These Familiar Spirits demo release

To celebrate the spooky season, Julia and I are releasing a song a day from our newly completed demo for These Familiar Spirits! Follow along on our Instagram (@gordonandjuliamusicals) for daily videos.

(Many of the videos feature the artwork of Odilon Redon – including the cover image to the left… His spooky and beautifully otherworldly artwork is a big inspiration to us!)

Thanks to our phenomenal singers for their work bringing this brand new score to life over the past several months (and beyond!) – Shaleah Adkisson, Delaney Amatrudo, Kim Blanck, Ally Bonino, Carina Gravante, Victoria Huston-Elem, Amy Linden, MinJi Kim, Alllison Lian, Elexis Morton, Allison Posner, Hana Slevin, Gabrielle Stravelli & Tatiana Wechsler. And thanks, as always, to the wonderful music director Rich Silverstein and engineer Andrew Zinsmeister for making it all sound so good!

(Want to hear the whole thing at once in story order? Head on over to Soundcloud…)

RVM@MSM

This past weekend we got to return to the world of REB+VoDKa+ME after far too long for a quick two day workshop in the Manhattan School of Music Musical Theatre Lab Series with a few new songs and brand new group of amazing actors!

The workshop featured Lucy Ames, Hallie August, Timothy Bevens, Cory Brooks, Maithili Ginde, Carina Gravante, Callie Anna Henrysen, Ayla Gittelman Ipek, Gigi Mechetti, Teyla McAdoo, Sammi Pillow, Kenneth Sweeney, and Yoyo Zhou, directed by the wonderful Madsie Flynn with music direction, as always, by Rich Silverstein.

Thanks to Aaron Riccardi and Liza Gennaro for this opportunity to revisit this project. I’m hopeful that we’ll be back in this world again soon!

Back at Flint Rep!

Julia and I were thrilled to be back at Flint Repertory Theatre from November 11-13 for our first workshop of the first full draft of These Familiar Spirits. Directed by Colette Robert, with music direction by Adam Yankowy and stage management by Rae Ocenasek, we spent a few brief days learning the score and exploring the book. We had a private reading for a few friends of the theater at the end of our time – it was thrilling the hear the full draft for the first time!

Our wonderful cast included Audrey Allen, Olivia Bath, Sabrina Dahlgren, Leslie Hull, Chloe Kirchmeier, Megan Krause Meyer, and Ash Moran, with stage directions by Bree Wilson.

Thank you to the amazing Flint Rep staff – Michael Lluberes, Nicole Samsel, Taja Calhoun, and Emily Nichter – for welcoming us back and for giving us the time and space to further develop the show. We love being there and can’t wait to get back again!

When I think of home…

I had the absolute pleasure and privilege to help assemble a celebration of the 50th Anniversary of Stagecrafters Youth Theatre, my original artistic home in Pepper Pike, Ohio. Like so many, I found my artistic voice and my artistic joy in this program that is rooted in the building of confidence and community through musical theatre. The celebration culminated in a performance featuring more than 100 alumni at the State Theatre, part of Cleveland’s Playhouse Square, which I co-directed with Jamie Koeth with music direction by Jared Stein, on August 19, 2024.

Broadway alumni Jordan Brown, Max Chernin, Hannah Delmonte, Ben Fankhauser, David Holbert, Andrew Kober, Halle Morse, Robb Sapp, Elena Shaddow, and Jason Weston performed songs from their childhoods, their professional careers, and from the Stagecrafters vault, while a chorus with decades of alumni shared some favorites. About three dozen speakers told the story of the program and shared the ways in which the program shaped their lives, both on- and off-stage. Current participants and students also joined the alumni for a number of songs to show that we are indeed a family!

Most importantly, we were able to honor program founder Loe Goldwasser with a scholarship named in her honor (funded by her family) and current director Wendy Scott-Koeth with a rehearsal studio named after her. Their work shaped so many generations of artists (and humans) and it meant so much to create a way to acknolwedge and celebrate them both with the community they built!\

First read/sing of the first act!

There are few things as exciting as hearing the songs you’ve written sung for the first time, especially when they are sung by some of your most trusted (and talented) collaborators.

Julia and I were thrilled to have a table reading of the complete (and sprawling) first act of These Familiar Spirits – all 90 minutes and 16 songs of it!

Thanks to our readers and singers – Shaleah Adkisson, Liz Carbonell, MinJi Kim, Lauren Marcus, Allison Posner, Hana Slevin, Rebecca Spiro, and Colette Robert – and music director extraordinaire Rich Silverstein for tackling a lot of material in a short amount of time and letting us hear this new project for the very first time! What could be better than an afternoon with generous, talented, and insightful artists??

On to Act II and Michigan later this year!