We finished our auditions for HOMER IN CYBERSPACE last night and now there are actual people attached to all of the music I’ve been writing for the past nine months. We will try to have an informal reading of the all the music I have done to date in early March so the cast and crew get an idea of what is ahead.
I have 19 numbers finished so far and have 6 more to go. Tick tick tick tick tick tick tick….
———
I just got a cranky note from someone who auditioned saying that the cast has not been announced yet. I know that there were a few more call backs that Mel wanted to hear, and I imagine the names will be released very soon. I’ll post them here when it is official. I guess I should have said, the show is almost cast.
Mel, Jeremy, Chris, Dan, Dan and I heard auditions for HOMER IN CYBERSPACE yesterday from 10 to 4. Talented UCLA students from the Theater, and Music Theater programs delivered a monologue and sang one song — either a “long lined song” or a patter song “showing off your articulation.”
Mel sits through auditions all the time. I haven’t done it since Flashpoint/Stonewall in 1994. The majority delivered the SONG to me, and the monologue to Mel. A minority delivered them to some invisible person in a chair. I have to say it’s pleasurable to be sung to. Someone looking you right in the eyes and singing. I do it all the time when I’m singing this music to my pals, but no one does it to me. Cool karma.
There were two guys with warm voices, they’ll sound like Bing Crosby when they are older; four of the gals were Disney mezzos — the kind that flash big smiles and sing “It’s a Whole New World!” and blink; there were a couple of “bratty little girl” voices so popular these days; lots of very useful musical theater type voices that one normally hears in music theater shows across America; and then there were, what we all referred to as the “American Idol song” — musical platforms for showing off belting, and hysterical gospel embellishments (think Whitney Houston at the end of an up song).
One issue I was struck with in the monologues was that the actors chose for the most part highly moving situations, ones that can very easily veer toward crying. And once you do, you can lose the power and momentum of where you were going. The actor and singer have to let the audience cry. The ability to resist tears will cause the audience to cry even more.
The spasms involved in crying do NOT help singing or speaking. I’d love to learn what actors are taught to avoid crying. The only trick I’ve ever learned is the BREATHE deeply through your nose. The minute you stop breathing, it’s very easy to trigger tears.
We have another batch of auditions Monday evening, and then we will pick the cast and I’ll start adjusting the music by transposing or tweaking the melodies here and there. This is always an interesting part of the work, not unlike tailoring a garment for a specific body.
*
After three days in bed, spending a day auditioning walloped me back a few steps in my battle with Dr Flu. I went home and collapsed. Daniel got me some matzo ball soup from Greenblatts, I curled up and watched two movies, and then crashed. Four days of no composing, oh well. I’ll make the deadline. Six more songs by the end of March. Mel is very happy with everything I’ve been doing. Our emotional knock em dead song that is sung once by Penelope and in the closing scene as a love duet by Penelope and “O” is called “I Used to Be Beautiful.” Bring your hankies.
*
In that Dr Flu is refusing to leave, I’m going to have to miss seeing Peter Kazaras’s terrific UCLA Opera Workshop production of Verdi’s FALSTAFF. I saw it last week and loved it. But dude, where are the tunes? In this opera shows us how hip he can be with harmony, texture, counterpoint, and to hell with the memorable tunes. As I listen to Sondheim’s recent musicals, I keep wondering whether we are witnessing the Verdization of Stephen Sondheim? Isn’t this what happened in late JS Bach? and Beethoven? and Mahler? and, well, not Rossini.
*
Here is a very cool video of Jean Michel Jarre playing the laser harp in Rendez-Vous 2. The video is from the Twelve Dreams Of The Sun concert (Giza plateau, Cairo, Egypt).
I’ve been home with the flu for three days. Trying to stay in bed and make it go away. I watched lots of movies, an activity that keeps me still and in bed. Blogging and other sitting at the computer activities doesn’t help you get better I have found, so I’ve not posted too much lately.
Today, there are auditions for HOMER IN CYBERSPACE, so Mel and I will be sitting in a dark theater listening to auditions. I requested two Sondheim songs: “Not Getting Married” and “Johanna.” I am interested in hearing quick, projected, articulate diction, and people who know how to sing long lines. So, I’m still sick, but I can’t miss this, so I’m dragging my ass down to the theater to listen. Actually, I can’t wait.
I don’t think composers can really write constantly without taking breaks. To a person on the outside, these breaks might look like “goofing off” but we composers know that you have to recharge your batteries.
Swallow.
Take big breaths.
Stretch.
Take a nap.
Have a meal or a snack.
Take a walk.
Run an errand.
Surf the web.
Putter in the garden.
Make a phone call.
Take a shower/bath/hot tub.
Exercise.
DO SOMETHING DIFFERENT
That way, when you come back, you are refreshed and able to carry on from where you left off.
Another common composerly ailment is the “Hello?” syndrome. During one of my composerly “breaks” I’m hearing the passage I’m working on playing over and over, or I’m stuck and I keep taking long musical jumps in my mind to get into the next phrase, when all of a sudden, whoever you are with appears in your face and says “Hello? Roger, anyone home? Where’s Roger?” I snap back into “reality” realizing how far away I was.
Our occasional compositional obsessions and absent-mindedness are usually harmless. With any luck a composer has a good mate who knows this side of their lover. Debussy once said “music is a jealous mistress” and I know that to be true. I have advised my students in my so-called “commercials:”
“…if your boy or girlfriend ever gives you an ultimatum like “it’s either me or your music” always take the music. Don’t spend your life with someone who doesn’t love what you do and who you are.”
This “amateur” video drives me mildly crazy but it’s a unique entertainment and the process draws you in. This chap plays neither the piano nor drums. Does that mean that he is not musical? Heavens no. Computers now make making music quite simple for the so-called “non-musician.” Given the desire, most people should be able to do something musical.
Composer (and my teacher at New England Conservatory), Malcolm Peyton told us several times that a composer’s metabolism is reflected in his/her music. A brilliant observation — although I remember one classmate at NEC who loved to play late Liszt, Rachmaninoff, and Ravel, but when it came to writing his own music, it was like Morton Feldman bubbling through a lava lamp.
•
I have always had an imaginary but vivid movie of Stravinsky walking down a sidewalk, composing in his head, and he is walking in time to the music he is hearing in his head. His gate is a little jerky, his shoulders accent the chordal offbeat stabs, his head sways back and forth depending on the tune, and his gate is the pulse in the music. To this day, when I listen to his music, I see this odd little movie.
•
I learned to write quickly when I studied with William Thomas McKinley who amazed us by how much music he would write in one semester: a string quartet, a cello concerto, a piece for clarinet and orchestra, a solo flute piece, and a piano piece. WOW! As students, we wanted to compete with him, so we wrote as much music as we possible could. I’m not going to tell you that what I wrote there was that great sounding, but I learned how to compose at lightning speed. Ditto when I compose for films, I’ve had to compose 50 minutes of music, orchestrate it, conduct it and record it in 3 weeks.
•
Coupled with the ability to write quickly a composer is lucky if s/he can catch the wave of a biochemical-hot-flash muse. But like all biochemical hot-flashes, the wave crashes on the shore and it’s over. When you revisit that passage, it is technique that enables the talented composer to continue whatever is unfinished in the initial rush. Good thing, because tomorrow you will be a slightly different person.
And once that biochemical hot-flash passes, you move on to a contrasting section and to a contrasting biochemical feeling. Or it might be a spiritual enlightenment, or a zen moment, depending on the composer. The difference is appreciated by your body and by the listener and performer as well. Contrast is always our friend.
I love watching you on Project Runway. People tell me that we look alike, but you have MUCH better clothes. You have inspired one of our administrators here in the UCLA Herb Alpert School of Music who now quotes you regularly and isn’t even gay. His favorite motto now is “rally!”
My note to you has to do with how you use your glasses. Watching you, you have a lot of facial distortion as you peer over the top of your glasses. Tim, you don’t need to do that. Probably not good for your eyes and gives you even MORE wrinkles. My guess is that you had some role model in your past who wore half glasses and you found that “style” attractive and have consciously or unconsciously emulated it yourself. Peering over your glasses is normal if you have half glasses, but you are wearing regular glasses, and you feel compelled to look over them as you scrutinize the designers’s work. Get progressive lenses where the prescription is nil at the top so you don’t have to fight whatever prescription you have in your glasses and peer over them. Glasses should be a tool for you to see, not a face distorter.
Unless that is the image you are trying to project,
Twice today I heard a friend dismiss someone because of something they said when they first met. In the first case it was an obnoxious bordering on hostile comment, and in the second case it was something someone said in their interview. And in both cases, they never updated their opinions of the person, and probably more accurately, has born a grudge ever since.
I forget sometimes that I’m probably always making an impression on someone, and most of the time I don’t think about it. But I guess I should.
rss feed
