Here's a video of the final prototypes working in unison. See you in Edinburgh!
Here's a video of the final prototypes working in unison. See you in Edinburgh!
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.
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! |
BANNED Rail Board Concept |
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.
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. 😀
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 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 |
Eigg performance at Vintage Theater |
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. |
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!
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 |
Drinking Scotch and exploring the Isle of Eigg in 2019 |
Good friends at Eigg the Musical in Edinburgh |
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 |
Sandy Brechin with Eigg Ensemble (April, Mark and Cieran) |
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 the Musical cast and crew |
Eigg the Musical cast and crew |
Eigg the Musical writing team April Alsup and Mark Sbani |
April Alsup at St Thomas in Leipzig Germany |
In 2019 I travelled to the Isle of Eigg for a little theatrical research. During the trip I was exposed to the atmosphere at a ceilidh dance and I knew it needed to be integrated into the Eigg show. Over the pandemic I learned to play the accordion and now I can actually play with a ceilidh band. Here's a 360 video of the Eigg cast learning the dance steps to Miss McLeod's Reel. Our dance instructor was Tim Luscombe and he studied dance at the University of St Andrews in Scotland. It was a lot of fun and very informative too.
Drone launch point and historic main street |