February 16th, 2010 | Show: Performances | Leave a comment

Sheet Music Site Devoted to New Musical Theatre Launches

NEW YORK, NY, December 10, 2009 – NewMusicalTheatre.com, the first website ever exclusively devoted to selling sheet music by musical theater writers, launches today. The e-commerce site will start out selling sheet music written by Nick Blaemire (Glory Days), Adam Gwon (Ordinary Days), Joe Iconis (The Black Suits, The Plant that Ate the Dirty Socks, Things to Ruin), Kait Kerrigan and Brian Lowdermilk (Henry & Mudge, Tales from the Bad Years, The Unauthorized Autobiography of Samantha Brown), Ryan Scott Oliver (Darling, Mrs. Sharp, Rated RSO), Benj Pasek and Justin Paul (Dogfight, Edges).

This handful of up-and-comers has netted many of the prizes and laurels available to young writers in the theater community. Among them, they’ve won four Jonathan Larson awards, two Ed Kleban awards, two Rodgers awards, one Fred Ebb award, as well as songs featured on television, several off-Broadway and regional productions, and one Broadway production. Many more writers will be added over the coming months.

The goal of NewMusicalTheatre.com is to create a direct connection between people who write music and people who want to perform and listen to it. It provides an affordable and legal one-stop shop for musical theater fans and performers to discover and share the work of self-published writers. Site features include custom songbooks, song ratings, and a search functionality that caters to singers browsing for new audition songs. It aspires to foster a dynamic community where fans and actors can directly connect and impact writers while they’re still struggling to make a living on their music.

Artists Currently Represented on the Site

Ultimately, this will be a place where actors and fans not only find and purchase music, but also a place where people go to browse for new writers, to find lyrics, share their thoughts, and even interact directly with the writers of tomorrow.

“The site’s an extension of what we all do in the real world — support each other’s work.  To have a site that not only gets our music out to people who want to sing it, but helps those people discover other young writers, is amazing.  It’s bursting the doors of the new musical theater community open to the whole world,” says site member Adam Gwon, composer of Ordinary Days. NewMusicalTheatre.com will bring writers, actors, and fans together to share the music in a safe, dynamic - and most importantly - legal way.

The site was created by writers for writers as an alternative to traditional publishing. Most songs have mp3s or video samples. NewMusicalTheatre.com uses new technology to protect writers from having their sheet music illegally downloaded by password protecting the downloaded file with the customer’s credit card number. While protecting the writer, it also allows customers to have more control over their purchase. Rather than having to print their sheet music right away, they can keep the sheet music on their computer for continued access to the file and multiple printings.

When Jeff Marx (co-creator of Avenue Q) previewed the site, he said, “Whoever thought of making your credit card number the password to unlock the downloaded file was an absolute genius.  That changes everything and serves everyone.  This is going to be bigger than porn.”

December 11th, 2009 | Show: Website News | Leave a comment

Registration is beginning for the spring semester of Kait’s libretto-writing course at Primary Stages. You don’t have to have taken the first level of the course, but you do already have to have an idea for a musical. Don’t you want to feel like you’ve accomplished something? Like a first draft?

Libretto 2 – From Treatment to First Draft:
A musical is only as good as its libretto. Any producer will tell you that without a strong story that drives forward from the initial moment of conflict to the final moment of discovery, great songs don’t matter. This second-level course is a continuation of last semester’s Libretto workshop. It is designed for writers who have already developed a treatment for a musical and are prepared to write their first draft. Each week, we’ll workshop writers’ musicals-in-progress as well as look at successful musicals to figure out what make them tick. Topics covered include story and scene structure, thematic resonance, theatrical devices, song placement, and dramatic tension. By the end of the semester, all students will have a first draft (either with songs or ready to shop to composers).
Prerequiste: In order to enroll, you must submit a treatment for the musical that you want to develop by February 1, 2010.

Wednesdays from 10:00am – 1:00pm
Begins Wednesday, February 17
February 17, 24, March 3, 10, 17, 24, 31, April 7, 14, 21

http://www.primarystages.org/playwriting

November 24th, 2009 | Show: Other Stuff | Leave a comment

It’s all happening. For the first time ever, a Kerrigan-Lowdermilk show is being licensed. And if you know Kerrigan and Lowdermilk, you know they like to do it weird do it up and do it web-tastic. So this show is unlike any other show that you’ve licensed. It’s all the material you need to make your own Kerrigan-Lowdermilk show. You choose the set list, you choose the format, you choose the level of awesome.

We make recommends along the way - for example, we recommend a high level of awesome.

1. Tell everyone you know. 2. Tell them to mention you in their application if they apply for a license. 3. We will give you free sheet music and other fantastic prizes.

This is, of course, just the beginning: www.kerrigan-lowdermilk.com/pwc/index.html

November 3rd, 2009 | Show: Party Worth Crashing, Performances, Website News | Leave a comment

Matt Doyle (Bye Bye Birdie, Spring Awakening, Gossip Girl) will perform “Last Week’s Alcohol” at the second Cutting-Edge Composers concert at the Canal Room on November 9th.

You should come because a.) Matt Doyle has a ridiculous perfect voice for this song, b.) for approximately ten minutes during the Gossip Girl season finale, you and everyone you know thought he was Gossip Girl and that blew your mind and c.) “Last Week’s Alcohol” is currently Kait and Brian’s favorite song that they’ve written and it hasn’t been performed in New York yet and things like this only happen for the first time once.

Think on that. Then read the PRESS RELEASE, then make some reservations.

November 2nd, 2009 | Show: Bad Years, Performances | Comments (2)

Kait is teaching her class “The Libretto” at Primary Stages this fall. Classes start September 25th and go through December. Learn how to write a musical from a Kleban Award-winning bookwriter (yeah, you heard me.) Brian will make a special guest appearance for their famed “How To Write A Musical” collaborative exercise and by the time you leave, you’ll have taken that idea you’ve had for a musical to the next step.

There are only a few spots left!! Click on the following link for more information and to reserve yours in the class: http://primarystages.org/playwriting#libretto

The Primary Stages School of Theater is an interdisciplinary institution where students may hone their skills and develop their careers in a nurturing and collaborative environment. The School provides extensive opportunities for emerging artists, professionals, and life-long learners to collaborate with working professional artists while building strong relationships within the New York theater community.

September 2nd, 2009 | Show: Other Stuff | Leave a comment

Kerrigan and Lowdermilk have joined twitter profiles. If you still don’t know what twitter is, please see this explanation that we already posted.

This is going to be an even better twitter feed because we’ll both update it and therefore it will be updated twice as often. You’ll love it. So follow, please at http://www.twitter.com/kaitandbrian.