Twin Cities Song Story

What do David Bowie, witches, chairs and fears have to do with a show about a couple planning a dinner party? Catalog Models (Mark Sweeney and Gemma Irish) dive into how these elements found their way into ‘Invitation’, the opening number to The Chair-builders their 2016 Minnesota Fringe Festival offering.

After about seven minutes of yammering and a peek into early versions of the song, you’ll hear Megan Kelly Hubbell sing ‘Invitation’. Huge thanks to David Orlicz for providing reeds in an alternate take of the song.

Experience podcasts like they were before the internet!

The NoisePicnic Podcast Festival is coming up August 28th and 29th at the Phoenix Theater. It will feature six live shows of all your favorite NoisePicnic Podcasts over two nights. Twin Cities Song Story will close out the festival with guests Philip Simondet, Tom Reed + Co-host, Phil Gonzales and special appearance by Lounge-asaurus Rex!

More info HERE. 

See you at the Phoenix!

 

 

Andrew Gaylord is a listener. If you ask him a question he’s more than likely to want to hear your answer than to give you his own. As one-half of PlaceBase productions he’s traveled across Minnesota collecting the stories of communities and spinning them into site-specific productions. When the company was approached to create a show around the Minnesota River Valley he felt there was contentious piece of Minnesota history he couldn’t avoid.

In this podcast Andrew talks about the song “Traverse des Sioux” from After the Birds Taught me to Fly, a new production premiering June 5-7th at the Minnesota Valley National Wildlife Refuge. The songwriter discusses his company’s process, and why he was drawn to write about the Dakota War of 1862. The podcast ends with a recording of the song ‘Traverse des Sioux’ performed by Andrew.

Ted more is a sound designer and composer who thrives in punctuating stillness and tension. His work manipulates live instrumental performance and recordings with software through written processor effects. In this month’s podcast Ted Moore talks about his work on Persephone, staged at the Cowels Center in December 2014 with director-creator, Hannah K Hollman.

Ted discusses how code writing and sound manipulation have turned his computer into a personalized instrument. He also recalls how scrapping a whole movement late in the rehearsal process transformed the narrative arch of the piece for the better. The music added to that fifth movement is included at the end of the podcast.

Ted Moore is currently the sound designer of These are the Men at the Southern Theater.

In Fruit Fly: The Musical, Sheena Janson and Max Wajtanowicz thinly fictionalize twenty years of friendship between a gay man and straight woman.

This month’s Song Story, features Max and Sheena discussing “I’m Totally Fine Without You” from Fruit Fly.

They explore why their specific relationship felt necessary to bring to the stage and how distilling their friendship into song made it appeal to a larger audience. Max and Sheena perform “I’m Totally Fine Without You”, written by Michael Gruber and the cast, at the end of podcast accompanied by Jill Dawe.

The much loved Minnesotan film Sweet Land, based on a short story by Will Weaver, is not standard musical theater material. The story lives in quiet actions and awkward silences as cultural barriers give way to understanding and eventually love. In these quiet moments Perrin Post found opportunity to create music that dives under the skin of the characters of Sweet Land.

In this month’s podcast, the creative team of Sweet Land The Musical , producer/ book writer Perrin Post, lyricist Laurie Flanigan-Hegge and composer Dina Maccabee, explore how the single action of looking through a camera’s lens, found in Will Weaver’s short story “A Gravestone Full of Wheat,” lead to the song “The Photograph”. The team also discusses how the use of instrumentation creates specific environments, from trains to wheat fields, including a moment where a character witnesses the northern lights.The podcast concludes with a performance of “The Photograph” by musical director Matt Riehle.

More info at sweetlandthemusical.com.

It’s episode ten and it’s Jill Bernard! Jill is the creator of Drum Machine, the amazing one woman historically placed solo improvised musical. She’s also one of the most fearless and giving performers I’ve ever witnessed.

 

Jill created Drum Machine in 2002 and has toured it internationally. She talks about how music, history and her numerous musical collaborators have influenced the show and her approach to solo improv. We also discuss finding balance between song structure and the emotional expression of her characters. The podcast ends with a song from a past performance of Drum Machine accompanied by Jack Barrett.

 

www.jillbernard.com

Ryan Dean creates work under the name The Live Instructional Video .  His 2014 Minnesota Fringe Festival show Lazerjuice was a multidisciplinary work of modular theatre that mixed elements of dance and electronic music with audience isolation, sketch comedy, puppetry, and movement. Also, it took place in space and had invisible robots. It surprised those who saw it and left a lasting impression.

The highlight of Lazerjuice was a 20 minute solo dance that landed at the end of the show. In this episode of Twin Cities Song Story Ryan Dean talks about the music that was created for that dance, a piece he collectively calls Space Dance. He thinks through his philosophy on performance, how he comes to create music and how he is continually striving to marry music and dance.

David Darrow and Blake Thomas sit down after a long rehearsal to talk about ‘The Wandering Wondering’ from Jonah and the Whale: A New Musical. They wrote the song when faced with the challenge to develop a character after her death.

Thomas comes from a more traditional folk songwriter background and is continually discovering new ways to compliment story with his music. Darrow writes music that tries to explore a moment and doesn’t manipulate the feelings of the audience.

‘The Wandering Wondering’ is played at the end of the podcast featuring the ensemble of 7th House Theatre.

 

Beaverdance! A Marxist Holiday Fur Trading Musical returns to Bedlam Theatre this holiday season after premiering in 2009. This time around the show has five new songs. In this episode composer Marya Hart and lyricist Dan Pinkerton talk about ‘One Click Shopping’, a snappy, toe tapping, slightly evil song about the availability of mass produced goods.

The collaborators talk about their creative decision making process and how a ‘snap’ informed their lyrics and music. It all ends with a back and forth on the compact nature of music and lyric writing for theatre. Then, of course, ‘One Click Shopping’ in-full.

Beaverdance! opens November 21st. Find info and tickets here.

‘One Click Shopping’ is performed by Chase Burns, Ryan Patrick and Andrew Fleser.