A couple years ago, a songwriter named Matthew Hardy approached me to orchestrate a new musical he was working on. It was commissioned by a state-backed arts organization in Warsaw, see, and was about a Polish classical pianist and politician named Paderewski who played a lot of Chopin, bedded a lot of women named Helen, and had a winery in California. Naturally, of course, Matthew thought the best way to represent the statesman’s life was as an epic rock musical.
Well…when you write it out like that it sounds pretty ridiculous, but the songs were really fun and Matthew’s a very charming guy so I said yes anyway. And the next thing we knew it had a workshop in New Orleans. And his script and score were, like, really good. And now it has an officially scheduled production for Fall of 2020 - in Poland!
Read all about this wild journey in the latest American Theatre.