by Modern Songbook Records | Mar 9, 2018 | Charlie's Blog, News
My latest play just opened in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. Him & Jim is a comedy about what happens when a divine stranger wanders into an unremarkable auto parts shop. My partner-in-crime in this project is director Ara Barlieb. I wrote the play alone, but Ara gave it life, and from what I am hearing he is taking it in directions that I never even imagined. And yet I trust Ara enough to know that whatever he and his talented cast invents, it will make sense with the play. More than make sense: It will make the play a better one.
by Modern Songbook Records | Mar 6, 2018 | Charlie's Blog, News
Last week, maestro David Fanning and the National String Symphonia brought my piece, Retablos, to life for the first time at the Kennedy Center’s Terrace Theater. The piece features a fiendishly difficult percussion part that requires the percussionist to leap from the bass drum to the vibraphone, to various temple blocks, and back to ten other instruments. For the soloist, Mark Carson, it was an exercise in choreography and stamina as much as it was in musicality. Mark and I (but mostly Mark) worked off and on for months to make sure that this percussion part was playable. The result was a fluid and, honestly, gorgeous performance. The NSS will perform it again in Baltimore on March 11.
by Modern Songbook Records | Mar 3, 2018 | Charlie's Blog, News
19: The Musical, a carnival ride of a project about the passage of the 19th Amendment, is still taking shape. Last weekend, singers Millie Scarlett, Katie Ganem, and Maria Ciarrochi performed three new songs from the show at The Belmont-Paul Women’s Equality National Monumentin Washington DC in honor of Women’s History Month. Lyricist Jennifer Schwed and writer Doug Bradshaw have been the visionaries behind this project, which we hope to keep building and workshopping over the course of the next year. At our Saturday matinee shows, we were blessed with enthusiastic and curious audiences, including one extremely lively bachelorette party all in purple (the color of the suffragists). Could attending historical feminist musical theater offerings be a new bridal trend? For the sake of this show, I sincerely hope so.
