(from the back) Richard Sullivan, Paige O'Hara, and me

For the last several months (and I may be sugar-coating that when I say only “several”), I’ve been arranging music for a new musical about Judy Garland. Now, I’m probably the last person you might expect to take on such a mammoth task about a celebrity who died some 15 years or so before I was even born, but the project continues to surprise me, challenge me… and take me to Vegas!

Last weekend included a trip there to meet with actress and singer Paige O’Hara. You may recognize her from her role as “Belle” in Disney’s Beauty and the Beast. Now, I’m not much of a pianist, but I did manage to tickle the old ivories well enough to pound through a few of the tunes in an effort to find her best range for our songs. Paige has been very enthusiastic about our show as Judy Garland was a huge influence on her growing up. There’s a chance she will star in the show once we get to the production stage so cross your fingers.

Sitting next to her on the piano bench while she belted out Richard’s melodies to my humble arrangements was a really cool experience. Paige is an amazing vocalist and it was truly an incredible hour to work with such a seasoned artist.

After we got back to the Strip, we took in a wonderful dinner at the AquaKnox restaurant and front row seats to The Blue Man Group. A little advice: don’t get front row seats to The Blue Man Group. Your clothes will thank you later.

The first draft of Memento is complete. It’s an interesting piece — far different from the likes of Turkey in the Straw. First of all, it’s a much more lyrical piece; that is, it’s way slow. At a dotted quarter note equals 48, this baby clocks in right around 7 minutes totalling 89 measures.

Even though it’s probably classified as a “ballad,” it’s far from the warm and fuzzies we often hear. The word “memento” literally means “something that serves to warn or remind.” Musically, the piece is somewhat haunted by dissonance and an ascending 3-note motif. Its structure is, for the most part, classical:

INTRODUCTION
THEME A
THEME B
DEVELOPMENT
EPISODE
THEME A’
THEME B’
TRANSITION
CLIMAX
RESOLUTION 

–though its style is somewhat minimalist. That is, beginning in the Episode, a 16th note figure begins to add a mechanical motion to the piece that, without it, would resist any forward, flowy, flowery motion. I think there is something profoundly beautiful about this “resistance to movement” within phrases. Two examples I can think of that epitomize this concept are Elgar’s Nimrod from the Enigma Variations and John Mackey’s Turning. 

I’m extremely anxious to hear it. It’s always a struggle during this part of the process. As a composer, you live a piece for months — you love parts of it early on, but the more you live with it and after 100 times of hearing the computer play it back for you, the more expected, predictable, and plain it sounds to you. It’s easy to let it get to your head and go crazy (especially with MIDI), but the promise of real, breathing humans is always something to look forward to. During a first reading, it’s always incredibly obvious what works and what needs revision.

Hopefully the revisions will be things like “put in missing dynamic markings” or “rescore trumpets down an octave” and not “rewrite” or “cut half the piece.”

…are you thinking what I’m thinking?

This afternoon, Linh invited me to the Tempe Tardeada Festival where she and the other members of the ASU Latin Dance Team were to dance in honor of today’s celebration of Hispanic culture.

But first, the Miss Arizona Runner-Up sang an arrangement of “God Bless America” backed up by — oh, yes — a children’s choir. 

I’ll apologize right now: I just bought Adobe Lightroom so forgive me if all of the photos are way too over-processed. I just can’t help myself; they just look so cool! 

It’s been a while since I’ve seen Linh dance. Watching them, I grew vaguely nostalgic of when she conned me into taking Latin Salsa 1 a few semesters ago. It was a lot of fun and probably the hardest thing I’ve ever had to learn, but I think it’s better left to those who actually look sexy moving their bodies in unbelievably awkward ways. 

Salsa, merengue, cha-cha! Okay, enough of me talking. Here are some great action shots! 

For the past two months, I’ve been working on adapting a more lyrical piece that I wrote for a short film, Sitting, into a more lyrical piece for concert band. After orchestrating a direct transcription of the piece, it sounded too “dream-waltzy” — fine for short, artsy film, but a little cheesy for a beefy band. So I scrapped the transciption and decided it would be more effective to start over and rethink the piece while still containing the melodic and motivic ideas in Sitting that kept haunting me. I’ve just completed a first draft of the piece and now I’m in the process of going back through it fixing orchestration and cleaning up the messy score, but I hope to have a final draft within the month. For a tease, below is a MIDI realization presented in MP3 format of the last two minutes of the piece **spoiler alert**.

Memento Demo