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.

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.