The show biz is not immune to the woes of our economy, either. Like all of you, I'm just happy to be working.

And, politics aside (YAY OBAMA!), I'm working. This flight right now brings me home from a short teaching tour of Ohio. (Ooh, the glamour!) This week I taught master classes at Bowling Green State University (thanks to professors Marc Sherrell, Michael Ellison, Marilyn Shrude and Geoff Stehenson) and Baldwin-Wallace Conservatory of Music (thanks to Vicki Bussert and Scott Plate). It was a fantastic whirlwind of colleges. I taught master classes in audition technique and understanding musical styles, I coached a group of students working on duets, I gave a talk about form and structure in the musical theater to a gathering of music composition majors, I led a Q & A about the realities of the musical theater business, and I sold exactly four CDs. Woo-hoo! Next week: master class at Cal State Fullerton just outside of LA, assuming the entire state does not burn to the ground.

Also coming up next week, I'm music directing a tribute to Stephen Schwartz at the Pantages Theater in Los Angeles starring Jason Alexander, Michael Arden, Susan Egan, Eden Espinosa, Tyrone Giordano, Jason Graae, Debbie Gravitte, Megan Hilty, Karen Morrow, Philos, Hila Plitmann, Eric Whitacre and me at the piano. Concert is Monday the 24th at 7:30 pm. (Tickets and information: 323-933-9244 ext. 54). In addition to having written WICKED and PIPPIN and GODSPELL (maybe the key to success is having one-word show titles?), Stephen is a generous supporter of new musicals and a mentor to numerous young writers. I wouldn't mind being him when I grow up.

Other than that, I'm writing, recording new demos, starting work on my second album, and beginning a very very brand new project with playwright Jamie Pachino (my new favorite writer).

As Thanksgiving approaches, I always get kind of sentimental and nostalgic. So indulge me one more moment as I thank you for continuing to be interested in the work that I do. Unlike more disciplined artists I am certain that if you were not paying attention I would not be creating music, so thank you very much for giving me a reason to write.

**************

And if you're still reading -- here are some GIFT IDEAS for the holiday season:

Breadwinner
Two of my sorority sisters from Vanderbilt started this yummy bread company based in Atlanta. They ship loaves of delicious bread anywhere in the world. Send some to your mom.

Tickety Tock
New children's book to be released in December written by my husband, Jason Robert Brown and illustrated by Mary GrandPré (of the HARRY POTTER books!). If you are familiar with his musical "The Last Five Years," you will recognize the story of Schmuel, the tailor from Klimovich, which was the foundation for this story. Ages 4-8.

Donate to your favorite charity. Mine is ASTEP (Artists Striving to End Poverty).

The Widget

2008-11-16T21:19:00.000-08:00

2008-11-11T23:03:00.001-08:00

Finding Inspiration in England

2008-10-24T17:22:00.000-07:00

Really, I mean no disrespect. But after two months of working on this crazy TV schedule, I needed a break.

"America's Got Talent" wrapped on a Wednesday. (YAY and CONGRATS to winner Neal E. Boyd, whose life has now spun into hyperdrive.) On Thursday morning, my daughter and I flew to New York. On Saturday it was her birthday (Happy Birthday Molly!) and we threw her a little party. On Sunday, my husband's Broadway show opened. (More on that below, but oh wow oh wow you really have got to go see it if you can.) It was a big week.

Three days later I got on a plane and flew to London. My UK agent Alastair picked me up at the airport and we were off and running. Or, rather, off and driving. We got in the car and drove to Oxford College, where we met a friend for lunch. After lunch, we kept driving north. I slept. We talked and laughed and listened to bad 80s music. And then, we arrived in Manchester, just in time for tea. You know the Brits. You can't miss tea time.

On our agenda that first evening was a production of WEST SIDE STORY at the gorgeous new performing arts center in Manchester, The Lowry. I was struggling to stay awake for some of the first act. (It was jetlag, really, not the quality of the show!) But the thing that kept pulling me back to attention was that score. That amazing Leonard Bernstein music.

Like so many of you, I know that show so well that I never think I'm going to be wowed by a production of it. But this time the thing that got me was how much of the storytelling was done without words. Music and dance. A real ballet. I spend so much of my time crafting lyrics and trying to get songs to be filled with layers and layers of meaning, but I sometimes forget how powerful it can be just to let the music open up and speak on its own. Bernstein and Robbins knew that. My mind started wandering, thinking about my own shows and how there might be ways to crack open the scores to allow room for more dance. I started thinking about who the great choreographers of this generation might be, and whether or not there's currently a place for them on Broadway. What does it take for someone to be recognized as a visionary? And before I knew it, Tony was dead (uh oh, did I spoil it?) and it was time to go to sleep.

The next day we drove back down south to Dudley College in the West Midlands, where I had been booked to teach a master class. This was an amazing experience for me because the kids there were so well-versed in contemporary musical theater. Not only did this group, in the middle of another country, know who I was, but they also had copies of my CD and my songbook and they had prepared some of my songs. You haven't lived until you've heard your words sung in a thick Midlands accent. I played for them. They swooned. It was very good for my ego.

The real reason for this trip, however, was the launch of the New Voices Collective in the UK. I've written before about this group, led by my friend Artistic Director Joel Fram. For several seasons in New York the New Voices Collective put on several concerts a year featuring the music of composers in New York who were making their livings in the pit orchestras of Broadway shows. Most of us were writing songs that were not getting performed, and Joel -- in conjunction with colleagues Doug Okerson and Jen Bender -- created a concert series that recognized us and our work. Knowing that we had deadlines and guaranteed performances made us write, and Joel often gave us specific tasks for the pieces he wanted written.

Anyway, New Voices was one of my favorite things about New York until Joel moved to London a few years ago. After a bit of a hiatus, this month the Collective had its UK premiere performance of some of the "greatest hits" from concerts past, and some of my music was featured. It was an astounding concert, rich with complex music, humor, glorious singers, a crazy-talented pianist (Mark Etherington), and some of the best songs I've ever heard. Claire Moore's performance of Joel Fram's song "somewhere i have never travelled" actually made me cry. I was so proud to be among that group of musicians and am so eager to see what they do for the next concert, scheduled for March.

Finally, on my last day in London, I was a guest at the Guildford School of Acting where I spoke to and taught some of the most talented young musical theater kids in the country. I love that place, and (shhh...) we are just beginning to discuss the possibility of working on something bigger together next spring.

After all that (and... a silly visit to the set of X-Factor where we stalked Simon Cowell a bit...), I came home renewed and ready to get back to work. Thank you so much Alastair, Joel, Annette, Oliver, Mark, Tom, Martin, Jen, Kourtney and Simon, Ruth, Sara (potato), Ross, Chas and Chris, Alastair's mum and dad, and Nigel for making the trip so much fun. Can't wait to come back!

TWO REMINDERS:

1. Go see "13" on Broadway. Click here for the show's website.

2. VOTE!

Broadway In South Africa

2008-09-26T14:47:00.000-07:00

Monday, October 6th at 7:30 pm

Peter Norton Symphony Space

2527 Broadway at 95th Street

Tickets here.

I have written a new song. Kendra Kassebaum is singing it.

Read all about it here.

DE PROFUNDIS

2008-09-26T14:34:00.000-07:00

Announcing: the release of a new choral piece! Thanks to Judith Clurman who approached me about submitting a choral piece to be included in her choral series, De Profundis is now available from G. Schirmer. This is the first a cappella piece of mine to be published, and it was premiered by my friend Jeremy Faust and his ensemble, the International Orange Chorale. The voicing is SATB, the text is by Christina Rossetti (1930-1894 and yes, she's a favorite of mine), and the music is by yours truly. Enjoy.

Here's the poem.

Oh why is heaven built so far,

Oh why is earth set so remote?

I cannot reach the nearest star

That hangs afloat.

I would not care to reach the moon,

One round monotonous of change;

Yet even she repeats her tune

Beyond my range.

I never watch the scatter'd fire

Of stars, or sun's far-trailing train,

But all my heart is one desire,

And all in vain:

For I am bound with fleshly bands,

Joy, beauty, lie beyond my score;

I strain my heart, I stretch my hands,

And catch at hope.

On Set: Week after Week

2008-09-25T17:21:00.000-07:00

I was having a really great time blogging about my TV show until we got deeper and deeper into the process. For starters, my time at work got busier as more and more singers advanced week after week (so there wasn't as much sit-around-and-blog time as there was before), but also, I started to realize that most of what I was doing on set was more or less confidential. Something interesting would happen on set and I'd think, oh, I can't really write about that without getting in trouble with the network. So I seem to have stopped blogging.

I will say this: I am incredibly proud of all the singers who appeared the show. The final performances aired last night and America voted. I have no idea who won, and I'll likely find out on the air next week, the same as everyone else. I sometimes get flack for working on reality TV shows like this, but the coaching I do with these singers is the same coaching I do with everyone else. Don't forget to breathe. Think about your phrasing. Make sure you have enough air to land in the center of the pitch. Who are you talking to? What can we do to justify that key change? How can you earn the high note at the end? I am a proud mama backstage when one of my singers goes out there (in front of twelve, thirteen, fourteen MILLION viewers) and 'nails it', as David Hasselhoff would say. May they all have exciting opportunities as a result of the work they've been doing for the last two months.

On Set: Week Two

2008-09-03T12:14:00.000-07:00

Walking around a TV set all day, you begin to wonder who all of these people are and what they do. There are the obvious jobs: the hair and makeup people who carry their tools of the trade on their belts, the camera men with their cameras on their shoulders, the stage managers with their headsets and walkie-talkies. Even the guy who maintains the snack table (bless him) is usually holding a bag of chips or a case of water bottles. But my new favorite job, and one I never knew existed until I started working on TV shows, is the celebrity stand-in.

Of course it makes sense. The celebrities are way too busy, I'm sure, to sit around all day while everyone is making all the elements fit together. Things happen over and over in rehearsals. Sometimes they go wrong, and you have to do them again. Yesterday the baton twirler came out to do his twirling routine and his batons were pre-set in the wrong place. Today one of the pyro sprays sent sparks in the wrong direction. We run a number, and then we sit around while the director watches the video playback to make sure all the camera shots are correct. We adjust the mic levels. A lighting cue is changed. Frantic PAs run around looking for a missing hat or a misplaced prop. (How do you think I have time to do all this blogging?)

And while all that is happening, there are three people sitting in the judges' chairs. I'm told you can make a whole career out of being a stand-in (though I don't imagine it buys you a house in the Pacific Palisades). These are the same stand-ins who do everything in town -- the Grammys, the Oscars, American Idol. Two of them I even recognize because they were the stand-ins on "Grease: You're The One That I Want." The best part is when we rehearse the "judges comments" and the stand-ins get to speak directly to the performers. They're directed to say only positive comments for the rehearsal run-thrus, and they say things like "Wow, that was so amazing, so original. You have obviously practiced so much and I'm sure you're going to be in the top five." And then the real judges come out, two hours later, and rip the contestants to shreds on national television.

The stand-ins even kind of look like the celebrities a bit, too. The more the show goes on, the more they try to say things the actual celebrities might say. And what's amazing is that each contestant seems so relieved that someone liked his performance. Even if it's a celebrity stand-in. Even if the stand-in has been directed to say only nice things. Even if none of it is true.

I continue to think it's such a weird time we live in, when reality shows rule television and everyone around is looking for his fifteen minutes of fame. A job is just a job, I guess, but if for two or three hours a day you get to pretend to be someone famous, well then perhaps that makes your job just a little more glamorous.

On Set: Week One

2008-08-24T22:07:00.000-07:00

The thing about Hollywood studios is that they are Hollywood from the moment you pass through the front gate. As you're parking your car, you have to drive past rows and rows of empty parking spaces that are being reserved for people who are more important than you are. My first day on my new TV show was Saturday, and even though there was no one else on the grounds, I drove my car up to the fourth floor of the parking garage in order to avoid parking in empty spaces being saved for the casts and crews of "Samantha Who" and "According to Jim" and "Geeks" and "CSI:NY." Of course the really famous stars get to avoid the parking garage entirely. Ah yes. The hierarchy had begun even before the job had.

This is the third music-based reality TV show I've worked on, and though the job changes every time, the location doesn't. It's amazing to me that we are in the same studio now as we were two years ago when I had my first TV job. There are 23 studios on this 40-acre campus and we are in the same one. Okay, that's fine. At least I know where the bathrooms are.

I also know where the craft services table is, and that's dangerous. I had forgotten how hard it is to stay far far away from that evil table. On that first morning, there were more donuts than I had ever seen in one place at one time. But then again, this is a huge show, and there are hundreds of people on the crew. The hundreds of donuts were supposed to get everyone through the morning. By noon, sure enough, the donuts are gone and the snacks are out. And I'm serious when I tell you, if you have EVER snacked on it, it is on this table. The challenge then becomes to avoid the chips/candy/gum/soda/pretzels/dips/OMG Reese's pieces as you walk past this table eighty-four times each day.

My job this time around is that I'm the vocal coach. In the past I've been everything from rehearsal pianist to click-track generator to celebrity handler to music clearance seeker to lyric transcriber to schedule coordinator to harmony teacher to lip synch monitor to orchestra conductor. (Watch footage from the GREASE days here.) But this time, I am simply the vocal coach. My job is to work one-on-one with all of the singing acts to make sure they are comfortable and that they sound as good as they are capable of sounding. Some of the contestants have lots of experience and a great sense of their own abilities. More often, though, they are just beginning. My two favorite moments so far have been teaching a 40-year old woman how to do a vocal warm up (She's been singing her whole life and apparently no one has ever suggested to her that it might be good to get the voice moving a bit before she tries to belt an E-flat.) and suggesting to the twenty-something guy that it might be a bad idea for him to take a quick smoke break in the middle of our singing lesson.

The thing about being on set is that there's an unbelievable amount of down time. I mean, SOMEBODY is always working (except for lunch, which in this case is catered on the ground floor of that empty parking garage. Yes, I'm serious.). But while they're resetting the stage or refocussing the lights or getting the performer out of the hair and makeup truck, you're sitting around waiting to be useful. Or in my case, you're blogging.

All right. Show starts in 43 minutes. I've gotta go check in on my acts. Tune in on Tuesday and Wednesday nights between now and October 1st. As we used to say in Covington, Tennessee: it is certainly something to see.

America's Got Talent
NBC

Perspective-Altering Things Musicians Have Taught Me (or why I eat avocados)

2008-08-21T23:27:00.001-07:00

In the course of my lifelong musical education, there are a few people who have said really perspective-altering things to me, and those little gems have changed the way I think about music. The same thing happens in the real world, too, like when you spend your whole life avoiding avocados because they're so high in fat and then someone tells you it's the "good" fat and actually they're okay to eat. Perspective-altering. Life-changing. Anyway, one of those concepts popped into my head last week and I couldn't stop thinking about it, so I will share it with you here, along with some of the other nuggets of wisdom various musicians have shared with me along the way.

1. GESTURE
One of the composition professors I had in college talked about using the concept of "gesture" as a writing tool. To this day I think it's the most important thing I learned in music school: the idea that everything you write has to have gesture. Is your musical idea sweeping and lyrical, with overlapping phrases like the sight of a swimmer's cascading arms? Is it pointillistic and choppy, like Sondheim's music for George Seurat's character in "Sunday In The Park With George"? What is the shape of the sound? I wish I could hear his lecture again, because I find it's hard to explain the ideas. But I remember bringing music into my composition lessons and he would circle musical ideas on my scores and say, "Ah, this is a great gesture here," and my assignment would be to sustain that musical idea for a page and a half before moving on to the next one. A gesture is small, like the three notes that sit on the lyrics "Bali H'ai" or the lilting beginning of the chorus of "I Could Have Danced All Night." Those melodies have gesture. Shape. I think about it all the time.

2. TIME
For about the first 22 years of my life I was a solo pianist. I played classical music, tons of it, and many of the hours of my day were spent alone at my piano, practicing. My piano playing was a lone thing or, at most, an instrument to accompany a singer or another instrumentalist. It really wasn't until I started playing piano in orchestra pits that anyone ever talked to me about the concept of TIME.

In music, "to have good time" means that you are a steady player, that all the beats of the music fall exactly where they are supposed to fall. Especially in jazz and swing music, and I suppose pop music, too, it means that you can play with a groove, that you can hold your own in a rhythm section (with a bass and drums, for example) without rushing or dragging the tempo. When you're sitting alone in your living room playing the piano by yourself, you are allowed certain nuances to the "timing" of the music you play. Flexibility. Breath. Rubato. Even if you're playing Bach, the strictest of the classical composers (and one of my favorites), you're allowed to stretch a phrase here and there, to push and pull the tempo as you follow the musical line. When you're playing with a swing band or jazz combo or, I don't know, a Broadway pit orchestra, you are not. (Well, not unless you're the conductor, but that's another story.) In my first few years in New York I had a hard time knowing when I was supposed to be strict with my time and when I was allowed to be flexible. A music director told me once that in order to think about time, you have to acknowledge that all the beats are the same, whether you're playing them or not. If you're in 4/4, then every measure has eight eighth notes, and they all have to be exactly the same length. That's easy to do if you're playing all the eighth notes, but if the measure is half notes or whole notes, it's awfully tempting to rush right through them. And if you did that, you would have horrible time. Aside from the professionals working in the industry, most of the pianists I hear playing Broadway music have bad time. It is one of the first things I notice, and if it's not good, I will cringe through the entire performance. Now that you know about it, I bet you will, too.

3. WORKING FOR FREE
When I was first starting out as a music director in New York, I remember a fellow music director asked me that awful question, "So what are you up to these days?" It's an awful question because you're compelled to say something impressive since the alternative answer, the TRUTH, is "I'm trying to figure out how to pay my rent so I can keep doing this thing for a living." I don't even remember what I really had going on, but what I told her was that I had been offered work music directing a few things for free but that I was going to turn them down because I was too far along in my career to be working for nothing. And she raised an eyebrow and pointed out that some of the most valuable experiences she had had were on projects where she was working for free.

Of course she's right. There are two adages that come to mind on this point. The first is "Work leads to work." Invariably, some person involved with the project you're doing for free will think you did a great job and recommend you for the next thing, which will actually be a paying job. Sometimes it's even a GREAT-paying job. Having a presence in the industry is so important. Also, sometimes there are just things you believe in. There are benefits for causes you support. Showcases for projects you think are brilliant. Cabarets for actors you think are talented and unheard. And you just want to be a part of them. So you do them. I recognize that we can't always afford to work for free, and I really, really try to make sure everyone who is working for me is getting paid SOMETHING, even if it's a fraction of what he or she is worth. But since that conversation, I have thought twice about the "I'm-too-important-to-work-for-free" argument, for sure. The second adage is that you have to do a job because it makes you "rich, famous, or happy." It's really, really rare that one job will do all three. There are the money jobs that you take because the paycheck is too good to say no. Those are the "rich" jobs. Then there are the jobs you take because of the exposure you'll get. The interviews. The time in the spotlight. The name-recognition. Those are the "famous" jobs. And then there are the jobs you take because you just want to be a part of the making of something exceptional. Those are the "happy" jobs. If we're lucky, our careers are balanced with experiences from all three categories.

4. LISTENING
I have a love/hate relationship with jazz music. The way real jazz musicians think about music is so different from the way I think about music. When I was working on my first jazz-based musical theater score, right after college, I asked a big band leader if he would be willing to teach me jazz piano lessons. He declined, but he told me that all I had to do was listen.

I harumphed for a while, thinking what he meant was that I should listen to a lot of famous jazz recordings and just imitate what I heard. Ha. Easy for him to say. It is possible that he meant exactly that, but over the years I've come to think that maybe he meant I should listen more closely to the other musicians I'm playing with. Whenever I'm having trouble hearing myself in an ensemble or locking into the groove with the rest of the band, I play less. I guess for me anxiety leads to me feeling the need to POUND on the piano and make myself heard, and that's usually disastrous. But if I play more softly, or more sparsely, or with more precision and less grip, the music falls right into place. Always. Unless the drummer has bad time, and then we're all screwed.

5. EDITING
In college I wrote for the school newspaper. Usually I wrote about musical things for the arts section -- interviews with Joan Tower, John Cage and George Crumb, reviews of cast albums and at least one generally scathing essay about Andrew Lloyd Weber. In those days, we were responsible for making sure our articles fit exactly into the space they were allotted, and I learned a number of tricks about how to edit down an article without losing any of its content. (For example, in the sentence above I could easily have cut out the words "exactly" and "a number of" and "down" and "any of" and probably made this entire blog posting a line shorter.) Even if I'm not publishing an essay into a certain number of printed inches, I still think about those editing techniques, and I find they have made their way into my compositions, too. Knowing how to edit your work is just as important as knowing how to write it.

All right, that's enough bloviating for one night. But I will share with you this fascinating article I found while googling "musical gesture" in hopes of finding a more illuminting definition than the one I wrote above. It has little to do with anything I wrote above, but you music geeks who made it to the end of this posting will really appreciate it.

"The Geometry of Music"
Time Magazine, January 26, 2007

PS Thanks to Michael Kurek, Ted Sperling, Kimberly Grigsby, Barry Levitt, and Andy Grogan.

The American Mall

2008-07-27T22:36:00.000-07:00

Well, it's been a month and I haven't found Adam Wagner. Or Waggoner. Or Waggner. Or his sister Cara. We think he might be in Iowa. We're pretty sure he might have been in Ames, Iowa at some point. And it was suggested that maybe he was in the Navy. (Sigh.) What good is the internet if I can find everyone in the world except my fifth grade crush?

Anyway, moving on from middle school crushes, I'd like to talk a little bit about high school crushes. At least, the kind of high school crushes for which MTV movie musicals get made.

I have these friends in Los Angeles who are songwriters, and in addition to the many theatrical shows and TV scores and Cheetah Girls albums they work on, they happened to write one of the songs for the Disney movie "High School Musical." These friends (who are married to each other) were talking about how they write songs for movies and shows all the time, and this one just HIT, before they knew what was happening. And because work leads to work, the producers of HSM hired my friends to be the music SUPERVISORS (a big promotion) of their next project, which is a film called "The American Mall."

It's so true that an entire career can be built because of "who you know." In the course of putting together the soundtrack for "The American Mall," my friends were working with a songwriter who was a brilliant producer and was getting a great sound out of his tracks, but his songs were perhaps not theatrical enough. (That's ironic for me, since in this town my songs tend to be "too theatrical.") So my friends, the music supervisors, asked me if I would collaborate with him. I talked to the director about what he wanted the moment in the movie to be, and he said he was looking for it to be a modern-day "Whatever Lola Wants." (That's a pretty theatrical reference for an MTV movie director; I was impressed.) So I sat down and I wrote a tango. I wrote a whole new song but I kept the title and the hook from my collaborator's old song. And I showed up at his studio with my piano demo, recorded on Garage Band with me singing and playing at the same time. No bells, no whistles, just verses and choruses and my croaky alto voice.

Collaborations are an amazing thing, really, and to this guy's credit, he kind of smiled and nodded, and he turned my piano tango into the kind of song that belongs in an MTV movie. I know all kinds of people read this blog; some of you theater fans will hate the movie, others will love it. But I'm really fascinated with how all this happened, how my song was virtually unchanged in the writing and TOTALLY changed in the production. You'll see.

Once the movie's been out for a while I'll see if I can't post the "before" and "after" mp3s. It's a way cool process. And... while I'm at it, my music supervisors brought me in to collaborate on one of their songs, too. So I've actually got two songs in the movie. If you do watch it in a few weeks, pay close attention to "At The Mall" (which I wrote with them) and "The New You" (which is the not-really-a-tango that is actually kind of a theatrical AABA song but you can't tell anyone or I might never work in this town again).

The movie premieres on MTV on August 11th. I'm going to the actual movie premiere tomorrow night and I'm told I should expect to walk the red carpet. WHAAAAA? I have to wrap up this blog and see if there's anything in my closet that's not from Banana Republic.

Watch the movie. Let me know what you think. In the meantime, here's the official trailer. Enjoy.

My Lifelong Love

2008-06-29T22:01:00.000-07:00

Earlier this year, Lauren Kennedy, one of my very favorite performers, recorded a song of mine called "My Lifelong Love." (You can hear the song HERE on my music page.) It's on her new album called HERE AND NOW which is filled with great performances of lovely songs by fantastic new theater writers. I am thrilled to be in the company of so many superlatives.

But that's not why I'm writing.

The song is getting a lot of attention, and people keep writing me for the sheet music. It's currently unpublished, so that's (so far) the only way you can get it. But I am thrilled that people are responding to it. It's a song about a woman remembering her first love -- Adam, a boy who played the clarinet in her junior high band. I wrote it specifically as an assignment for the New Voices Collective when artistic director Joel Fram was putting together a Valentine's Day concert and wanted all of us writers to write about our first loves.

Ah, Adam. Yes, to answer your many questions, there really was an Adam, and yes, he really did play the clarinet. And yes, a year later, so did I. The first time my dad heard this song he chuckled and said, "Did you send it to Adam?" And you see, that's the problem. I CAN'T FIND HIM.

Adam Wagner. Any of you who knew me at Covington Elementary School will roll your eyes right about now remembering the torch I carried for Adam Wagner. Not only did he play the clarinet, but he swam on the swim team (as did I) and he played football. (Okay, I didn't play football. But he did, and that was totally awesome.) I think I remember that he was kind of a computer geek, too, but I say that with all the love and affection an 11-year old girl might have for a 12-year old boy. I also know (and hope) that he eventually might read this and I would hate for him to think, all these years later, that anyone thought he was a geek. Who can say? I have very little memory of anything that might be called a fact. I just remember that I had a huge crush on him, and it kind of defined the sixth grade for me.

I'm sure somewhere in my mom's basement there are pictures of Adam Wagner, but for now all I can tell you is he has a very common name and he left my high school somewhere around sophomore year and moved away. I thought maybe he moved to Iowa, but I couldn't swear to that.

Anyone know Adam Wagner?

Free Style

2008-06-20T23:54:00.000-07:00

FREE STYLE at the Ford Amphitheatre
A heartfelt and fun evening of song and dance featuring Malcolm-Jamal Warner and the Groovaloos.

Since January, Reprise teaching artists visited more than 1,000 Los Angeles High School students to teach them how to write song lyrics. Students composed lyrics about their hopes, fears and dreams. Out of this group, fifteen finalists were chosen.

In a ground breaking new program, Reprise paired those fifteen young lyricists with professional musical theatre, film and pop composers including Desmond Child ("Livin La Vida Loca"), Stephen Bray (score of The Color Purple, Madonna's "Into the Groove"), Michael Skloff (theme to "Friends"), and Baby Musical Director Georgia Stitt. The result is an original musical work called FREE STYLE that gives us a unique look at the real lives of LA's urban youth.

Join a talented cast including Malcolm-Jamal Warner, Tituss Burgess (currently starring in Broadway's The Little Mermaid) and Emmy nominee Paul Anthony Stewart along with LA's most famous dance crew the Groovaloos, for a truly unforgettable evening.

Come hear their songs.
FREE STYLE at the Ford Amphitheatre
July 11 at 8:30pm
Ticket info here

88s Cabaret, July 7th

2008-06-18T16:00:00.000-07:00

THIS ORDINARY THURSDAY
(on a Monday under the stars)
The songs of GEORGIA STITT

Monday July 7th, 2008
8:30 PM
Republic Restaurant
Los Angeles

www.myspace.com/eightyeightscabaret

Sing Me A Happy Song

2008-06-11T23:28:00.000-07:00

Thanks to the Festival of New American Musicals in Southern California, and especially producers Bob Klein and Marcia Seligson, I'm getting a one-week workshop of a new musical revue that David Kirshenbaum and I are writing together. It's called SING ME A HAPPY SONG, and until a few days ago I wasn't really sure what it was. But there's nothing like the pressure of knowing people are showing up in a room to work on your material to make you get your show written.

Here's the blurb: Written by two of the newest Broadway voices, Georgia Stitt and David Kirshenbaum, "Sing Me a Happy Song" is a contemporary musical revue by two of Broadway's newest voices about finding heart in these material times. With songs about modern-day relationships, searching for yourself on the internet, striving to have everything but never having enough, love, family and your gay best friend, this five-character show is at once comic and poignant, smart and silly, emotional and timely.

Not bad for something that until about a week ago was just a collection of songs. In the last week David and I have written an opening number, a closing number, and a trio. (Okay, well, most of a trio.) Add that to the numbers he and I have been sneaking out for the last year and a half, and there's starting to be a score there. What's fun about this collaboration is that David and I are both composers and lyricists, so we're sharing the responsibilities of each job throughout the process. Some of the songs are his, some are mine, and some are his lyric my music, and others are his music, my lyric. We're challenging ourselves to find the voice of the piece, rather than lining up a his-song/my-song kind of score. So that's been interesting.

The folks at the Santa Clarita Performing Arts Center have been great and supportive, especially Adam Philipson who has championed this show since he heard a few songs over a year ago. He paired up with The Theatre Project/SCV and the College of the Canyons, and now we've got a cast of college-aged students working their tushies off to learn our tunes. Performances are this Saturday, June 14th. If you think you might wanna come see it, tickets are here.

Also, here's some press: Theatre Project Brings Pro Arts Education To SCV

Questions from aspiring Musical Theater Writers

2008-06-03T11:14:00.001-07:00

Wow -- it's been a really long time since I blogged. I think this last month has been one of the busiest ever for me. We did the reading of THE WATER in Los Angeles. I did a concert at Birdland in NY. I spent a week in Connecticut watching my husband's show "13," which is on track to come to Broadway this fall. I'm now in preparation for a workshop of SING ME A HAPPY SONG in California, and I'll write all about that in another blog entry. But I realized that with so much going on I haven't had time to absorb or reflect on any of it.

On the plane ride from NY to LA yesterday, I responded to several emails where students were writing me seeking advice about songwriting. And as I was answering them, I thought maybe it was info that was worth sharing. So, for today, here's some Q&A on the topic of songwriting. And in a few days I'll write another blog telling you more about all the rest of the stuff that's going on. Thanks for being patient with me!

Georgia
____________________

Something I noticed and really like about your lyrics is how naturally they capture real life and modern speech patterns, but still adhere to musical theater structures and verse forms. One of the most challenging things for me right now (especially since I often am writing lyrics without music- something you luckily don't have to worry about!) is figuring out how to create and stick to a structure for a lyric without giving the song a constrained or forced quality at points. Do you ever have to compromise the structure for the meaning or the content for the poetic? Are there any exercises or tactics you would suggest to work on balancing such things?

I think for me as a lyricist, the structure of a song emerges as I go. I start out with a metric form that might be a bit stilted, just my first draft idea, and as I go along, I realize that maybe in the second A section I need a few more syllables in the third line. So then I go back and alter the third line of the first A section to make it match. And then that sparks a new idea which might change things again. I figure it's not done until it's done. And no, you can't sacrifice meaning or your song won't work. But you can continue to tweak and alter things until you get it right. If you're stuck with a word you can't rhyme well, then think of another way to say the same thing, and give yourself a new rhyming word to play with. I do the same thing with the melody -- which is easier for me when I'm both composer and lyricist, of course. But I can keep changing the melody to make it fit the words I need until I get it right, and usually that means getting it right several times, in all the different sections of the song where it matters.

One idea might be to write lyrics to pre-existing melodies. Like take a classic Rodgers and Hart song (or whatever inspires you) and write a whole new lyric to that melody. Your composer never needs to know what your inspiration was, and if you do it right, it won't be ABOUT the same thing so he/she will never know. But it might break you out of your obvious first-instinct rhythms and compel you to try something different. Like instead of "My Romance," your song might be called "On The Bus." For example.

Another thing I've noticed and admired about your work is the humor in many of your songs. While I can sometimes be funny in real life, I'm having a lot of trouble writing funny songs. Of course I know one can't sit down and just write something funny because it'd end up forced but is there be some technique or approach that is slightly different when writing comedy?

Humor in a song is something I'm still trying to figure out. A lot of it has to do with timing, and that will probably just require some experimentation. Right now I am just trying to observe what makes me laugh in real life -- and they're usually more about funny situations than funny lines. So humor really has to be character based. An anonymous funny song is nearly impossible to write, but a funny song sung by a character with a unique (or even a more universal) point of view is much more compelling.

At NYU grad school, one of the first exercises they assigned us came from a stack of black and white photos they had on file. They spread out these photos on the table and we each had to choose one and write a song about what was happening in the photo. Might be a fun exercise for you. Look for a photo that makes you think one of the characters might be amused by something or might have an amusing comment or perspective about the situation, and see if you can sustain the idea for a whole 3 1/2 minute song.

As a young writer, I should be editing as I work. I know the process is different for each person and I know songwriters often talk about writing several drafts of a song. What is the editing process like for you? Is that something I should be thinking about at this point, writing several different versions of a song, slowly and carefully going through every possibility, or should I let the words flow (when they will) and let them carry me away, so to speak. I want to trust my creativity but I also want to be objective about what I'm writing.

I wouldn't worry too much about it yet. Just write. Get lots of songs out. Get them on paper. Find composers to collaborate with. If you have a lyric that keeps bugging you (inside your head), then go back and tweak it. If you think you can make it better, then make it better. But don't edit for the sake of editing. Look at what bugs you about the song you just finished, and try to get it right the next time around. At this point, the more you write, the more you'll learn. If you sit there and try to make every song perfect, you'll graduate with only a few finished songs and lots and lots of questions.

I have wanted to write for the theater since I was in high school, and this summer I am hoping to finish a musical that I've been working on for a while. I would love to go to NYU for the Graduate Musical Theater Writing program after [college]. What would you recommend that I do to prepare a competitive musical portfolio for admission to the GMTW program?

I'm not sure how much it has changed since I went there, but the application to get into NYU GMTWP is really extensive. Back in my day (ages ago, whew) you had to set one of their lyrics, write several essays, submit a sample of your hand notation, outline a made-up musical, etc. You might want to write the program and request an application just so you can get a sense of what will be required of you.

Honestly, at this point I think the best thing you can do is get a solid and well-rounded foundation in your music theory and history. I didn't write any musical theater until my senior year at Vanderbilt, but one of the most exciting things I did along the way was spend a semester writing almost entirely vocal music. I set poetry as art songs, I wrote choral music, and I really got to learn a lot about vocal ranges and phrasing, breathing and blending, etc. Write in a million different styles, and see if you can discover all the amazing things the human voice can do.

When I was at Blair, the Vanderbilt Opera Theater (do they still exist?) performed my musical as part of my senior project. Looking back on it now, it was filled with all kinds of problems --- compositionally, dramaturgically, lyrically, oy veh -- but having a chance to rehearse it and hear it out loud was invaluable. How about putting together some kind of student workshop of your musical? Do you know any aspiring directors? At this age and this point in your process, it seems to me that school-based developmental opportunities are the best. If this show turns out to be your GODSPELL or your AVENUE Q (both of which were started as college-projects), then it'll still be there when you graduate -- and it'll be even better for having been workshopped.

I love composing and musical theater so much, and I am very excited about the future. I am taking composition lessons next semester, and I know we will work on my musical together. What do you think the next step is? I know that the process for making a musical successful is a long one, but I am truly committed to and deeply passionate about what I do. I would love to start the process as early as I can, but I have no idea how I should go about it. How do I get involved in the readings and the workshops that are necessary to taking a musical to the next level?

If you love musical theater that much, make sure you're getting a chance to work in it -- however you can. I spent my college summers as a piano accompanist and then music director at a summer stock theater (the College Light Opera Company in Falmouth, MA). I'm not sure if you sing or play piano or conduct or any of those things, but even if you're not writing the show, you can learn a lot by DOING musical theater. I think I learned more about how musicals work by conducting them for ten years than I ever learned at Blair. (I mean absolutely no offense to any of my marvelous teachers, of course.) The more well-rounded a musician you are, the better your music will be. So -- study everything: music history, counterpoint, analysis, orchestration, poetry, literature, dance, philosophy, psychology, art. (I use all of those things on a daily basis.) Finally, expose yourself to lots of life, so you always have something to write about.