Tonight I went to a concert at Birdland, for Georgia Strit or something-like-that...a composer, who's starting to work on a musical. She has a new CD out (which she plugged way too many times, it just got very annoying) and performers included Matt Morrison, Cheyenne Jackson (both of whom I hadn't heard even *sing* in a while, so yay!), Will Chase, and some others. Matt was second, and it was great to hear him sing again--still has a wonderful voice, and his hair isn't as bad as it was. I still desperately miss the curls, it has grown back to be a short buzz(?) cut, but he's not as nearly-bald as he was when he changed it, so that's good. He threw in a silly dance in the middle of the song. (Which might have been from Once Upon A Mattress? This chick worked on that TV movie and that's how they knew each other). Either way, it was a pretty love song. He threw in a pretty falsetto near the end. I feel like I haven't heard him sing falsetto much, but I could be wrong...

Jenn Collella from High Fidelity sang two songs which she rocked on. Then Will Chase sang this song "Air" that I've actually heard Cheyenne sing in another concert. Will went a little off key as he reached for the high notes at the end. It was still a good performance though, and I adore Will. Lauren Kennedy sang two songs, including this song where she was in 5th grade who was in love with the smartest boy in 6th grade who was a great clarinet player! Part of the song was her "doo'doo'ing the clarinet notes" and I very much enjoyed that, was laughing prob more than anyone in the room...at least seemed to be. Oops. Well, it was a cute song about the guy having a girlfriend, but that being okay, because she fell in love with music, and couldn't play clarinet but joined the choir and sang "doot's." Aww.

Tituss Burgess, who was in Jersey Boys, and is going to be in Sebastian in Little Mermaid sang a song and kicked ass! He was probably the best of the night. He hit these insane high notes. It very much has me looking forward to his performance in Mermaid.

Then he and Cheyenne sang this duet "She" that I'm pretty sure I've heard in concert before as well, but they sounded great together. Then the chick described getting type-casted and stereotypes as playing/singing one part, so she was gonna challenge Cheyenne tonight, and he delivered wonderfully--it was this slow piece that he did some vibrato, some humming, really got to show off varied talent.

Now I could have sworn I saw Kelli O'Hara walking around. I thought hmm, guess she's stalking Matt, but she surprisingly came up to sang a song (was not one of the announced performers). Twas a nice treat, she sounded beautiful as always.

Then the chick explained that Kathleen Marshall had asked her to help out with the Grease show, which she said was really exciting aside from it being a reality show. Heh. Now before she started speaking, a bunch of performers came on the stage...who I knew but couldn't exactly place. I saw the girls much better than I could see the guys though. I knew I knew one. As soon as she mentioned Grease, i realized that the one I recognized was Kathleen Monteleone (random one to recognize). And then I was like ohh wait, that's Ashley Spencer next to her...Allie on the end, oh look there's Austin, dude! I got kind of excited...the finalists of the show, except for one performer and the two winners were there. Then a second later I decided it was really sad that I got excited. Oops. They needed to be conducted. You could certainly tell some were better than others, not only in voice, but in stage presence. Overall I felt that the guys had better stage presence than the girls. Ashley S was surprisingly very stiff.

I still don't forgive cracking, but cute as Derek was on the show, he is gorgeous in person! Those dimples, gah! Chad is too, very tall. Kevin also has a cute babyface. Maybe there's a particular biased reason that I felt the guys had more stage presence. Austin looked girly, not too shocking.

Now, i was at a table by myself (it was kind of cool that they had a table for 1), right across from my friend Diana and a couple of other people that I knew. We all paid our checks, and as we walked out, they were just going to leave. I didn't realize but both Cheyenne and Matt had left. No, I was really really looking forward to seeing them, especially Matt! Boo!

But maybe I can't complain. Early in the concert, the chick acknowledged her husband, who was there and laughed and such...she later acknowledged him to be Jason Robert Brown!!, composer of Last 5 Years, Parade, Songs For A New World, and Urban Cowboy (not his best effort) among others. He's one of the up-and-coming composers with more of a musically advanced, classical sound.

Now last spring I attended a wonderful concert at Symphony Space, about composers who wrote both for Broadway and classical music. Jason was one of the composers featured. (Somehow Bernstein wasn't, but that's another story). He would have liked to have been there, but couldn't so he prepared a speech before the dude played his classic piece, Mr. Broadway, at the piano. He explained his two biggest idols are George Gershwin and Leonard Bernstein, so he conducted this classical piano piece that integrates a lot of...signature elements of both Gershwin and Bernstein, and takes Jason back to a time when Broadway was (not in these words) the shit and hwat it must have been like, etc. I adored that piece for obvious reasons.

Now I don't love to bother audience members about anything fan-related...I like to think they're not performing, they shouldn't be bothered, but then again I figured how many people in the room were gonna complement JRB about a classical piece? I figured he would appreciate it, and though I was quite nervous (I get that way around composers), he passed me and I umm'ed and got his attention, apologized for bothering him being in the audience (he was perfectly nice, said that's okay...seemed to be a bit of attention whore throughout the show, but there is totally nothing wrong with that, as i well know :-P ), and said I figure not too many other people in the room would want to tell you how wonderful they think Mr. Broadway is. He was pretty shocked. He said oh god no...it's not even published yet! We briefly discussed how he's trying to get it published, and then the difficulty of have someone play it for a CD. I told him good luck with that. Ha. He was very appreciative though, as I'm sure he's often complemented on one of his shows, I figured it would be nice to hear a complement about a not well-known piece. I'm glad he appreciated it, and the way I worship Broadwa ycomposers, it was so awesome that I got to briefly talk with him!

So, I was disappointed at not getting to talk with Matt or Cheyenne, but I guess Jason Robert Brown is an adequate substitute :-P

Realized tonight that this show might be a little more...up there in the professional ladder than I realized. We're running on equity contracts, and most of the actors are in equity, including this Lorraine chick who was nominated for a Tony for some play and I ibdb'ed her and saw she was in the original Broadway production of Zorba, and a replacement in the original production of Cabaret.

Anyway, was curious if I would have heard of anyone else in the cast (don't think I have), so I googled it and this came up:

http://offoffonline.com/listings.php?id=4838

The fact that it's on this website obviously means, it's officially an off off Broadway production!! I'm actually playing for a production with the word "Broadway" in it...far levels off...you know off off Bway even has its own awards...I don't know, I guess it's some aspect of Columbia Grad School's production program that is off off, who knows?


Hehehehe. Suddenly I'm much more more than satisfied with only making $50 for the whole thing. Because I'm playing for an off off Broadway show!

Friday night was our first official game night! So much fun! Cool to play with someone besides Leah. We didn't make it to Scattegories because it was late at night and the buzzer was too loud, but we played everything else. Jenna won Trivial Pursuit Pop Culture (she's read EW once a week since she was 10), Anthony beat me at Chess, but I CREAMED everyone at Scrabble, with my "S trick." Not only that, but had a seven letter word with the S trick on a triple word. The great man who was my father would have been very very proud. He taught me well. And I didn't even cheat!

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I realize that there's now ay I'm gonna catch up on 2 weeks, so I'll get back to writing about day to day stuff. So I'll start with yesterday, go backwards, and see what i get to. Granted, most of the days last week involved watching TV and such, so I may get through a lot of it.

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Here is my long awaited response paper for attending my first opera. (If anyone's interested, my friend=Binh)

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So Joe Cassidy, one of my beloved Scoundrels, was in a musical reading tonight that I went to. It was so good to see him! It was excerpts of a musical that pretty much seemed to tour America that actually seemed pretty good. In the first scene, Joe showed off his voice (great to hear) and sang a cool song called "Rock City." Norbert owned the part of Freddy, but Joe actually had the better voice.

Then there was this cute scene between a grandfather who could barely speak and his granddaughter. They were by the Alamo or something and she was cynical about relationships and getting married, and then Joe appeared with a hankerchief suddenly. The grandfather urged him to stay, and the granddaughter explained he's waiting for the dead grandmother, they'll see each other speak, and he swore they heard a voice the first night they met (this place by the Alamo) saying this is the person you'll love forever and they did, until she died. joe and the granddaughter sit down while the grandfather sings to the grandmother, and Joe awkwardly tries to I guess...inquire about her singleness and ask her out, it was so cute and funny. She rebuffs him, but then looks at her grandfather, runs back to give him her number. Aww.

Joe wasn't in the next scene, but it was funny as hell. the highlight was a song called "You're my Bitch" which lyrics like "You're the ozone, and I'm Al Gore." Ha!

The last scene Joe played this seemingly really weird tour guide, trying to get this woman to get into a barrel to jump over the falls. He played it really funny, the tour guide was supposed to be all weird and stuff, but they sang a pretty duet, as we finally realized for her, going over the falls was a metaphor in her decision to marry her fiancee. Aww.

Of course, it was great to see Joe after. We hugged, he said "hi darling" in his teeny Southern accent which makes me wonder if he forgot my name...I don't mind, it's just amusing...and said he thought he saw me halfway through the show. I was like yeah, I tried not to look at you while you were sitting, didn't want you to be in the middle of something and suddenly be like ohh...he said he was really into the show anyway, except he was laughing at the bitch song too.

Now I'm not sure why...maybe I was tired, maybe because he said he had to get going, but I wasn't being...that...talkative. For me. Which I suppose is still pretty talkative but most of the conversation was him asking me questions...where am I at school, how's jobs/internships going, etc. which was really sweet. It's always amusing when they talk more than me. we smiled at how I proudly wore my DRS shirt, and he said he was so happy I came, and in awe about how I manage to find out about these things. Heh. When we said bye, he said it was wonderful seeing my smiling face in the audience again. Aww.

But...it was weird. At one point I even said to him...you know it feels like a lifetime ago...and he was like Scoundrels? I was like yeah. It really does. It was weird, not awkward/bad weird, but...I dunno seeing him tonight it just kind of hit me how much it feels like a lifetime ago. I mean, I guess it's with good reason...DRS is closed now and I'm not anywhere near seeing another show 27 times or having half the cast and creative team know me, I'm away at school now living in the city, etc, but also...I needed the involvement I had with DRS...it really helped me through all the rough times. I know I don't need DRS or constantly seeing them like I did. It's still nice and makes me happy and yet...in the old days (that really sounds crazy), whenever I talked to/hugged any of them, I would leave the stage door skipping. And that didn't happen this time. Not that I wasn't glad to see him...it just hit me...not even how different I am now,k but how different my life is. It's great that I can still see them once in a while and wear the shirt and stuff.

I had a pretend conversation with friends (okay it sounds weird, but it's quite therapeutic) about the whole situation--explaining, and therefore remembering myself, the story and each step I took into knowing so many people in DRS, thinking back to the times when I was so excited to get a hug, whereas now it's sweet, but sometimes it's weird if I don't get a hug...remembering the joy things brought me as I never experienced them. I can't explain why, but it made me feel good to do that. I mean, everything else aside, for like 2 years, I didn't make one new friend that didn't love theatre. I was really off in another world, and I know it's great now that I'm not so completely in that world, and makes up for missing DRS, but...I guess I hadn't thought about how different things are from all perspectives...whatever, once I finished my fake convo I felt good and very happy to see Joe and that he's still so sweet, even if I didn't skip. :-)

I was briefly talking about the whole thing with Erica online, and she said yeah, she can see that I'm even more mature now than I was last semester. Great. I don't hear it enough from the family...it did kind of strike me as weird because I feel like I came a long way from living at home, but was already different last semester...I don't know. She said maybe it's just because she didn't see me as much. maybe she misses my performances, I'll have to go do my Big Spender dance for her...

It kind of saddened me that it felt like another lifetime ago, but I guess if I have to pick, this lifetime is a better one, even if I don't have a stage door "where everybody knows if not my name, my face." But it's nice to see them around every so often every once in a while. They're not my friends--I have friends--but i do honestly think they care about me--when they ask how I am and questions and tell me how great it is to see me, it is sincere. I think there needs to be a new term for these kind of relationships. I don't like the word acquaintance, and I don't really think that covers it...I mean, at least to me, these people are different than people I chat with in the elevator. We don't talk outside of stage doors have you, again not friends...but it is a particular kind of relationship. Hmm, who wants to invent a new word?

And nobody better suggest "stalker"! ;-)

When I type up my opera response papers, I'll post those...damn, I don't even remember everything that happened the past 2 weeks...

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I just need to say that being internet savvy helps get me through life!

After AGYG ended, I was depressed, and started peeking around online. Found a February ad for instrumentalists for Columbia Grad School's production of LaChusia's The Wild Party. No part was pure clarinet, and the ad was from Feb, but the performances weren't until April. So I figured why not, sent a reply explaining I know the ad is old and I only play clarinet but I've played these shows in the past and transposed and all. So they replied that they still need instruments, and the musical director will contact me. Just heard from her, they still need a reed 4 player. That book consists of clarinet, bass clarinet, and bari sax. They don't mind if I transpose everything to clarinet, though I may look into seeing if I could get a bass clarinet since I do play that, then just transpose the bari sax music into bass clarinet.

Performances are April 18-21 at 8PM, and April 22 at 2PM. I'm not sure what I get paid yet, but I get something. And LaChusia is a great composer. The Wild Party was from 2000, Off-Broadway. There are actually 2 versions, long story. My friend Lee adores the man and says I'm very lucky and the music's great. The musical director said the music is quite difficult, but I should be able to handle it since I've handled WSS. Yay!

A grad school performance should be very top-rate I think. They're going to mail me the music and CD. Yay!

Lots of rehearsals though. Still, I love it.

Maybe I should start making business cards...

This was an event held at City Centers, to help aid an organization that corrects child facial deformity for no cost. I wasn't planning on attending until it was offered on one of my papering services for $4. I suppose that was worth it ;-)

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Okay, so that wasn't exactly the cause, but it's a great song...

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