Thanks for purchasing sheet music!

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

Australia Concerts in March

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

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


Visit:
www.yourmanagement.biz
for more information!

A Master Class for the Writer

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

BIG RED SUN prepares for NAMT

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

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

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

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

Notes from the Great American Songbook

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

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

It's a timeless alliance, Words and Music, a pairing behind every great musical since the first, and it's the same with RTC's current crowd-pleasing production Hello! My Baby. Last week we introduced you to Cheri Steinkellner, the mind behind the words of our standout musical; this week we're proud to introduce Georgia Stitt, H!MB's talented composer. 

Georgia received her M.F.A. in Musical Theater Writing from New York University and her B.Mus. in Music Theory and Composition from Vanderbilt University, where she graduated magna cum laude. She is a recipient of the ASCAP Frederick Loewe Fellowship, the Harold Arlen Award, and the Sue Brewer Award for excellence in music composition. Georgia lives in Los Angeles (and sometimes New York) with her husband, composer/lyricist Jason Robert Brown, and their two daughters.

________________________

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



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



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



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



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



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



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



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



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



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

© 2009 Rubicon Theatre Company

Radio Show Goodness

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

HELLO! MY BABY

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

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

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

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

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

Alternatives: The Legal Way to Find Sheet Music

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

1. www.newmusicaltheatre.com

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

2. www.musicaltheatrearts.com

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

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

Thanks!

The Copyright Debate Continues

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

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

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

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

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

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

Now what?

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

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

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

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

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

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

and finally,

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

Thanks for engaging in the debate.

PPC Benefit

June 12, 2010

7:30 PM

Pasadena Presbyterian Church

585 E. Colorado Blvd.

Pasadena, CA 91101

626-793-2191

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

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

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

JASON ROBERT BROWN
and
GEORGIA STITT

in concert TOGETHER

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

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

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

For church members: $15 tickets available at PPC

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

www.ppc.net