Singers - where art thou? Dance, tinitis - Adrian and mashed potatoe

Well, it's about a week since I put out the call for singers...initially I had a good response with 9 singers contacting me and I thought things were beginning to roll... but it's all gone very quiet! I am beginning to wonder if my email address isn't working!

Today I put out some ads. for people to put up in public places singers frequent - colleges, theatres, music venues etc - and Lyn my librettist - who lives in the West End - took ads to all West End theatres showing musicals... plus the opera houses and the South Bank Centre etc.

Luckily I have a good long lead time of 6 weeks on this audition. So I'm not panicing yet! But I am a bit down hearted today.

Also - having printed the piano reduction on tuesday and had 16 copies made I think it was a huge moment of letting go and exhaustion has crept up on me. It took me seven months to get the vocal score looking right. So many things to sort out and proof read. Had a couple of days away from looking at music on the screen - while I psych up for the final furlong with the full score. So much proof reading to do there.

But it is worth writing this blog - I thought no one was reading it and I was just writing into the void - but a lovely lady contacted me having read my last entry saying she had a direct contact for the Australian Dance Theatre if I wanted an introduction! It made my day. Still waiting to hear back on that... (say no more).

I thought the Australian Dance Company gig at Sadlers Wells was a little too crazy heavy - punk electronic music for 75% of the hours show - and then this stray piece of Chopinesque piano music out of nowhere.... they do have a lyrical side but concentrated a lot on the wildly acrobatic and group herd instinct type energies. It was sensational and only occasionally touching. Still the power of beauty of their work is flagrant. And the photography on large screens of the dancers and the slow mo film - frame by frame of their dance - was exceptionally effective.

I guess I should just ride this low out and recognise I have just achieved a huge amount in printing the vocal score. It's there forever now and that feels good.

I might try contacting some casting departments tomorrow. Adrian Lee, my good friend and advisor suggested that. He is helping me project manage this process now. He has really good ideas - being a composer/producer - notably with the RSC.

i am getting tinitis at the moment - intermittently - but like when I lie down on my pillow my ear starts to whistle! It's quite invasive. I am going to get my ears candelled. It's an American Indian technique.

I'm flat as a pancake tonight. Tired after having had the vocal score printed on tuesday. A big relief. Just wanted to eat mashed potatoe like my mum used to make it this evening. So I did. And felt like I was ten years old again. Sitting watching TV, having dinner - zonking out. Now to bed to read - Embraced by the Light - about a near death experience.

Call for singers, dance company and carrot soup.

I have put out a Call for Singers for auditions for the recording of the opera (well, 20 mins thereof only). Big step for me! Have spent whole of last year in a bubble of computers and music preparing the scores and the audio - and to now be opening up my focus to real musicians is a bit of a shock to the system. I had become very inverted and, to say the least, sedantry in the last year! Who would have thought so much work would have had to go on... but on it has gone.
I am opening up the call for singers to West End shows, left field experimental singers, world music singers (need to be able to read though), light operatic singers, and ideally that cross bread of singer who can both 'rock and roll' an audience as well as enchant, terrify, invoke and inspire. Come forward my friends - the time is now! ... I have a dreammm... and it's called a Dance Opera.
I'm looking forward to seeing the Australian Dance Theatre on tuesday next at Sadlers Wells... they're billed as "innocent, arrogant, rude, poetic, elegant, punk - and sexy as hell" - and that's just the kind of dance company I'd like to have choreograph to my piece. I mean - shooting for the stars... that sounds like the kind of group that would set this piece on fire... it's already alight I have to say, as music any way, - but imagine how hot it could be with dance in the mix as well!!
Shame they are from Australia - it's a bit of a way a way... but - hey - dream on I say!
The audio files are now all up on the internet - and if you're a singer with Sibelius software - I could send you the whole vocal score to look at by email. There are samples of the vocal score also on my website - and these will form the basis of the audition. I hope we get lots of singers interested in auditioning - so far, after two days, eight people have got in touch - so that's not a bad start!
I have now finished proof reading the piano vocal score - and will, early next week, print it out, do the photocopies and binding. That will then form the basis for all corrections in the full score still to work on.
If ever there was a time in my life when I felt like I was going for it - this is it. What will happen once we have the demo recording?? I can't think that far ahead! I just know that this music needs to be given a chance to come back to life - and this is the only way I can think to do it.
We have to make a really good impression with the demo and hope that some exciting influencial entrepeneurial innovative people and organizations get to hear it and want to get involved in making the piece come to life in it's fullest from - as a Dance Opera!
I can't think of much else these days - I would be boring company at a dinner party - rabbitting on about my own project endlessly no doubt!
The best bits of the day for me are the gaps between the work - they are short but they are my meditation at the moment.
Making the carrot soup at lunchtime was like spending time in a Zen monastery. Silence in the room - except for the chopping of vegetables. Bliss.