On Set: Week after Week

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

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

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)

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

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

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

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

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

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.