Last August, I music directed and composed some music for a show that comedian/performer Jamil Ellis has been developing for quite awhile about stereotyping and racial tropes, called The Magical Negro Speaks. It was part of FringeNYC and was selected for FringeNYC's encore series and was a fantastic experience.
Today I'm reading some articles and whose show do I see mentioned in a Slate article on race and the magical negro trope? That guy, obviously. Check it out!
And you can check it out here. It was me, video game designer/composer Blake Reynolds, and our lovely musicologist hosts Scott and Kurt talking about melodic development, motivic development, and the curse of the "ding dong" melody.
I am pleased to announce that some songs I wrote with Kevin Wanzor will be featured in a brand new program at CCM's Musical Theatre Program that pairs up students with new musical theatre songs written by current songwriting teams. Check out Andre Catrini describing the exciting new program here at the Crazytown blog.
The Anonymous People, as the headline indicates, just won Best Feature Documentary at the 2014 Prism Awards. As well it should - it's a well-made, moving film about addiction. You can purchase the documentary on Itunes here.
From their About:
With the release of The Anonymous People documentary film, Faces & Voices of Recovery and our partners are collaborating to launch a new campaign, MANYFACES1VOICE.ORG to engage and mobilize the newly emerging constituency to transform public attitudes and policies affecting people seeking or in recovery from addiction to alcohol and other drugs. Whether behind the scenes or on the front line, every recovery voice is needed.
I'm honored to have been a very, very small part of this film, having contributed some assistant scoring for Brendan Berry's awesomely subtle soundtrack.
SUNY Purchase's precollege music programs are about to enter their fourth year, and we've got a lot of fun stuff planned that I wanted to share!
These programs are of course the Songwriting Workshop, Creative Vocal Lab, and Vocal Intensive. Songwriting runs from June 30 to July 11, Creative Vocal Lab from July 14 to the 25th, and Vocal Intensive from July 28 to August 8.
The first big announcement we have is that we have a new lead instructor for Songwriting Workshop, Mr. Tom Rosato. This guy does everything: he's a rock/pop bassist, drummer, keyboardist, and guitarist, he's even been a jazz pianist. But what he really does is produce & engineer. As front of house for the Bard Avon theatre he's mixed everyone from Ben Folds to The Temptations; as a producer he's worked on some of my favorite recent recordings, and recently we had delightful experience of making the Twisted: Twisted record together, which was a blast. In fact, just about anything that's well-mixed on my website was probably mixed by him. We've yet to find a genre he can't handle.
He's helping us to make the program even more hands-on. We're talking guided collaborations, group recordings, performance workshops, lyric-writing labs, etc, with more in-studio recording and songwriting challenges than ever before. We'll be analyzing a combination of classic songs and modern hits, figuring out what makes them work, and creating our own. This program is consistently the most popular and well-attended of all Purchase's summer programs, and it's a real hoot.
Other course instructors include myself, Evan Feist (scroll down for his redonk credits) and Blake Reynolds (who has created some incredible orchestral video game scores, and understands pop music like nobody's business), plus some other awesome peeps.
Once you've learned how to write songs, ditch the instrument and head over to...
In Creative Vocal Lab, singers aren't just interpreters - they are songwriters, collaborators, and arrangers, who learn how to turn the sounds in their head into fully-realized music. Students compose melodies, harmonize, create back-up parts & basslines, and lay down drums - with nothing but their voices. No instruments, no sheet music.
A little about my co-teacher for this: Evan Feist was an assistant arranger for the soundtrack to Pitch Perfect, an arrangement editor for NBC's The Sing-Off (seasons 3 & 4), a vocal coach for NBC's The Voice, and he will be providing vocal percussion for the upcoming season of Glee. He also has two master's degrees in music from Columbia University, and generally knows his stuff and is amazing at getting you to know it too.
Singers create a cappella ensembles and learn how to make their own songs & their own arrangements. After two weeks, we have enough original material for an hourlong concert. We also have a really collaborative vibe, and students who attend this camp typically remain friends for a long time afterward - it's a great group.
"Hot Laundromat," an improvised vocal jam from 2012's Creative Vocal Lab
After you've spent two weeks using your voice in collaborative writing & improvising ensembles, develop your skills as a soloist (once again with myself and Mr. Feist) in:
Purchase Vocal Intensive focuses on developing the vocalist as a solo performer, interpreter, and artist. This isn't a course in any specific style or tradition of singing (operatic, musical theatre, rock/pop) - the skills you develop in this program can and will be applicable to performing in any genre, and you won't have to worry about losing your own personal style. In the past we've done everything: country, alt-rock, showtunes, jazz, even some opera.
In two activity-filled weeks, singers go in-depth with vocal production techniques, song analysis and preparation, audition strategies, acting and performance skills, and sight-singing. Students will leave the program with a diverse repertoire of artistic tools that allow them to deliver dynamic interpretations, take creative risks, and sculpt active, focused performances.
Also, it's really, really fun. (But hey, we're biased.) It's smaller than the other two courses, with lots of personalized attention and song selection.
And we don't have video of it yet! But we will. I promise.