The Performing Arts Project

It's not everyday a new Musical comes out of nowhere and is selected as the best music theatre show of the year. It's hard for a small theatre troupe to compete with the public media outlets and the larger venues in the area, but that's really part of the magic of theater. Every year Broadway World provides the Denver theatre community with an online portal to get the people's vote for the year's best theatrical productions around town.  This year is the 20th anniversary of the event and "Eigg the Musical" was nominated in nine categories and snapped up four of the 2023 awards, more than any other show. Eigg wins included "Best Musical", "Best New Musical", "Best Director of a Musical" and "Best Supporting Performer in a Musical." BroadwayWorld requires the performances premiere between Oct. 1, 2022, and Sept. 30, 2023. Audiences members and their friends can then vote and make their selections on an online portal for the best in each category through December 31, 2023. Winners were announced on January 9th, 2024.

2023 BroadwayWorld Denver Awards

“I’m ecstatic for the cast & crew and the show too,” said April Alsup, producer and composer of the work. “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. 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 has 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. Kelly McAllister and Antigone Biddle did such a great job and deserve to be recognized for their individual roles, but everyone in the cast was fantastic and it was a team effort for sure." Alsup said.

Cast & Crew of Eigg Musical

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. "The shows at Vintage theatre were packed and it's always nice to have your theatre friends support and vote for you." Alsup said.

Perhaps the most captivating music theatre work to ever come from Denver Colorado, Eigg the Musical took Scotland by storm this Summer at the Edinburgh Fringe. The festival is the world's largest performing arts festival and features performances from theatre companies from around the world. Established in 1947 as an alternative to the Edinburgh International Festival, it takes place in Edinburgh every August and this year's festival was bigger than ever.

With so much competition from other shows and venues, it's hard to get any sort of traction in Edinburgh, but by luck Eigg the Musical was selected as one of only 20 shows to kickoff this year's festival at an hour long press gala attended by all the major media outlets in Scotland. The event would provide the momentum needed to propel the show through the rest of the festival, but the story doesn't stop here.

The actors performances delighted the public and the locals quickly adopted the story as their own. The show sold out nearly every night and Eigg the Musical became an overnight sensation at the 2023 Edinburgh fringe festival. The critics agreed and the show was labeled a five star performance and given a unanimous thumbs up by the Scottish media. Learn more about this wonderful show at eigg.show

"This show has great potential to be something big. It tells an important story and is expertly performed. It is an ultimate show of the power of community, telling an important story of Scotland's history. Could this be Scotland’s next Sunshine on Leith?"
* Abi Whitefield - The Scots Reviewer - August 10, 2023

"Eigg the Musical: Before we even talk about how great this show is, I just have to mention that the cast is full of wonderful people. So down to earth and so talented! The show itself is AMAZING. The music is awesome, the story is lovely, and it’s chock full of humor, love, and strength. If you want to see a wonderful musical based on a true story, this is the one!"
* Dan Lentell - Get Your Coats On - EdFestivals 2023

"The Hebridean story of the Eigg community and hopes of creating a Gaelic utopia are brilliantly told and wonderfully performed. Well worth the ticket."
Posted in Edinburgh Inquirer - August 14, 2023

NOTE: Broadway World selected Eigg the Musical as a top ten show you really don't want to miss at this year's Edinburgh Fringe Festival... Thank you Broadway World!

PERFORMANCE VIDEOS:

Here's the complete performance of Eigg the Musical in Edinburgh Scotland on August 10th, 2023. It's a small thrust stage venue, but it really allowed the actors to engage with the audience during the show. Thank you Scotland for all your support!

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)

 
Posters for "Eigg the Musical" performances in Edinburgh Scotland

Creating a brand image for your new music theatre show can be challenging, but if you follow some basic design principles the process can be fun and rewarding. The first step is to find an art director who can put together a concise creative strategy for your graphic designers to work from. It's important to get everyone on your team signed up to the process and the strategy document to eliminate any anecdotal input from stakeholders at a later date. Keep your tactics focused on the execution of the elements provided in  the strategy document. Here's an example for a new show being introduced at this year's Edinburgh Fringe Festival. The process took roughly a month from start to finish and went relatively smoothly. The example below includes the initial creative strategy manifesto used to create the final design. Let us know what you think or if you need support with your next show. We'd be glad to help!

Creative Strategy (PDF) for Eigg the Musical Logo

Lots of things have changed with the music theatre development processes lately. It seems like making a soundtrack for a new music theatre work and collaborating remotely have become the new normal. Perhaps, there are just more use cases for our music material these days, but it really doesn't seem that long ago that we'd all gather around the piano with sheet music in hand for our early rehearsals and readings.

Nowadays it seems it's all done online through our favorite web conferencing software. Unfortunately, online latency issues between computers really prohibits audio from multiple sources in real-time so we use small in-home studios with audio software to record and deliver our tracks remotely. This too can be a bit troublesome, since everyone seems to use a different DAW and organizing all the files for your project can be a nightmare.

Recently, we participated in a webinar with the development team for the The Violet Hour (the Musical), based on the play The Violet Hour by Richard Greenberg and they presented their methodology for producing the soundtrack for the show. The speakers were Eric Price (book and lyricist), Will Reynolds (composer) and Andy Einhorn (music supervisor and conductor). The session was organized by the Dramatist Guild of America and Emmanuel Wilson was the moderator. Their process used the traditional method for recording a soundtrack using orchestral musicians and cast members.

We quickly got into the nitty gritty and Eric described how it was fairly easy to get high quality talent into the studio because with the pandemic raging everyone seemed available. Andy described how they all got together in the same room, but were in separate glass sound isolation booths so they could all see each other, but remain safe from possible infection. Will described how they used multiple tempo mappings for things like fermatas and/or rubato. Then, Andy mentioned the orchestration was integrated afterwards similar to a movie process and the instrumentalists could visually see the tempo maps as they performed.

An alternative method for creating a soundtrack would be to use online collaboration software such as Soundtrap (a Spotify tool). The cloud-based application allowed the development team for WYSIWYG, a Colorado based production created by April Alsup, to work on their scores while the actors add their vocal parts in a cloud-based DAW. It doesn't have some of the nuances of a live string section and dialogue and timing can be tricky, but it isn't as expensive as coordinating an entire orchestra for your recording. Virtual instrumentation is often used with modern pit orchestras and once the parts are approved by the producer the audio mastering team creates the master tracks for distribution.

Here's a link to review the new interactive version of WYSIWYG. There's nothing to download and the music is streamed directly to the browser. There are even QR codes if you want to hear the music on your phone as you read the script. Soundtrap has built-in notifications that can notify each participant when the project has been updated. This sort of functionality has been utilized by project managers for enterprise business applications for quite some time and is now being used to streamline the unique requirements found in an artist's creative workflow.

Both projects had a positive outcome and you can hear it in their music. The New York team used tempo mappings and multiple isolation booths to produce a high quality soundtrack in a relatively short period of time, while the Colorado team used collaboration software to pull together actors, musicians and sound engineers into a unified creative process. There are pros and cons to each method, but both show the will power of creative people to produce their art in the face of a pandemic.

In Music Theatre, an ALSUP (Another Libretto Score User Production) guide is a single PDF document that combines a musical's libretto with the show's songs in a single, "easy to use" digital performance package. In the past, (directors, performers, musicians, etc.) of Broadway-type Musicals commonly used two major (printed) documents, a libretto (script, stage directions and lyrics) and a music score (sheet music for the actors/singers and/or musicians) when mounting a new music theatre work. Much of today's licensed collateral is dated and inefficient. The format for an ALSUP performance package was created to take advantage of the functionality and the universal adoption of electronic PDF documents while eliminating the needless duplication of hardcopies for the various personnel involved in a music theater production.

An ALSUP (Another Libretto Score User Production) Document

We recently attended another webinar from the the Dramatist Guild's Production Compensation Series. It's was an in-depth discussion on Music Compensation Rights. The webinar was lead by Ralph Sevush, with an expert panel of contributors including: Sean Flahaven, Jeanine Tesori, Kirsten Childs and Amy VonMacek. We asked April Alsup, our local music theater expert, to represent PAP (The Performing Arts Project) in the webinar.

The first major takeaway from this session was that as a member of the Dramatist Guild there are lots of  resources who are familiar with just about every aspect of the production compensation of Musical Theater works and they are willing to help whenever questions arise, but ultimately an agent and/or publisher should promote your works, manage your rights and they should always be working in your best interest.

Dramatist Guild Music Compensation Panel

There are a lot ways to supplement the music of a theatrical piece. Are you playing your original music live, are you getting played on the radio? Are your songs placed in a TV show, film or commercial that is being played on TV? Songwriters get paid for these types of public performances and PROs (Performing Rights Organizations) like ASCAP and BMI are an integral part of how the music industry get these types of public performances licensed, tracked and then royalties paid to songwriters.

Here's some terminology:

Mechanical rights are regulated federally. In copyright law a mechanical license is a license from the holder of a copyright of a composition or musical work, to another party to create a "cover song", reproduce, or sample a portion of the original composition. It applies to copyrighted works that aren't free, open or in the public domain.

Synchronization rights are the agreements between the owner of a copyrighted composition and the user. A synchronization license grants permission for a user to release the song in other media formats. This permission is also called sync rights and your terms and conditions are completely negotiable.

Grand rights are a type of music licensing that specifically cover the right to perform musical compositions within the context of a dramatic work. This includes stage performances such as musical theater, concert dance, and arrangements of music from a dramatic work.

The license agreements of major Performance Rights Organization (PRO)s such as ASCAP and BMI do not cover grand rights and exclude the usage of compositions within "dramatic" works. Unlike small rights, grand rights must be negotiated directly with the publisher or copyright holder of the composition. Grand rights also differ from sync licensing, the licensing of music to synchronize with video content in films, videos, videogames, etc. Small rights is a term used to cover performances of individual songs in a concert or cabaret-type setting.

Print rights (licenses) provide a significant form of income for interested parties, despite new technology and new revenue streams. Two major sheet music companies are Hal Leonard and Alfred. Sheet Music for commercial music is roughly 1% of an artists revenue, but for music theater composers it can be as much 10% of the music revenue.

Providing your music digitally tends to have a greater amount of piracy issues since the files are easily copied, but the panelist agreed there isn't much you can do about it. Also, they said it's not uncommon for a sheet music provider to give an upfront advance of $25,000 for a completed music score and to be weary of contract provisions that include recuperation costs.

So that's a quick recap of the Music Compensation webinar. If you have any questions don't hesitate to reach out to us. We're glad to help you any way we can.

Here's an online magazine interview about choosing the Performing Arts as a career profession. April Alsup, a leading music theater expert from Denver, Colorado and PAP artist, shares several tender moments about her decision to pursue a career in the Performing Arts and the inspiration that happens behind the scenes with music theater development projects. To read the full interview and see all the pictures select the link below.

Canvas Rebel Magazine Interview | Meet April Alsup

Canvas Rebel is a national publication based in Dallas, Texas that examines the "modus operandi" of creative people in a way that might be beneficial for others who are dealing with similar issues. Unlike many local media sources, who can be influenced by their advertisers and/or donors, Canvas Rebel is a grassroots organization that considers stories based on its referral network and often draws attention to the human elements of an artist's journey.

One thing theatre groups often overlook is branding for their new music theatre shows. There are a lot of hats for a theater's marketing team to wear and sometimes there just aren't enough resources for this sort of thing. Large advertising firms typically have whole departments dedicated to branding and strategy. There's a whole bunch of catch phrases they use during the development process; target audience, single net impression, user personas, CTA (Call to Action), positioning, messaging to name just a few. PAP's marketing team has decades of experience in this space and best of all, they're fun to work with. Here's several examples we've collected for you. Just give us a call and let us know how we can help with your project.

WYSIWYG: (WIZ-ee-wig) exposes a world where people live life defined by others.

Logo: WYSIWYG the Musical

The Age of Sisyphus: Sisyphus must teach the citizens of Corinth to embrace free will, despite the wrath of the Gods.

Logo: Sisyphus the Musical

The Burgess and the Laird: The Isle of Eigg has a long history of conflict, can the inhabitants take control?

Logo: Eigg the Musical

We've been participating in the production compensation webinars presented by the Dramatist Guild in New York City over the last few weeks. The discussions are lead by Ralph Sevush and include a variety of experts depending on the topics for each session. This series is very informative and is a real benefit of being a member of the Dramatist Guild. Our sense is there really isn't any blueprint for these sorts of financial matters, so the format is perfect. Ralph does a great job at identifying the topics for each session and then lets the experts share anecdotes and valuable insight from their experiences working in the real world; afterwards, a DG participant gathers questions of the online audience for further discussion. The sessions last several hours and are going on for the next month or so.

If you plan to use recorded music for a theatrical production, you'll need to pay royalties if the music is protected by copyright. There are several different scenarios for this; for example, you may need music for background ambiance in your lobby and/or as music tied to the performance itself

If you do this sort of thing you should probably get a general license from the organizations that represent the writers and publishers of the songs. The best-known organizations are ASCAP (American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers) and BMI (Broadcast Music Industries).

General licensing is used by businesses like restaurants and retail stores for background music and if you use a lot of background music, it's usually cheaper to get the yearly license. Licensing organizations base the amount they charge for the performance licenses on the type of theater and its seating capacity.

You can can even license music from a particular composer or the entire catalog of all ASCAP or BMI composers, but you can't do it for just one or two songs. Recently, April Alsup added the music for her award winning musical "WYSIWYG" to the ASCAP catalog, so her songs are now available for theaters who have subscribed to the ASCAP catalog.

Permission to use recorded music with live stage performances involves what is called "synchronization rights." Those rights are handled by the publisher or an intermediary like the Harry Fox Agency and/or the National Music Publishers Association, the agency that represents most American music publishers. Just let us know if you need any help with any of this.

Getting your music theater soundtrack online has it's challenges. Many musical theatre projects don't even consider creating high quality commercial song soundtracks for the airwaves; and even if they do, navigating the infrastructure of online streaming services, radio, television and film is not for the faint of heart.

If your show doesn't have label affiliation you'll need to set one up with GS1-US. This can get you going on services like Spotify and only costs $30, but music theater fans use all sorts of different online streaming services. 

Online Streaming Services for WYSIWYG the Musical

Recently, April Alsup expanded the soundtrack for WYSIWYG to include; Spotify, Apple, Amazon, YouTube, Tidal, Deezer and SoundCloud. So now we have the choice to hear our favorite WYSIWYG songs on a lot of different streaming services...just search for April Alsup and enjoy!  😀 🎧

Our PAP performers get an extra holiday boost from local businesses looking for everything from Dickens quartets to string quartets. Our performers see a real boost this time of year and we enjoy teaming up with colleagues over at accompanist.com for all sorts of different performing arts projects.

Christmas is a time for giving. The spirit of Christmas is in the 'togetherness' we share with each other, it's in the thought to which you put into thinking about others, where we forgive, take stock of what's important and become 'better' versions of ourselves.

Performing art projects are all over Denver this time of year and taking a walk through the spooky, illuminated landscape at the Denver Botanic Gardens all dressed up for Halloween has become an annual tradition for PAP. The performing artists brought life to the enchanting autumnal event with monsters, dancing skeletons, ghosts, coffin brides and brew mistress witches. It's always a treat to see former Performing Arts Project artists at events like this!

The gardens event team always does a good job with this sort of thing. They use local talent from organizations like accompanist.com and real pumpkins harvested from Colorado farms. Pumpkin artists from all over the state create sculptures and dense displays of jack-o-lanterns, with grins and grimaces fit for the season. It's so much fun, weather permitting of course.

The last few years have been really tough on the entertainment industry; fortunately, venues around Denver are starting to open up again so let's all take a deep breath and hope it stays that way. If you are interested in a Sunday matinee, Tenderly is playing at the Mizel Arts and Culture Center (MACC) in the Denver Jewish Community Center throughout August. The theater had a facelift a few years back and it's footprint is perfect for the Denver audience.

Beki Pineda and April Alsup at the Mizel Arts and Culture Center

Here's an interview with one of our clients about her experiences composing music theatre and there's plenty of touching anecdotes about working in the Performing Arts too. April Alsup was selected by the Los Angeles based Voyage Group to discuss the inspiration behind composing music theater works. April used our Crossroads facility back in 2014 for a workshop performance of WYSIWYG (What you see is what you get) the Musical which went on to win one of New York City's most prestigious music theatre awards. To read the interview and see all the pictures select the link below.

It sure has been a tough couple of years for theaters across the country; fortunately, things are starting to comeback now in Colorado. The Denver Center for the Performing Arts, The Arvada Center and Central City Opera have all announced plans for 2021 and 2022. It's refreshing to see audition notices being posted on all the social networks and the buzz of new shows hitting our Colorado stages. During the pandemic there was a lot of online discussions about the state of theater in Colorado. It's nice to get back to entertaining again; after all, that's really what it's all about. It'll be nice to get out and see our local talent back on stage developing their skills. Be sure to check out the latest events at all the local theaters.

The folks at the Performing Arts Project have been hard at work too! Shows like WYSIWYG have already received a lot of national attention, but over the pandemic the team was able to create a brand new musical arrangement for upcoming shows with larger casts. We're even making plans to take a new show to the Edinburgh festival in 2022. So please stay tuned for any audition announcements.

We are heart broken at the recent mass shooting in Boulder, Colorado and the Performing Arts Project sends our condolences to the family and friends of all the victims that were tragically taken from us last week. We stand in solidarity with our colleagues in the Boulder arts community and hope that we can all work together to build a stronger world that overcomes hate, misogyny and racism.

#BoulderStrong

Artistic workflow has been changing quite dramatically over the last year. Making audio tracks for new Music Theatre works used to be a bit of an after thought, but since we are all collaborating remotely these days it's becoming more and more part of our processes. It doesn't seem that long ago that we'd all gather around the piano with sheet music in hand for our early rehearsals. Nobody was focused on producing audio recordings, but now it's all done online (digitally) and we can just save the parts for mastering at a later date.

Unfortunately, online latency issues between computers really prohibits audio from multiple sources in real-time So we use small in-home studios with audio software to record and deliver our tracks remotely. This too can be a bit troublesome, since everyone seems to use a different DAW and organizing all the files for your project is not for the faint of heart.

WYSIWYG Workflow Schematic

Over the last several months, the Performing Arts Project has been using the online collaboration software known as Soundtrap. The cloud-based application allows our development teams to work on their scores while the actors add their vocal parts in a cloud-based DAW. Once the parts are approved by the producer the audio mastering team creates the master tracks for the show.

Soundtrap has built-in notifications that can notify each participant when the project has been updated. This sort of functionality has been utilized by project managers in business for quite some time and is now being used to streamline the unique requirements found in an artist's creative workflow.