Sing Me A Happy Song

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

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.

Harmonious

I wrote earlier about how 900 voices were going to sing my choral music in a concert last week. Well, they did. And I was there. It was an astounding event. The choir was too big for the stage, so they sat in the audience seats at Disney Hall and the actual audience was relegated to those nose-bleed seats above them and the section behind the stage where you usually get a nice view of the conductor's face but the entire orchestra is facing the other direction. That's where I sat. Front and center. Facing the choir. It was glorious. Imagine being at a ball game where everyone is singing the Star Spangled Banner, but they're beautifully musical, refined, harmonized, and nuanced. Hee Hee Hee. Or if you can't imagine it, take a look at the LA Times photos here. (In photos 2 and 3 of 6, I'm pretty sure that's my music they're holding.)

Here's some video footage of the event. If you listen to the last five or six seconds of sound on the clip, while Jessica Hernandez is talking, you'll hear the words "the promise of light" ending on an open fifth. Maybe it's not the most fabulous music in the whole piece, but there ya go. That's mine.

I've learned that in the classical world, credit often only goes to the composer and not the lyricist, but I was still surprised to discover that Len Schiff's name wasn't in the program. The conductor did mention the "gorgeous poetry" from the stage, but I offer my public apologies to Len for something that was completely out of my control. You should all know how gifted a wordsmith he is, and you should all buy copies of the music so he can cry all the way to the bank.

Two reviews.

High School Students sing at Disney Hall
by Francisco Vara-Orta, The Homeroom (blog), The Los Angeles Times
Wonder what the future of this country sounds like? Harmonious. At least if you judge by the 1,000 voices of high school students gathered in Disney Hall downtown today for a choral festival. Row after row of black-tie tuxedos and vibrant dresses and gowns filled the seats in the modernist hall. The teenagers have practiced for months to master songs centuries old from countries throughout the world. Vivaldi, Astor Piazaolla, Georgia Stitt, and Gabriel Fauré were the musical favorites of the crowd, sung without instruments or occasionally a piano.

Hundreds join in song at High School Choir Festival
by Francisco Vara-Orta, The Los Angeles Times
Friday's festival, which was free to the public, marked the end of a yearlong process of applications, auditions and practices for those hoping to make the cut. The songs of Antonio Vivaldi, Argentina's Astor Piazzolla, L.A.-based composer Georgia Stitt and France's Gabriel Fauré took months to master. Most of the set centered on religious-themed works about faith, Scripture, devotion and gratitude -- with some pieces dating back centuries.

The Southland In the Springtime

I got a fan email yesterday from a girl who currently lives in the small town in West Tennessee where I grew up. According to her myspace profile, she hates the town (as did I), loves Broadway (as did I), and can't wait until she graduates from high school and has a chance to try to make it in New York (as did I). She asked me if I remembered a girl named Lee who was in school with me, and I wrote her back that yes, I remembered Lee. Turns out Lee is her MOTHER, and the whole thing blew my mind because I suppose that means if I had played my cards differently, this girl who was writing me a fan letter and reminding me so much of myself at that age could actually have been my daughter.

A few weeks earlier I got a Facebook message from a guy I knew in high school who was a couple years older than I was. He had lived in my neighborhood and my sister and I used to ride our bikes around the big circular driveway that led to his family's house. Back in my high school days I thought he was too popular to know who I was, and I thought he was probably trouble anyway. So we were never really friends. But then one summer after I graduated, I was home, and he was home, and the older versions of ourselves seemed to have more in common than the younger versions of ourselves did. We hung out that summer and then went our separate ways again. Hearing from him this month has been super interesting, and thrilling in a deeply emotional way, as if the 14-year old girl in me was finally being acknowledged.

I don't spend a lot of time talking about the South, or claiming my southern heritage, or waxing nostalgic about the place where I grew up. While I was there, I really hated it. I spent a lot of time in my room -- and this was long before we all had computers and chatrooms and text messages to keep us from ever really being alone. I read books. I listened to music. I practiced the piano. I wrote in my journal. I made grandiose plans for what I was going to do when I finally got to New York. Or Europe. Or college. Or anywhere where the people "got" me and didn't make me feel like an outsider for wanting the things that were as big as the things I wanted.

I did stay in the south for college, but my first job post-graduation was on the east coast and I didn't look back for about fifteen years. But lately, I don't know, I guess I've been kind of missing it. About two weeks ago I made a trip to New Orleans and visited some family down there, and I was struck with how familiar it all was -- the accent, the food, the pace, the manners, the religion, the family, the scent of spring flowers in bloom -- even though it hasn't been my world for most of my adult life. I don't really think I'm a Southerner anymore. But I'll admit that I'm starting to understand its appeal. When I think about the things that I want for my own daughter, having a big circular driveway in the neighborhood and being able to spend the afternoon riding your bike around it doesn't sound half bad.


PS Happy Birthday, Emily!

News from MTV

You may have known that I worked in reality TV, but did you know I was an expert in the field?

The task ahead this week is writing out accompaniment for songs I've composed and even performed but never bother to write down on paper. Eerrrgghhh, it's a tedious job, filled with tiny decision after tiny decision. But with so many performances coming up and so many people learning music without me in the room to tell them how it all goes, it seemed like time to get all those ducks in a row.

Coming up in May, we're doing the reading of The Water that I wrote about earlier, and then two weeks later (on May 26th, to be exact) I've got a concert at Birdland in New York. It hasn't officially been announced, but in addition to performing the Alphabet City Cycle live (with Kate Baldwin and Victoria Paterson, just like on these recordings), I'm premiering yet another a new song cycle and I'll be trotting out some of the old familiar songs that I do at every concert. I started putting the evening together and realized that the list of songs I was drawing up looked exactly like the list of songs I had performed at my Birdland concert in 2004, so I figured it was time to write some new tunes. Which I did. Look for performances from Keith Byron Kirk, Lauren Kennedy, Elizabeth Salem, Jennifer Simard, Tony Holds and... maybe even a few others. We shall see. It's still over a month away. But if you wanted to pick up tickets, you would do it here.

And finally, just cuz I'm a mom.... don't you wish you always felt this happy?

LA Choir Festival featuring THE PROMISE OF LIGHT

If you've been reading my blog for a while, you're aware of the fact that I also write choral music. Perhaps you recall the blog entry from about a year ago where I talked about my newly published piece, "The Promise Of Light," which I wrote with lyricist Len Schiff.

Well, the music director of the LA Master Chorale, Grant Gershon, chose that very piece as part of the repertoire for the 19th Annual High School Choir Festival, and the NINE HUNDRED VOICE CHOIR will be performing the piece at Disney Hall in two weeks. Here's the info for the Friday, April 18th concert, and here's what's on the program.

The Promise of Light, Georgia Stitt
Cantique de Jean Racine, Gabriel Fauré
Liber Tango, Astor Piazolla, arr. Oscar Escalda
Gloria: Quoniam tu solus Sanctus, Antonio Vivaldi
Gloria: Cum Sancto Spiritu, Antonio Vivaldi
Witness, Jack Halloran

I mean, COME ON.

If you're in any way involved in the event, write and let me know how it's going. I think this is very exciting.

Making THE WATER

WE WON! I'm so happy to be able to announce here that the original musical I've been writing for ... oh, EVER... has just won a contest in Los Angeles. Years, truly YEARS, after I had an idea to write a show about a town that survives a flood, I find myself still working on it, rewriting things that we've never quite gotten right. That's what I was doing this afternoon -- rewriting that damn cemetery scene AGAIN -- and I figured maybe it was time to post about it here.

A little history. Back in the late 90s, after I finished grad school at NYU but before too much else had happened, I met this pair of writers that I really liked. Jeff Hylton and Tim Werenko had hired me to music direct a show of theirs at this black box space in SoHo, and at the time I was just starting out in the city. I made most of my living by music directing a children's theater so being hired to work with adults was a real step up for me. It's funny to think about it now because it was really such a different time in my life. I don't think I even owned a piano yet, and I was managing to give coachings out of my apartment using an electronic keyboard and these tiny little speakers. (There will be karmic payback for that, someday, I'm sure.) But I was happy to have the job and the credit and I enjoyed being in rehearsal with these people who were smart and funny and completely inappropriate at every possible opportunity.

My friend Clay had mentioned an essay to me that was written by John McPhee and published in his book The Control of Nature about how the US Army Corps of Engineers tried (in the 1950s) to divert the flow of the Mississippi River for the purposes of flood control. (This was pre-Katrina, of course, and none of us knew how prescient the writer was.) The book description on amazon.com says "The Control of Nature is John McPhee's bestselling account of places where people are locked in combat with nature." I thought, 'now there's a subject I could spend years considering: man vs. nature.' I was (and still am) particularly interested in how each new generation tries to come up with a plan to beat Mother Nature at her own game and each generation uniquely fails. You plug up this leak over here and suddenly there's water springing forth over there, unexpectedly and completely out of your control. What a great idea for a musical!

Unfortunately, musicals are built on CHARACTERS, not IDEAS, and so it took us a few years of writing about nature and floods and damns to find out that our story was actually about a few (fictional) people in this small (fictional) town in Missouri which is built on the (fictional) Onkeeton River. We wrote a draft of it that was read at the Tribeca Performing Arts Center. We did rewrites. Based on those rewrites, we got a workshop at TheatreWorks in Palo Alto. I remember director Robert Kelley pulling his hair out trying to get all those people on and off stage for the opening number. (It's been cut.) We learned so much about our show there, and as soon as the workshop was over we did another set of rewrites. Based on those rewrites, we got our first full production at the University of Michigan, under the direction of Brent Wagner. He was a godsend to us -- a champion of the piece who was willing to spend weeks rehearsing it and untold hours of his time asking us challenging questions. ("When Rebecca and Will enter, how long have they been together? When Maddy says "quite bright," what is she seeing?") The cast and crew at Michigan pulled off a gorgeous production. Check out some of their photos as well as a program from the performances here. Really, they're lovely and you get a real sense of the way the show looked.

Of course, we came home from that production and did an unbelievably huge rewrite that took the bigger portion of a year to complete. And now, at last, we have a new (again) version of the show. We've re-written all of the big numbers in the show and several of the solos and duets. The new version is the one we submitted a few months ago to the Academy of New Musical Theater in Los Angeles (ANMT) and they chose our piece as the first prize winner of their Search for New Voices in American Musical Theatre. Our next reading is scheduled for May and there is to be a concert presentation of the show in Los Angeles this fall.

So, today, I was back at the piano, going through the score, making sure everything that's in the new script is properly notated in the score. It would really be great if this opportunity was the thing that allowed our show finally to build some momentum. It would be even greater if this opportunity solidified a relationship for us with a director who had bold ideas about where to take it next. It would be even greater than that if this opportunity leads to a full production and we can finally see our show with the diverse and heartbreaking cast we always intended to showcase. However, if there's anything I've learned through the experience of writing this show, it's that some things are just beyond our human control.

Notes in Heels

I miss London. I do. Apparently Lauren Kennedy gave a kick-ass performance of my song "My Lifelong Love" over there a few days ago and I got all kinds of phone calls and text messages and Facebook postings about how great she was. I was sad to have missed it. And I will be sad again on Sunday, April 6th when the Brits pull off a concert at the Duchess Theatre in Covent Garden that features a whole heckuva lot of my music. I will be in Los Angeles at the time, but I'm hoping some of you who live east of the Atlantic Ocean might take it upon yourselves to drop by and spy for me. Here are the details:

Sunday 6 April 2008 - Duchess Theatre, Covent Garden

Notes from New York returns to its roots with a typically tantalising twist to present Notes in Heels, a show profiling the work of Georgia Stitt, Jenny Giering and Zina Goldrich, three flourishing female stalwarts of New York’s eternally ebullient musical theatre scene, starring Notes regulars Julie Atherton and Paul Spicer, alongside newcomers Selina Chilton, Stuart Matthew Price and Amy Pemberton.

Continuing the Notes from New York philosophy of presenting hitherto unheard work in front of an appreciative West End audience, Notes in Heels will bring the extensive repertoire of these fearsomely talented female composers together for the first time in an evening featuring a multitude of UK and European premieres. Adored by musical theatre enthusiasts in the States, each has a truly individual talent and distinctive identity to rival any of their more renowned male counterparts.

To book online click here or call the Box Office on 0844 412 4659

PRINTED SHEET MUSIC HAS ARRIVED!

IT'S HERE!!!! Click here to purchase a copy from amazon.com, or pick up your own copy at any music store that carries vocal selections and song folios from the musical theater. (Colony Music in NY, Hollywood Sheet Music in LA, Dress Circle in London. Anyone seen it anywhere else yet?) I've got my own personal copy in my hands, and I can't wait to hear from those of you who've got yours. I think it's taking a few days to trickle into the stores, but now that I've seen it I can't wait to share! YAY!

Starstruck

Chris Gorham and Becki Newton from UGLY BETTY







Director Jason Alexander had some sitcom in the 90s... can't remember what it was called.







I'm sorry... is that Dick Van Dyke?






And yes, that's Zachary Levi, who plays CHUCK on the NBC show called CHUCK. I think I love him.