Growing up in a small town

I wrote this song about someone reminiscing their memories of growing up in a small town. The family moved to Vienna, West Virginia in 1958 when their youngest child was just one year old. All the children left the area after college, but frequently brought their families home to visit as their parents aged.

4202 3rd Avenue, Vienna, WV 26105

Three generations of the family had a presence in the Parkersburg area for around 60 years. The parents passed away in 2011 and 2013 and the original farmhouse was torn down in 2018. The song is about time, coming of age and finding refuge in the family memories one holds in their heart and mind. 

     

5207 3rd Avenue, Vienna, WV 26105

Green screens are fun

Chroma keying, is a visual effects technique of putting two or more images together based on their color range. The technique is used to remove a background from the subject of a photo or video. This technique can be referred to as color keying where a green (or blue) screen is used because they differ from the hue of human skin, but at the end of the day no part of the subject should have the color used as the background.

BANNED cast spotted at the Cavern in Liverpool

We recently used a green screen to create a cast announcement for the musical BANNED! Going along with the shows theme of a group of individuals being banned, the green screen technique allowed us to create a "mugshot" of each of the cast members, as well as, to spot the cast in various locations in and around the United Kingdom leading to the Edinburgh fringe festival where the show will debut this Summer.

BANNED! cast announcement

Mobile phone prop for BANNED txting

I've always enjoyed making theatre props, especially when it requires technology and a little out of the box thinking. There's a famous story about how Hitchcock placed a battery-operated light within the glass of milk that one of his characters fears is full of poison. The milk glows ominously, emphasizing her suspicions while her motif is played in a minor key. All the characters in Banned! the Musical use their cell phones to txt one another so I wanted to implement the same sort of effect. The timing on these sorts of things is critical so it was important to give each actor the ability to turn on their phone as well as a theater tech the ability to flip all phones on and all phones off.

So it was off to Home Depot to figure out how to make 10 of them. I found some relatively thin puck lights that fit nicely between several electrical wall plates. I used the wall mounting #6 machine screws and a nut to fasten them together. Then I added some foam padding to reduce vibration and stress. Then it was off to the local arts and craft store (Michaels) for some personal design paper with an adhesive backing to differentiate each phone.

Here's a video of the final prototypes working in unison. See you in Edinburgh!

Long ago and far away

I purchased my Real Book in an alley near the Berklee School of Music in 1977 and I've been playing the charts ever since. A few years back I decided to learn to play accordion and found the instrument to be a natural fit for playing jazz standards. The stradella bass system is powerful and I decided to go through the charts and add some songs to the YouTube Channel @accompanists.

Long Ago (and Far Away) is a popular song from the 1944 musical film Cover Girl with Rita Hayworth and Gene Kelly credits to Kern/Gershwin - Real Book circa 1977.

Edinburgh shoutout for BANNED the Musical

Things have really started to pick up for the 2024 Edinburgh Fringe Festival. Last week outdoor advertising became available and this week they added over 1,300 shows to the festival's online ticketing portal. It was a pretty big announcement and they even had a shoutout to Greenside and BANNED at Riddle's Court. With that many venues and performances on the calendar it's hard to get visibility for your show.

2024 Edinburgh Fringe Shoutout for BANNED!

The Fringe's online ticketing system has lots of options and the Fringe organization has been super helpful with explaining all the ins and outs. Our venue is Riddle's Court and the theater is Willow Studio. It has a three quarter thrust stage and roughly 60 seats. We've tried to set the ticket prices at a reasonable price to accommodate everyone who wants to see our show. During the preview week we have all sorts of specials, the weekdays have some special offers too and of course the weekends are crazy. Hope to see you there!

BANNED Poster Concept

We've been putting the final touches on our marketing plan for BANNED. The process all starts with the creative strategy document, but it sure doesn't stop there. It's important for any campaign to have some sort of basic marketing manifesto, but you still need to be flexible in the tactics. Here are several high level assumptions we made early on:

• Find an abstract artistic treatment that captures the spectrum of gender, include the use of electronic gadgets and create a modern genderless world.
  
• Find a background element that shows gender diversity in the public space and can be reused.
  
• Provide elements that show the broad spectrum and various dimensions of gender and speaks candidly to an audience of all ages.

BANNED Poster in four colors

At some point we realized that using color might be a compelling way to individualize each character while maintaining the sense that there is a group of individuals in society that are being marginalized for not abiding by traditional gender norms. We're planning to print and distribute the posters in four different background colors using the original artwork created for the logo. We'll hang them around Edinburgh, the venue and provide signed copies to our donors, friends and family.

BANNED Rail Board Concept

The overall concept worked nicely with our outdoor advertising campaign too. One of the first advertising milestones for the Edinburgh Festival is when outside advertising products become available to the public and this year we were able to snag several rail boards in prominent areas around Edinburgh this year. More to come!

"When it Rains it Pours" says BANNED Finale

I wrote the single "When it Rains it Pours" (WIRIP) way back in 1985. I always liked the hook and knew one day it would end up in one of my music theatre shows. It's funny how songs you may have written years earlier can fit so well in your newer shows. This song was a perfect fit for the closing song in BANNED the Musical, after all, I was looking for an upbeat song with a great hook. You see in the the closing scene the "Organized Confusions" are reinstated as one of the Musical acts at the "New Horizons" theatre festival and the whole community celebrates that the ban has been lifted on the new groups' show.

April Alsup · Master Track: WHEN IT RAINS IT POURS

It's sort of a toss up how people interrupt the saying "When it Rains it Pours" as a metaphor these days. In our Musical BANNED it's used for bad news and good news, but you'll have to see the show to learn more. 😀

BANNED the Musical to debut at Edinburgh Fringe

I enjoy participating in the Edinburgh Fringe Festival and it seems like I always find a great team to share the experience with. This year I'm taking the show BANNED and I'm sure it'll all start coming together in May and June. We're staying at the University again and Kelly McAllister is directing the show, he did such a great job with Eigg! You know he won "Best Director of a Musical" from Broadway World for his effort last year. He's planning to start some preliminary readings, choral work, blocking and choreography soon. Creating theatre is truly a godsend and I'm particularly proud of this work. Here's a link to the official BANNED press release.

Eigg wins "BEST MUSICAL" of 2023

Eigg the Musical recently won four 2023 BroadwayWorld Denver Awards. The annual BWW announcement represents the best in regional productions, touring shows and more. Eigg wins included "Best Musical", "Best New Musical", "Best Director of a Musical" and "Best Supporting Performer in a Musical." BroadwayWorld entries come from regional performances between Oct. 1, 2022, and Sept. 30, 2023. Audiences members and their friends make their selections on an online portal for the best in each category through December 31, 2023. Winners were announced on January 9th, 2024.

“I’m ecstatic and very proud of the work that the cast & crew have done and proud of the show too,” said April Alsup, producer and composer of the new Musical. “The amount of time and effort that goes into a production like this is unreal. To see those efforts acknowledged in a regional and statewide way is really fabulous."

2023 Regional BroadwayWorld Awards 

"The people voting validate that the work we’re doing is high caliber and at an elite level. It acknowledges the hard work that the leadership team have put into developing the show and the performances of the actors.” BroadwayWorld is an international organization that’s broken down in different regions across America, Canada, Central and South America, Europe and Asia. “This is a peoples' choice award and it's really the only theatre award like it in our area, so it’s a big deal,” Alsup said.

Eigg performance at Vintage Theater 

Eigg the Musical was performed at the Vintage Theatre in July 2023. Situated in Scotland's Inner Hebrides, the Isle of Eigg has a fascinating history of sovereignty. Not long ago, the inhabitants of Eigg faced a different type of invader; a celebrity Laird looking to create his Gaelic island utopia. The transfer to community ownership hatched on Eigg is arguably the most captivating example of Scottish land reform. "Our shows were packed at Vintage and it's a good feeling to have your theatre friends support and vote for you," Alsup said.

Bold Journey magazine interview

Here's a link to an online interview I had with Bold Journey Magazine. They ask me about optimism and said that they believe it is the invisible ingredient that powers so much of the incredible progress in society from entrepreneurs and investors to artists and creatives who believe in something and are optimistic enough to risk their time, money, and reputation. I told them; "if you don't have something good to say just don't say it." I think the publication believes we can all learn from each other and they look for stories that will inspire their readers.

Click HERE to learn more.

BANNED headed to 2024 Edinburgh Fringe Festival

It was inevitable that "BANNED the Musical" would be performed across the pond someday. Some of our UK peeps come from our relationships with streaming music sites like Spotify, Deezer and Tidal, but the BANNED show has a real universal theatre appeal too and is very relevant with the polarizing discourse around gender and the proliferation of social media these days.

Willow Studio @ Riddles Court

We had a small theatre troupe at Fringe a few months ago with the show "Eigg the Musical" and we were hoping to get a spot in 2024 program. Our dates this year are August 2nd through the 10th. We're part of the evening lineup in Willow Studio @ Riddles Court. It'll be nice to see all our Greenside friends again and meet up with the European folks we know from a far next Summer in Scotland. Stay tuned for more details!

World on a string

Autumn is a great time of year for aerial photography. The change of color can be breathtaking in Colorado and the Fall foliage makes way for some excellent pictures. I usually start by powering up the batteries in my drone early in the day and get everything prepared for an early evening photo shoot. This year I headed out to Wallace Park, it's near the interchange of I-225 and I-25 and has a backdrop of the Denver Technology Center and the Colorado Mountains.

Wallace Park at Denver Technology Center

I decided to do something a little different. I wanted to get a picture of a kite flying over a park with the Fall foliage, the high rise buildings and the mountains, but hanging my 360 camera under a kite seemed time consuming and problematic. The solution was to use the drone to carry the camera and add the kite in post, but getting a image of the string of the kite would be a challenge.

Drone Flying at 150 feet above Wallace Park

As usual the local Home Depot had a nice solution, but as often is the case, this kind of thing can be a bit trial and error. It was easy enough to find a bright yellow string and a small pully and attach the pulley to the bottom of the drone. Then I fed the yellow string through the pulley and attached the old bullet time string to my old Insta 360 camera and knot them together.

Go fly a kite

I enjoy flying the drone, but in this case I had to manage a lot of different things. I put the Insta 360 in photo interval mode and launched the drone. It was set to take pictures every 60 seconds. The camera was spinning wildly so I wasn't sure how well the images would turn out. Sometimes you just have to wait until you back in your studio to see the results and in this case a lot of the images were blurry.

Little world mode of drone on a string

Fortunately I was able to use some of the pictures and the yellow/orange string looked perfect. The Insta 360 software has some cool image modes and I used a fisheye effect on the first image and little world on the second one. I then touched up the images in Adobe Lightroom and used Photoshop to remove the drone and add the kite.

World on a string

All in all, I'm happy with the results. The first image was a panoramic image I took using the drone's Hasselblad 1" sensor on an old Mavic 2 pro. The other two were from the Insta 360 and I did some post framing and color correction on them, but it was a fun day for aerial photo content creation before all the leaves drop and Winter time comes in Colorado.

Eigg the Musical in pictures

In my storage space I have all sorts of scrapbooks that my parents would make after they would take a trip. My sense is that these boxes will probably end up in the trash or one of my son's garages someday. Lots of us like to gather up and organize all the pictures and collateral from the shows we've been a part of and put them into a scrapbook. It takes a lot of time to bring a new musical work to the stage and along the way you accumulate all kinds of knick knacks, but these days it's mostly digital or can be easily made to be. Here's my latest one, it's for Eigg the Musical and goes all the way back to 2017. It won't end up in a garage somewhere because it's safe in the cloud...right?

Eigg the Musical in Pictures

360° video sample of Eigg Musical at Riddles Court

I've always wondered how well a 360 degree camera would work for theatrical stage performances. The Insta 360 camera is fairly old technology, but it has a gyro mechanism built in to the enclosure that orientates the lens to the proper horizon. I'm not really sure if it's a physical gyro mechanism or done through software, but the results work well for me since I often hang the camera from my drone or some sort of ceiling fixture.

Here's the first scene from our show Eigg the Musical at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. I used the bullet time string to hang the camera from the chandelier at stage right of the theater. The Greenside @ Riddles court venue is over 500 years old and once held a coronation party for King James V1. Check out the ceiling!

 
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Life was meant for good friends and great adventures

In 2019 I visited the tiny Isle of Eigg for a little theatrical research. I stayed at the Glebe Barn and made friends with a group of lovely people from Ayr, Scotland. During the day we explored Massacre caves, the singing sands of Laig Bay and hiked up Mount Squrr to Loch nam Ban Mora. In the evenings we drank scotch and discussed the history of Eigg. One of the members in the group was connected with Keith Schellenberg and later the Island Trust. It was very insightful and had a lot of impact on the Eigg show.

Drinking Scotch and exploring the Isle of Eigg in 2019

Four years and a pandemic later they came to Edinburgh to see the results at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. It takes several years to write a full length music theatre work and this one included moments from our visit 4 years earlier. It was so rewarding and truly one of the most meaningful moments of this year's trip to Edinburgh and one I will always cherish.

Good friends at Eigg the Musical in Edinburgh

Developing the Eigg show's musical score

The Eigg show has been a wondrous musical journey. Early on, I knew we needed to supplement the score with traditional Scottish music and after visiting the island I decided on the instrumentation of the music ensemble (accordion, violin and keyboard). My goal would be to compose and perform the work with the ensemble, I like to call it method composing. I had never played an accordion before, but it felt so natural. Well, I searched the internet and found Sandy Brechin, a Ceilidh accordion maestro from Edinburgh. He knew all about the story of Eigg and of many others too, he'd even performed on the island and knew some of the locals. So over the next year we used the marvels of technology to connect with each other and he helped a lot with my playing.

Sandy Brechin and April Alsup using Skye

On Sunday August 6th we met in person for the first time at Ensign Ewert tavern, a small pub which ironically is a stone's throw from the venue of our show. Then, on the 10th he came to our show I was able to return the favor by performing for him. It was truly a special moment for me. I find traditional Scottish music to be comforting, honest and humble and hope I was able to capture some of it's beauty in our show.

Sandy Brechin with Eigg Ensemble (April, Mark and Cieran)

Cast and Crew of Eigg the Musical

Here's an image of our cast and crew a few minutes before entering the Willow Studio at Riddles Court for our debut (albeit preview) of Eigg the Musical in Edinburgh Scotland. 

Cast and Crew of Eigg the Musical

Eigg troupe press photos

The Eigg show has been in the works for quite some time now and we've decided it's time to unveil our upcoming shows at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe. Here's a couple Eigg the Musical troupe photos we shot for the press release. Tracy Holt Doty took the picture during a rehearsal break the last part of June 2023. We were missing a couple of cast members that night since it was early in the process, but I'm sure we'll add plenty of images of the whole team on the Musical's website soon.

Eigg the Musical cast and crew

Eigg the Musical cast and crew

The process of writing musical theatre

I've been writing music theater works since I was a child and one thing I've learned is no one can give you a blueprint, a formula or a road map. I try to go into the process with an open mind and I sometimes just let the music show the way. My guess is my colleagues would tell you that I'm not the easiest person to work with. I enjoy collaboration, but there are often disagreements. My latest work was developed with Mark Sbani and started quite some time ago.

Eigg the Musical writing team April Alsup and Mark Sbani

The intersection between music, dance and storytelling is magical. I'll never forget coming home from Scotland after a little onsite research and discussing how we should retool the whole work. My sense was we needed to set the show within the events of a Scottish ceilidh dance festival. We then focused on just a few highland tales and the traditional music provided the authentic atmosphere we were after. Fast forward through a pandemic, learning to play accordion, a lot of give and take and it all started to come together. Next month we are headed to Scotland to perform our show at the biggest performing arts festival on the planet.

Visiting Saint Thomas in Leipzig Germany

In 2019 I visited Saint Thomas Church in Leipzig, Germany. It is probably most famous as the place where Johann Sebastian Bach worked as the music director from 1723 until his death in 1750 and is the current location of his remains. There's so much classical music history in Leipzig and musicians from all over the world travel here to experience the atmosphere. Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven and Mendelssohn all performed in this place.

April Alsup at St Thomas in Leipzig Germany