Tonight I went to a show at the York Theatre, a tiny little theatre underneath a church at 54th and Lex. The church is built with some very strange, memorable, ultra-modern architecture; it seemed like a place that might be famous for it for some reason.
Anyway, this show was the first in a series for "New, Emerging, Original Artist Songwriters," with two hour-ish shows. The first one, Reach the Sky - Songs by Adam Gwon, was the primary reason I wanted to go since, as I mentioned several posts ago, I really like his work. You can listen to several of his songs on his website, http://www.adamgwon.com - I especially love "Don't Wanna Be Here" and "I'll be Here" from his musical Ordinary Days.
From the first moment, I loved his show. He wrote and sang a new song explaining the process that led to the show, including a moment where he was intimidated by association with Larry O'Keefe. In the midst of the song, he introduced his performers: Jill Abramovitz (apparently of Martin Short: Fame Becomes Me, Jared Gertner (of the most recent Spelling Bee cast, or what I think of as MY cast), Michael Hunsaker (apparently involved in lots of previous Gwon readings), and Natalie Weiss (SHE'S EVERYWHERE). Then they proceeded to sing many other Gwon songs, most of them from Ordinary Days. I loved all of the performers except for Hunsaker, who mostly hovered on the edge of okay. Some of the songs didn't really work for Jared's vocal range, but his emotional range made up for it. Natalie (duh) and Jill were fierce, which was good, as both of my favorite Gwon songs are for girls, and they blew them away. Having seen Natalie so many times in such a short period of time, I find myself wondering about her expressiveness, though; I don't think I've ever seen her sing songs in anything but variations of the same character. That's not to say that she can't; I'd have to see her sing a song that's completely outside of her character comfort zone to judge, and that just hasn't happened yet.
Back to the subject: Ordinary Days is supposedly coming to the York Theatre sometime soon in a fully produced form, though I'm having a hard time finding any information about it. Keep an eye out - it seems like a nice story, and the music is very pleasant.
The second half of the show, Short Story Long - The Songs of Timothy Huang, left me more disappointed. The singers, pretty universally, were only okay. The songs had pretty words, but left no melodic impression. There were a couple of good moments, but generally I found myself nodding off a bit, and couldn't tell you much about any of the songs mere hours later. I will not be on the lookout for this composer - nothing in the show was offensive or bad, it just didn't strike me as all that good.
And now it is past my bedtime and I got no work done today. But, hey. Musical theater!
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