Anticipation

Sunset: A Musical is already on its way. Might get here today or tomorrow or the next day -- left WA late last night. Eager to inspect it and praying there is nothing to fix so I can be DONE with this project! I think Robin will find some productions. Good songs and a decent if schmaltzy story. Not my favorite project obviously but I'll sure be glad to have been associated with it when it's finally done. I can't believe how long this took. Years.

I spent some time this morning fiddling around in Finale, the extraordinary software for composers. Trying to figure out the best staff-template to use, or to design and use, for my purposes in music drama. I can't do what I want to do alone, alas. Too late to learn what I need to know. So what I'll be writing I'll be handing over to a composer, to John or someone else, to interpret and expand and arrange. What I'm doing is writing more than a libretto -- I'm adding musical ideas as well. But a composer needs to finish it and make it work. I'm just providing more input than a stand-alone libretto.

My first project has the working title FINAL EXIT. It's a four-voiced generic family story: FATHER, MOTHER, SON, DAUGHTER. The death bed. The usual issues. And some surprises. A string quartet -- that's the music for this. I feel very strongly on this point. Indeed, I am creating these around a particular musical idiom. The next, for example, is for a jazz quartet (drums, bass, piano, muted trumpet). These are not plays, i.e. there are no spoken words. They are music dramas or some hybrid of chamber opera, not sure what they would be called. I'm calling them music dramas, not "musical" dramas or musicals. Music dramas.

Anyway, I'm eager to get started and will right away this summer. I have the opening musical lines buzzing in my brain.