BYE BYE BIRDIE

I'm steeped in BYE BYE BIRDIE this week. I've listened to three different recordings of the show (the original Broadway cast, the movie with Ann Margaret, and the 1980s TV movie remake), I've watched the movie, I've played through the score and I taught "Telephone Hour" to a room full of teenagers.

I'm music directing a big benefit here in LA called "A Night At Sardi's." The cause is The Alzheimer's Association and the venue is the Beverly Hilton. The cast includes a lot of celebrities, many of whom have walked through my living room this week and even stopped to pet my dog. Maybe you read about the event in the NYPost. (The funny thing about that article is that they showed a picture of Marg Helgenberger and then she dropped out. Oh well.) Here are some of the highlights of my week so far.

1. On my cell phone: "Hi, Georgia? This is Dick Van Dyke. Can you give me a call, please?" And then he left his home phone number. I saved the message.

2. An email: "Thanks for being so considerate. Fondly, Charles Strouse"

3. My 2 year old daughter running through the house, squealing: "What's the story, morning glory? What's the word hummingbird?"

Okay, I'm in musical theater heaven.

There's a fine line here between gushing and name-dropping, I know, and I really try to walk that line in these blogs so I'm not one of those obnoxious people who builds a confidence with a performer and then goes and blabs about him or her online. But there's nothing to blab.
The thing about this benefit so far has been that every performer who has come onboard (okay, okay, I'll name drop: Steven Weber, Tony Plana, Ana Ortiz, Kristen Bell, Jason Alexander, Vanessa Williams, Zach Quinto, Lea Thompson, Michael Chiklis, Jean Louisa Kelly, Adam Wylie, Becki Newton and a whole lot of teenagers) turns out to be a major singer. Zach Quinto has a degree in musical theater from Carnegie Mellon. Kristen Bell has been in two Broadway shows -- a play and a musical. Tony Plana runs East LA Classic Theatre which specializes in delivering Shakespeare to young people. The cast of UGLY BETTY tells me that they are all musical theater freaks and they spend a lot of time on set singing show tunes. (No, really?)

Maybe you already know better, but I am still a bit star-struck when I meet someone I've watched on TV. The shocking part for me this week has been meeting the ones that I don't watch on TV and then googling them afterwards and realizing exactly how famous they are. And they were just here petting my dog.

Highlight #4. Email from Kristen Bell: "PS Your CD is awesome!!!! I'm singing along in the car!"

Also this week -- I've been in the studio nearly every day with my writing partner writing and recording and re-writing and re-recording these two songs for an upcoming movie. I'm starting to understand the concept of writing by committee. We write a song. We give it to our music supervisors, and they give us notes. We rewrite the song, maybe even rerecord it, to accommodate the notes. Then they pass the rewrite on to the producer of the movie, and he has his own set of notes that have to be included into the "final version" of the song. Only it's not really final, I don't think, because in this case it has to be translated into another language, and then if there are tricky problems in the translation I imagine we'll be back in the hotseat again, rewriting yet another version of the song. All I know is that at the end of it, there is a movie that will be made, and there will be a soundtrack that will be released, and it will sell in places like Target and Best Buy. And I've never had anything I've written reach quite such a large audience. So, here I go off to rewrite. Happily.

One final note: I made the mistake in an earlier blog entry to announce that I was going to be conducting WICKED in LA. I got myself over-excited and that announcement was premature. Once the reality of my schedule for this spring set in, I realized I didn't really have the time to devote to that show and I gracefully (I hope) bowed out of it. So, alas, none of that green madness for me. Yet.

God and American Idol. Really.

I spent three hours tonight catching up on TiVoed episodes of American Idol. Okay, maybe it wasn't quite three hours since I was able to fast forward through the commercials, but it was definitely time that I guiltily stole from something more productive that I should have been doing. I know there was a presidential debate on CNN and I know I have a conference call in the morning that I should be preparing for, but this show is unbelievable. It is so beautifully produced; it's no wonder it has become such a hit. Every week when I watch it I think, 'yep -- that's America.' We have such a big and diverse country. It's thrilling to see so many parts of it represented, and this show, more than anything since the days of Ed Sullivan, really captures the American Dream. We're not all cut out to be superstar recording artists, obviously, but you get a real sense watching this show that anything is possible, that success can come to anyone, and that hard work really does pay off. If I were majoring in sociology I would write a paper about it. And if I were a better singer (okay, and several years younger) I would be dying to be on it.

I'm really only one degree of separation away from this show. When we were filming "GREASE: You're The One That I Want," American Idol was filming on the sound stage next door. Our dressing rooms shared a hallway with their dressing rooms, and yes, I did one time walk right into Paula Abdul's dressing room when I knew she wasn't there. I spoke to Blake Lewis in the hallway really early in the season and told him how exciting and musical I thought his performances were. He didn't win, but he did really well, and I still think he's one of the most distinctive performers in that show's history.

For a big part of my career I have sat behind either the table or the piano as people sang their hearts out in auditions. Given that, my husband is amazed that I still have interest in watching this show. But I find there is so much spirit there -- in the hopes of the singers, in the cutting truth of the judges' evaluations, and in the vulnerability and exposure of the personal stories the producers choose to showcase. We are vain. We are talented. We are delusional. That's America.

Speaking of spirit, I just have to mention the most amazing book that I just finished reading. Talking about religion in such a public forum as this one is probably tricky, but I'm not going to preach or opine on your time. I'm just going to say that if you have an intellectual curiosity about religion, and especially about religion and politics, and you feel like any time you talk about religion (whichever branch of it makes sense to you) you get a big label as being "one of those people," then this book might be as fascinating to you as it was to me. Every five or six pages I felt like my breath was being taken away because the idea on the page was so big, so new, that I needed to stop to process it. Check it out. Especially in the year of this historic election, it seems vital to ask exactly these questions.

Check it out. Speaking of Faith: Why Religion Matters--and How to Talk About It.

Next week, back to music. I promise.

Bicoastal Blues

It's very strange to be back in NY for a few days. I lived here for ten years and then two years ago we moved to California. And in those two years I guess I've surprised myself by putting down some roots in LA. Since I graduated from college I have thought of myself as a New Yorker -- displaced or not. But being back here right now (for only three nights) has been shocking. I guess I'm truly one of those bi-coastal people who lives in two cities. The trade off for calling two places home is that, actually, neither is. I do spend a lot of time packing.

1. On my first day here in NYC I got off the train at the wrong stop. WHAT? I've got that subway map memorized. What better way is there to feel like a tourist than to come up from the subway, look around, and realize you're completely in the wrong place? To my own credit, at least I did remember which direction to walk to get to my correct destination. But what should have taken me 30 minutes took more like an hour. That never used to happen.

2. I can't sleep here. That always happens the first few nights I'm back in the city after having been away. Oh, the noise! Oh the light creeping in the window shades! Oh the sounds of the elevators and the garbage trucks and the radiators! I lay awake in that horrible cycle of willing myself to sleep and stressing out because I'm not asleep. And then suddenly it's morning and I have a busy day of New York ahead of me.

3. Water pressure in Manhattan sucks. I mean, come on. You spend half of your shower dodging the blast of freezing cold water and the other half of your shower trying to withstand the scalding hot torrents. Believe me, it does not average out to lukewarm.

Okay, I'll grant you that there's no greater city and that you can accomplish more in a day in NY that in several days anywhere else. And my friends in NY are the deepest, oldest (sorry), truest friends of my life. I miss them desperately, and when I visit I'm always overscheduling myself, trying desperately to fit work and theater and social time into a trip that's not nearly long enough. When I'm sitting at breakfast with my best girlfriend in the whole world, believe me, I'd trade all the scalding showers and the sleepless nights and the days of bad subway karma just to be able to see her on a more regular basis.

Alas. I have the bicoastal blues.

Alphabet City Cycle

I recorded these five songs over two years ago with the fantastic singer Kate Baldwin and the brilliant violinist Victoria Paterson. Lyrics are by the amazing Marcy Heisler. And with a few exceptions, I don't think anyone has heard them. I'm thinking of making them the foundation of my second album. Take a listen. What do you think?

Amusing Fan Mail

Funny story. My daughter had an audition for college today, and we were rushing aroung the house trying to get to ready to leave last night. She needed to print something off the computer, and just grabbed it and ran out the door. Earlier in the day I had printed up the sheet music [to "My Lifelong Love"], but forgotten about it. While we were in the car driving she realized she had the music, so she just tucked into her binder pocket. At the audition, she sang her ballad, and then her up tempo piece, and they wanted to hear something else. The only other piece she had was your song, so she pulled it out and went for it. She said they loved it. No one in the room had heard it before so it was refreshing to them. We won't know for a few weeks if she got into the college or not but I think she has a new favorite audition piece! Thanks again. The timing was PERFECT.

Beth S.



I was asking how I might get a hold of the sheet music for a few of your songs. More specifically the following song: I LAY MY ARMOR DOWN (this song just slays me every time I listen to it--no pun intended. One of these days I'll stop crying when I hear it; let me tell you, people tend to look at you strangely when you're crying to your iPod at the Gym).

S. H.


This is just a quick amusing note -- first, I love the title track of "This Ordinary Thursday", and just ordered the album -- looking forward to it! Second, the reason I'm writing, is that when I first pressed "play" on your website and turned up my speakers, it sounded normal, but after a moment -- just before the "someone practicing Bach" part, I heard a distinctly non-ordinary electronica sort of background accompaniment. I thought "man, this is some weird but interesting sort of music!"

"This Ordinary Thursday" got weirder and weirder as I listened, and the electronica sort of elements stopped blending so well into the background and got louder, until I finally realized that iTunes was on in the background, quietly playing the track "God Bless" by the band Lamb.

It was a surreal experience... I definitely prefer the normal version now that I had a chance to hear your piece by itself! :)

Eric N.

I Am Not Procrastinating

I told myself I couldn't go to bed until I wrote this. Here it is, almost midnight, and I'm totally procrastinating, which seems to be my word of the month. After Clash of the Choirs it's just taken me a while to get back in the swing of things, and now that American Idol is on the air I think my work ethic has completely gone out the window.

That said, I have two fun projects in the works.

1. I have new collaborators. One of the hardest things about moving away from New York (and it's been two years now) was leaving behind my writing partners. With all my NY collaborators, we talked about writing long-distance, working on line, scheduling phone meetings once a week, visiting in person as often as possible. It's worked, but it's been tough, and I'm not nearly as prolific as I was a few years ago. Maybe that also has something to do with the little person running around my house or the Broadway musical my husband is developing, I don't know, but the combination of things has made writing time much more scarce in the course of my day than it used to be. When I do get back to New York, I tend to lock myself in a room with one or the other of my writing partners, and we hash out something that makes me heartsick for the songs we don't have a chance to write. And then I get on a plane and come home. For a city filled with creative people, LA can be awfully lonely.

Those of you who know my album can see how much fun I've had writing with Faye Greenberg. (She wrote lyrics on "I Lay My Armor Down.") Faye and I have knocked out a few other songs (well, okay, one other song), and most recently she and her husband David Lawrence brought me in on one of those projects that could only have happened in Los Angeles. A movie musical. Faye and David wrote songs for both "High School Musical" (maybe you've heard of it?) and "High School Musical 2," and because of those successes they're now working as music supervisors on other projects. Yay for them -- and yay for me, because I got a writing opportunity out of it. Their new project is called "The American Mall" and I came on board to write two songs -- one in collaboration with Faye and David themselves and one with a new guy they assigned to write with me. His name is Eric Pressly, and I have the feeling that working with him is going to change me. In a good way.

My roommate back in college, Lauren, used to say I had absolutely no sense of pop culture. She, of course, was completely in the know and was always astounded when I couldn't sing the lyrics to whatever was on the radio at the time. Back then I was a real classical music type, practicing the piano for long hours every day, spending my free time at the music school in the library or in a practice room working out Bach or Rachmaninoff. I know she must be amazed that after all this time I've wound up living in Hollywood, working on reality TV shows and writing songs for MTV movies. That's why the fact that I'm working with Eric is so great. He's totally a pop guy. He's worked with Belinda Carlisle, Sheryl Crow, Stevie Nicks, and Cher (for God's sake CHER!), and he kind of fills in the gaps in my pop music head. You can imagine what our collaborations are like. I come in with Broadway-kinds of songs, and he pops them up. This should be fun. Watch for our tune in The American Mall, which is the vampy song for the bad girl, and if we're lucky, you'll also get to hear our two songs in the next movie which we're just starting now to write. Just wait until my college roomie Lauren reads this. She will flip.

2. And back to good old familiar Broadway, I've been asked to learn the conductor's book for WICKED. Which means I am going to conduct WICKED here in Los Angeles. I am told I will be the first female conductor they've had in the seven years since the show opened, and I think that will be very cool. So if you happen to drive past my house right now and you hear the very loud strains of "WIIIIII-CCCKKKKEEEEEEDDDDD..... (funny chord)....", you'll know it's just me practicing. From Rachmaninoff to Schwartz. Oh, how the times have changed.

G'night.

Summing it All Up

I've had lots of excuses for failing to post anything new in the last six weeks. The biggest one is that in order to work on CLASH OF THE CHOIRS (for NBC -- did you watch it?) I had to sign a confidentiality agreement stating I wouldn't go around talking about the show. And since that project took up every hour of my every single day from Thanksgiving to Christmas, there wasn't much I could write about, and even if there had been, there wasn't time to write, anyway. I don't know if I've ever worked on something that consumed so much of my time. Truly, I woke up and checked my email, then started dealing with things for the show until my husband finally screamed at me to log off and come to bed somewhere around midnight. In the midst of all that, somehow the Christmas tree got decorated, the presents got wrapped and the babysitter made a fortune.

I'm going to share just a little bit about the show and specifically my role in it. The show was a reality TV competition featuring five stars who went back to their hometowns and each hand-picked 20 singers to form a choir. Those five choirs rehearsed (in five different cities) for 40 hours each and then came to NY and competed in a sing-off on national TV. The winning celebrity got $250,000 donated to his chosen local charity, and the others each got $50,000 donated to their chosen charities, as well. (Click here to see some YouTube footage.) I was the assistant music director, which means I handled all things musical from choosing the songs (along with a team of several other people from network execs to choirmasters to celebrity managers) to supervising the choirmasters and their arrangements to conducting the orchestra (in rehearsal only -- the magnificent Nigel Wright conducted them for the actual TV shows) to overseeing audio for the TV broadcast.

What I loved about the show was how very much in the spirit of the holiday it was. Everything was in the spirit of good will and good fun, and the attention paid to the charities was lovely and sincere. Nobody said anything mean-spirited (well, at least not on the air). Also, there's something extremely bonding about groups of people that are thrown together in intense situations for short amounts of time. (Those of us in the theater know this to be true.) Those choirs were made up of unlikely mixes of people and I'm told several of them are still very close. The winning team, led by Nick Lachey, has been asked to perform several future engagements -- a Cincinnati Reds game, a corporate event, and even possibly singing back up on Nick's next album-- so I get the sense they're going to continue to be a choir. Hopefully the others will do the same.

I made some great friendships with some great musicians and I'd like particularly to draw attention to the five choirmasters who did fantastic behind-the-scenes work making real music and celebrating the choral arts with their choirs of amateurs. Take a look at these five diverse talents.

Kim Burse, for Kelly Rowland

Gary Eckert, for Blake Shelton

Steve Zegree, for Nick Lachey

John Stanley, for Patti LaBelle

Shelton Becton, for Michael Bolton

You'd be lucky to cross paths with any of these fine musicians.

So, the biggest stress of my life, aside from the usual stress of working at such a high level of pressure on such tight deadlines, is that the day I arrived in NYC to start working on the live shows, I left my computer in the back of a cab. The first wave of panic was the "how-am-I-ever-going-to-get-my-work-done" kind of panic, followed quickly by the "oh-my-God-everything-I've-ever-written-is-on-that-computer" panic and the third and most lasting panic was the "what-if-someone-tries-to-steal-my-identity-and-wipe-out-my-bank-account" kind of panic.

So, the production rented me a computer to get through the week, the hard-drive backups I've been doing at home seem to have worked, and the fraud alert I placed on all my accounts has so far had no activity. So my best hope is that whoever found my computer wiped it clean and gave it to himself for Christmas. Lucky me -- I had to buy another one. My friend Marcy Heisler tells me to enjoy the "clean slate" feeling, and that's a good way to wrap up this last post of 2007. Look forward to your clean slate of the new year, and for God's sake -- ALWAYS BACK UP YOUR WORK!

Happy New Year, everyone, and thanks for reading.

Georgia

Giving Thanks

I'm heading out tomorrow to start the Thanksgiving holiday week and as always, the last day before you go on a trip becomes a nightmare of organizing and trying not to forget anything important. I'm nursing a cold, too, which didn't help the singing issue I talked about last week, but hey -- the concert went well and I got a little bit closer to overcoming stage fright. Just before I went onstage in Santa Monica this week, one of the volunteers said to me, "Do you get nervous before these things?" I thought, "Well, I was doing a pretty good job at avoiding it this time, but now that you've brought it up...." Hmmph.

Broadway's dark. The writers in LA are on strike. I suppose Thanksgiving week is the time to say outloud that I'm grateful I'm working on a reality TV show. Who knew? I'll tell you more about CLASH OF THE CHOIRS as soon as they'll let me, but if you're in New Haven, Philly, Cincy, Houston, or Oklahoma City, you've probably already heard about it. And by this time next month, you will definitely have heard about it. Especially since there will be nothing else to watch on TV.

Here's a photo from the concert I did at the Madison Theater at Santa Monica College this week. That's Tim Christensen (bass) and Shannon Ford (drums) flanking me in the back, and Susan Egan and Kevin Earley sitting in front. If you put a little bubble over my head it would be saying, "Hurry up and take the pictures because I have to figure out what I'm going to talk about in fifteen minutes when the concert starts." But, as always, I'm glad someone was there taking photos to document the event, even though I might have been a little bit cranky as it was happening.

Since we're doing photos, here are two from the master class I taught at the Orange County High School of the Arts. In the first photo, that's Hannah Solow, Lamont O'Neil, Robert Anderson and Nina Herzog. And the second photo is everyone who was in the room while I was working with the first four people. That's an amazing program they've got there, and if it weren't an hour and a half from my house I'd be trying to get my two-year-old daughter on the wait list right now.I've been so lucky to get to see inside lots of fantastic musical theater training programs this year -- both in the US and the UK -- and I'm excited about the interest there is from young people in the future of Broadway musicals. Now, if we could just get the lights back on in the theaters. I know I sound flip, but it's really a problem. In case you haven't been following it, the Broadway stagehands union has been on strike for a week, and even though talks resumed this weekend, they didn't solve the issues at hand. Now it looks like the theaters will be dark over Thanksgiving week -- which means all those people in for the Macy's parade... well, I can't even think about it. Fingers crossed.

I'm gonna keep this one short because I've got to pack, but as this very special holiday approaches I want to thank all of you for reading my blog and supporting my music. This has been a big year, and I've got even bigger things in store for next year, but none of it would be possible if no one cared about the music. So, hey -- Happy Thanksgiving. I'm thankful for you.

Don't Worry That It's Not Good Enough For Anyone Else To Hear... Just Sing

I'm off this evening to play and sing a few songs in Susan Egan's "Broadway at Pomona" concert at Cal Poly. Those of you who know me personally know that I can play for anyone else without even a quickening of my pulse, but the minute I'm asked to sing in public I get so nervous I feel like I might pass out before I make it to the stage. It wasn't always this way. It used to be worse.

One year in college, I got so freaked out during my piano juries (which are like final exams for musicians) that I lost track of where I was in the middle of a Bach fugue. It's exactly a performer's worst nightmare -- forgetting your lyrics, forgetting the next chord, forgetting where you are in the music. You might as well be naked on stage. So, I did what any composition major would do. I made something up. I just improvised in the style of Bach until I got myself back to some place I recognized, and then I played out the piece to its end. My piano teacher's jaw hit the floor, I'm sure. Everyone in the room EXCEPT ME knew how it was supposed to go. The comments I got on my jury sheets (which ultimately constitute your grade for a semester of piano lessons) said things like "very creative" and "who knew?" Ugh. If I had been considering a career as a concert pianist, it went out the window that afternoon.

When I'm coaching singers on their audition material, I tell them what I believe: that if you're truly acting your text, if you're talking to the right person and your objective is clear and you've done your homework in terms of vocal technique, then you won't be nervous. Or, at least, your nerves will be manageable. I think it's part of why actors say they're never nervous when they're actually doing the show -- only when they're auditioning to be in the show. It's all about where you are inside your head, and if you're fully connected as your character and you're trying to accomplish something, you don't have room for the self-criticism that might otherwise fill your brain. Trouble is, when I'm singing my own songs, my character is usually me and my objective is to sing my songs well enough that someone might be interested in buying my album after the show. You can see why I prefer to leave it to the professionals.

That said, every time I sing in public people tell me that there's nothing like hearing a composer sing her own work, and having seen other composers do the same thing, I know it to be true. I had one very very very famous musical theater composer (not my husband) tell me that he takes drugs before he has to sing in front of an audience -- and then he told me where I could order the ... we'll call it an herbal downer ... online. And I know there are other songwriters who simply won't do it -- though they confess to be just as nervous sitting in the audience knowing that people are listening to their songs and judging them accordingly. Oh, it's so hard to be a performer. Why on earth do we do it?

If you're in LA and you want to come witness me torturing myself in public, I'm performing with Susan Egan and Kevin Earley in Santa Monica on Saturday, November 17th at 7 pm. I know I've mentioned it before, but the details I can give you now are that this is only a 99-seat house and the only way to make a reservation is to call and put your name on a list. If this thing sells out (and since it's FREE it won't really sell out, but you know what I mean), hopefully it will lead to me having a kind of residency at this theater -- a standing gig maybe once a month where I bring in special guests to sing my music and other fun theater tunes. So, let's overwhelm them with calls so they know that there's an interest in LA for contemporary musical theater. Especially mine. Call 310-434-3414 and tell them how many seats you want. The address is The Stage at Santa Monica/Second Space, Santa Monica Blvd and 11th Street, Santa Monica, CA 90401.

All right. I'm off to warm up. And drink some tea. And figure out what to wear. And completely freak myself out. Here we go again.

Five Announcements

1. LAUREN KENNEDY's album Lauren Kennedy: Here and Nowis available! You can order the album today exclusively from PSClassics, but the official release is November 6th, at which point it will be available everywhere. Look for track #5, "My Lifelong Love," which is mine. I have several friends with songs on the album, too, so it's guaranteed to be a fun and interesting listen. Watch for it on iTunes in a few weeks, too.

2. I just got word that the goal for the published songbook for This Ordinary Thursday: The Songs of Georgia Stitt will be available mid-December, but they're already taking pre-orders at Amazon. Very exciting!

3. Thanks to conductor Judith Clurman, I've got another choral piece coming out for publication! This piece is called "De Profundis" and was premiered by International Orange Chorale in San Francisco under the direction of Jeremy Faust. After that, Judy Clurman conducted it with a choir at Girton College at Cambridge in England, and now it's to be published in her series with Hal Leonard. YAY! Watch for more details here. Unlike my other choral pieces, this one is a cappella SATB, but like some of the other choral pieces, the text is again by one of my favorite poets, Christina Rossetti.

4. Finally, I'm excited to announce that for the rest of the year I'm going to be working as the Assistant Music Director of a new NBC TV show called CLASH OF THE CHOIRS. It will air as a special holiday program for four nights the week before Christmas, and it will feature five celebrities and their choirs in a fantastically competitive but good-spirited "sing-off."

5. Coming up in the weeks ahead, I'm performing a few songs at Cal Poly Pomona University with Susan Egan on November 8th (info here), I'm doing a master class at the Orange County High School of the Arts (OCHSA) on November 9th, and I'm doing a FREE concert at Santa Monica College on November 17th. Check my website for more details on all these appearances!

If you didn't read last week's blog, take a look. I'd love your input. Thanks!