As I mentioned in my last post, I’m very excited that the 10-minute musical I wrote with my musician collaborator, Shion Beak, was selected to be produced and performed for Short & Sweet Musical KL on September 25-28.  Here’s how it happened:

March: I wrote the lyrics of Captured in Time & Space, set to some simple melodies, and made a very rough vocal recording of it.

April: I recruited Shion Beak, because she’s actually a musician unlike me, to listen to my painful recordings and see if she could transcribe the melody.

May: She came back to me with the basic melodies recorded from a keyboard. We met several times to where I drove her crazy as we perfected the melodies of the 4 basic songs which make up the musical.

June: Shion did her magic in Garage Band, adding lush instrumental harmonies to the music, creatively taking my ideas and making them so much better. We met several times, again, to work on the final performance track.  So we ended up with three distinct recordings for our 9:30 musical.

A performance track with the melody still in it. (to help the singers learn the songs)

A performance track without the melodies (to be used during the actual performances)

A performance track with demonstration vocals (sung by my daughter and myself)

We sent all of this, plus our registration form, to the director of KL Short & Sweet Musical for evaluation.

They liked it! So what does that mean?

A musical director will be chosen. He/she will audition a group of singers/dancers, and then, following the musical’s libretto, they will choreograph and stage our musical.

It will be performed for four nights in a row, in conjunction with 9 other short musicals. On Saturday September 28, awards will be given for the best musical, director, composer, etc…

So I am very privileged to get to attend and watch my musical come to life. It will be thrilling to see how they interpret it.

I will personally be up for two possible awards:

Co-Composer (with Shion Beak) and Lyricist.  Awards or not, it is the first time someone else has staged one of my musicals.

It’s going to be very exciting.