Arts and Artists of Tomorrow, featuring composer/lyricist Zack Zadek
This one, a concert featuring an up and coming composer/lyricist, was interesting especially because the music of a single composer was featured. And he played the piano. And he performed some of his own songs. (And he is also the book writer of at least one, and maybe two or all, of the musicals represented Monday evening.)
The performance opened with A Matter of Time, from Storebrand (if I’m remembering correctly), a work in progress. Sung by Harrison Chad,
Kathryn Gallagher, and Mr. Zadek, it had a heavy rock feel that finally evolved into some nice harmony toward the end. The rock influence was prevalent throughout the evening, making this a little rough on the ears for me.
Three selections from The Crazy Ones, a tech-savvy musical about Steve Jobs and the guy he worked with in his early days in computer evolution, were nicely done. Apparently this has been workshopped a bit, which showed, since Noah Zachary, in the Steve Jobs role, was pretty much locked in to the character. Mr. Zadek filled in as the Steve Wozniak character. The driving rock rhythms and chords pretty much made sense in a tech-heavy musical. There was a nice variety, compositionally, with Beautiful, the ‘I want’ song in musicals parlance, a nice view into the inner workings of how things work (computers and music), with a focus on the necessary details and focus on the necessary repetitions to achieve both. Those details carried over into In the Garage, the final song of this set, which I enjoyed quite a bit.
The third musical represented was Deathless, which has the interesting premise of would you or wouldn’t you take a pill that would keep you alive forever—not in the case of a horrific accidental death but would prevent the diseases and effects of aging. Alexandra Socha sang the opening number, Live Forever, and was somewhat overpowered by the piano playing of Mr. Zadek. I’m not sure whether it was his playing, her singing, a combination of both, or the range in which the song was set. It just didn’t quite click for me. On We Go was a duet where ‘he’ had already taken the pill and ‘she’ had not, and included a nifty lyric, “I’ll take a century off …” Three others included one with a country feel to it and the ‘11 o’clock number’ Up and Away, which expressed some strong sentiments due to a rift/split between two sisters whose mother had recently died. There are some interesting nuggets here. This work will have its world premiere at Goodspeed Musicals this summer (June 2–July 2), so I may try to keep an eye and ear out for any updates.
Next, a special guest appeared, singing a stand-alone song that was composed just for her. Lauren Pritchard (Ilse in Spring Awakening, and also known as LOLO) sang Saved by the Sinner (I think; it was only announced from the stage). With its heavy country/rock vibe, it was not my favorite but the audience really ate it up.
In returning to the beginning, a couple more songs from Storebrand were featured next. Emoji, sung by Kasie Gasparini, was cute as it traced a girl's journey through the generations of her life via different emojis. A recurring lyric was, “I had something that was almost as real as what I could feel,” but she eventually came to the conclusion that an emoji just didn’t quite make the grade.
The last song on the program was Last Song (I’m not making this up, you know!). It was written at Heathrow airport just before boarding a transatlantic flight, and was born out of the question ‘What would I do if this was the last song I wrote?’ It incorporated fears of ‘what if’ and “People live and die / the lucky ones get to say good-bye.” Not quite morbid, but almost. There’s a lot of talent in this guy, and a lot of strange ideas, and a lot of fertile goings on in that brain of his. Keep an eye out for the name Zack Zadek.
As always, a big thank you to John Znidarsic who has helmed this series for
these past twenty-six(!) seasons, and who will be directing a presentation of
Joey Contreras’ song cycle In Pieces as the final Songbook presentation of the season on Monday, May 22. I’ll be there.
ConcertMeister
p.s. A shout out, also, for Ethan Packchar who provided terrific guitar support throughout many of the individual numbers. (And who even corrected the opening chord for the composer in one piece!)
No comments:
Post a Comment