14 Days of Goodbye Gratitude, Day 5: today is for my friend Maggie Kate Coleman. I saw a reading of her new show last night, a time-traveling mind-bending musical meditation on Marie Curie and her radioactive legacy, past/present/future, co-written with the Greek Goddess of Delightfully Inventive Theatre Music, Erato A. Kremmyda, and being developed by The Civilians. These two are doing such great things with the form. Maggies someone who sees and thus respects no artificial distinction between the avant-garde and the accessible, the high-minded and the down-to-earth. The concepts are large but the execution is calligraphically fine-edged. Her lyrical craft is top-notch, and she can rhyme thrillingly with panache and verve (I think I heard the phrase snarky patriarchy at yesterdays reading, and I actually yelped with pleasure) but she fundamentally isnt interested in the typical musical theatre bells & whistles except insofar as they help either divert or direct your attention where she wants it— which always leads to really profound yet subtle observations about being human. Which is basically all I want in a dramatist. Shes constantly finding new things for theatre songs to do. Back in 2006 she wrote a lyric called THREE SISTERS that I was lucky enough—and quick on the draw enough — to pounce on and say Everyone out of the way, Im setting this one to music, and if you ask me, thats the day I crossed over from being a songwriter into composer-land: the assignment pushed me into places Id never gone in terms of using music to complement words, to fuel the storytelling engine, to bring out subtext, to hint at the unsaid. To this day Maggies lyric still amazes me for its formal majesty, its sly mixture of humor and pathos, its unsentimental look at family relationships, and its willingness to be angry and loving at the same time. Tomorrow night, the incomparably brilliant Donna Lynne Champlin (the first person to ever perform it publicly) will sing THREE SISTERS at the first of my going-away shows at Dont Tell Mama (7pm). Relearning it so I can play the thing has whetted my appetite for writing more songs with you, Maggie... cross-continental collaborations are a thing, right? Super excited to share it with everyone in attendance. Meanwhile, heres my equally dear friend Marie-France Ruaux (in a former incarnation as an Arcilla) singing it back in 2009.
Posted on: Mon, 08 Dec 2014 22:54:55 +0000
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