Marya Hart Music

Category Archives: In Dreams Begin Responsibilities

2009

December 31, 2009

New Year’s Day—
everything is in blossom!
I feel about average.

–Issa, translated by Robert Haas

photo of almond blossoms taken by Michael Favor, from wikicommons

The musical year here:

Twenty Days to Find a Wife enjoyed a successful run at History Theatre, and was named one of the top five dramas of 2009 by the Minneapolis Star Tribune.

Fidgety Fairy Tales had productions throughout Minnesota and in Guam, and we took the cast to Washington D.C. to perform for the conference of the National Association of Families for Children’s Mental Health.

Beaverdance had a very good run at Bedlam Theatre over the holiday season. The cast was amazingly fearless and funny, and I now know I can write a musical in three weeks.

We revived and expanded In Dreams Begin Responsibilities for a showing at Nautilus Music Theater. It is now a piano trio piece with challenging choreography and we are talking about revisiting it in 2010.

I worked with a number of wonderful collaborators: Laurie Flanigan, Matt Jenson, Corrie Zoll, Dan Pinkerton and Nancy Nair; and many fabulous singers, actors, directors and dancers.

Today, the last day of the year, I finished writing the last song for a cycle on the poems of Charles Baudelaire which will be performed in January and February by tenor Brad Bradshaw.

I got my daughter off to college and she is happy there. I’ve been playing piano in churches and dance studios and parties and concerts. Tonight it’s cold outside and it is warm in the house and there are candles burning. Happy New Year!

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if it doesn’t rain pretty soon…

May 29, 2009

If it doesn’t rain soon, I don’t know what I will do. We are near a drought and it is not yet the first of June. I am soaking the tomato plants and okra seedlings and trying to keep the flowers going. It feels wasteful to use the water like this, but there is nothing in the rain barrel.

I am antsy. It’s cloudy this evening, but still no rain.

Twenty Days closes this Sunday. This week I am attending closing night only. I saw it last week and was thoroughly satisfied. The actors are living inside the play. But as I have mentioned, I get a little tense when I watch it.

I’m going to a party at Michelle Kinney’s tomorrow night–she of Jello Slave who, along with Melissa Mathews and Michael Donley, did great justice to In Dreams Begin Responsibilities over at Nautilus last week. Such great justice that I think it is a music-and-dance piece now. Who in the world will ever produce it?

Nancy Nair, who choreographed it, says we should pair it up with an entirely different piece about dreams. I thought about that. Maybe, since she is currently reveling in the world of Merce Cunningham and I in the very different one of Franz Schubert, she should create one short dream piece and I another. Then we’d have three pieces–enough for an evening. And who would produce that? Eh, we’ll figure that out later.

photo by luigistrano from flickr

This afternoon when it almost rained, the scent of Linden flowers was intoxicating.

Hannah graduates from high school next week. I’m sewing sundresses and gearing up for summer teaching.

Fidgety is still going on–three performances last week, one this week. I have several ideas about auditions, rehearsal and scheduling performances for the next round of performances, as does Matt. Keeping a cast together has proven much more of a task than we anticipated. We’ve subbed performers into new roles for almost every show in May. The scheduling and juggling has fallen on Matt’s shoulders. He is someone who copes well with adversity. Thank god.

We play two public performances at Saint Peter Claver church June 14th. They will be free and open to the public.

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improv

May 18, 2009

Creating tight little worlds with music theatre…

Did I go overboard, attempting to make a score which is full of indications?

I find an interpretation of The Solidarity Song which is improvisational, and I find it so inspiring.

Die Arena, by John Heartfield

Notes can only say so much. They say something approximate. Listening to Indian music on KFAI and wondering, how much am I simply putting this into my frame of reference. What am I not hearing because I hear the notes I know?

Also posted in Compositions – 0 Comments

watching the run

May 16, 2009

The cast of Twenty Days is really playing with the material now and having a good time. Audiences have been great…laughing and responsive.

I saw it last night, but I am not going to go again for a while. Even though I am happy, I am so tense by the time it is done that I ache. It’s a product of having no control whatsoever. I try to communicate my intentions clearly in the score, and leave it to the performers to make as many choices as they can. Even when their choices are not ones I would’ve made, I find myself pleasantly surprised by what they decide. So, why so tense? It’s just the situation, I think.

I’m going to look around for a few more performance opportunities. I’ve been living in my head.

Three hour instrumental rehearsal for In Dreams yesterday. Wow. Michael Donley on piano, Melissa Mathews on violin and Michelle Kinney on cello. They are really good.

Also posted in Compositions, Twenty Days to Find a Wife – 1 Comment

dreams redux

May 14, 2009

We–Nancy Nair and Mary Keepers and I– will have a presentation of In Dreams Begin Responsibilities at Nautilus Music Theater this coming Monday and Tuesday, May 18th and 19th.

I have rescored for a piano trio and Nancy has re-choreographed for two dancers. I am blown away by Nancy’s choreography, and by MacKenzie, (that’s her on the left) who is a lovely dancer. Mary is our director. Thank god.

It’s only five bucks to get in the door, and they serve milk and cookies on the break. I strongly recommend calling for reservations (651) 298-9913 if you are going on Monday night, because seating is very limited in the Lowertown space. Tuesday night will be at the Foss Center on the Augsburg campus in Minneapolis.

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multi?

May 7, 2009

There is no such thing as multi-tasking, just paying attention to one thing after another. Which is what I am doing. Everything else is taking a back seat until Hannah’s red silk prom dress is done.

I have had time to note that there are a couple other nice review of Twenty Days here and here and a video up on the Yout

I am planning for a two day revival of In Dreams Begin Responsibilities at Nautilus Music Theater. That’ll happen May 18th and 19th. Watch this space for more info.

Tomorrow morning I play for the funeral of Mrs. Mary Hamilton, the oldest member of Saint Peter Claver congregation, dead at 105 years old, of the second of six generations to belong to the church, descended from people who walked up to Minnesota from the southern United States. Until recently, she could be seen pushing her walker down the frontage road every Sunday on her way to Mass. I’m pretty new to the church…joined about eleven years ago. I have varying degrees of reverence, but I am always awed by the staying power of the people who founded the parish. Ah, times have changed.The neighborhood called Rondo was the place to be until the freeway went through, bisecting it and cutting off neighbor from neighbor. That’s what they say. Mrs. Hamilton welcomed me and Hannah to the parish. I remember the card she gave Hannah at her first communion, with a two dollar bill inside it.

It’s spring. My window boxes are filling up,

and I am eating watercress. Hannah turns eighteen Friday.

Also posted in Compositions, Twenty Days to Find a Wife, home life – 0 Comments

trios

March 8, 2009

I am listening to and reading other piano trios while writing the trio version of In Dreams... Now I have some Beethoven going (”The Ghost” with duPre, Barenboim and Zuckerman) so if this post is a little scatter-brained, that’s why.

Today I will try to figure out the “Merry-Go-Round” section, which is a little dance piece centering around major seventh and ninth harmony and depending on repetition for its effect. My tendency is to get bored easily when I am writing, and to want variation for its own sake. I remember thinking when I wrote this piece that I wanted to limit what I said. The point of a carousel is that the same thing happens over and over. As the Father and Mother spin around on the carousel, it seems the music will never stop and they will never get off. Now I will see what I can do with new instruments to make that happen.

This is the photo we used for the Fringe Production of "In Dreams…"

The new version will be performed for Nautilus Rough Cuts on the evenings of May 18th and 19th. It will be fully danced, so on the 18th we will probably be downstairs from Nautilus’s itty little studio, to give it more space. I hope to find a nice dance space for the 19th.

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