Marya Hart Music

A quick post…I have been out of the loop on blogging here since the winter, which was deadly cold and unbearable. However it is now Spring and all is um better. The peas are up in the garden, and I have boundless optimism. I made a couple of local best-of lists, as a performer and a composer. Minneapolis Star Tribune named Twenty Days to Find a Wife, which I composed the music for, one of its top five plays of 2009; and St. Paul’s Pioneer Press named The Cradle Will Rock, which I music-directed and played piano for, one of the best productions of the decade.

Current projects:

I finished vocal music-directing a production of Cabaret at Century College, stage-directed by the estimable Randy Winkler, with orchestra conducted by Shirley Mier. This runs for one more weekend. The rehearsal process has given me more to chew on about performance. More on that later.

Bart Sutter’s verse play Pine Creek will be workshopped in Duluth in early June. I am slow writing music for this, but it’s coming along. I want to keep to a simple folk-music style for the show and it’s hard for me to walk on the correct side of the simple/stupid line. I have one more big song to write, and a number of arrangements to make. This play will premiere at Southwest State University in Marshall this coming fall.  This play is a reworking of his one-act piece, Small Town Triumphs which played at History Theatre back in the day, and was the occasion by which I encountered Bart and his brother Ross, a wonderful meeting which has yielded many collaborations.

I have a couple of instrumental commissions and a couple of vocal ones, including a reworking of Correspondences for a performance in late summer. I’ll be playing a benefit for Frank Theatre Company May 8th, and it thrills me to know that I’ll accompany Gary Briggle, one of the greatest singers in town. Now I am getting antsy, just writing about this, so I will get off the blog and onto the piano. More later.