Gordon Leary

159 posts

REB+VoDKa+ME goes to the opera

REB+VoDKa+ME will be featured in American Lyric Theater‘s 2019 ALT Alumni: Composers and Librettists in Concert performance!

Excerpts from the show will be performed by classically trained singers at the Morgan Library and Museum on Sunday, March 3 at 3:00pm. We’re sharing the bill with excerpts from new operas by Christopher Cerrone & Stephanie Fleischmann and Kamala Sankaram & Jerre Dye, some of whom are alumni of the ALT Composer Librettist Development Program with Julia.

It’s going to be a whole new way to hear the score (including with a few live instruments.) Tickets are available now!

Something Blue in Chicago!

Seven years after we wrote the first song for it, Something Blue is having its first public reading as part of the 2019 Chicago Musical Theatre Festival, produced by Underscore Theatre Company. I’m so thrilled to get the chance to hear it fully and so excited to get to spend a week working in Chicago!

More information is coming soon, but you can reserve your (free) tickets if you will be in Chicago on Presidents’ Day, Monday, February 18!

SPACE on Ryder Farm

I’m back in the city after an amazingly productive and beautiful week at SPACE on Ryder Farm of writing, eating, breathing fresh air, and making friends with woolly bear caterpillars. Julia and I made some great progress on thinking through Choreomania and made a giant leap towards a second draft of Something Blue.

I spent much of the week writing in the yurt, when I wasn’t harvesting dahlias or marveling at sunrises/sunsets.

We were thrilled to spend our time at SPACE with fellow P73er Blue Beckford Burrell, Working Farm playwright Antoinette Nwandu, and Stitcher podcasters Rachel Bonds, Ash Sanders, and Ellen Winter & Chris Litter

Thanks to Page 73 for sending us up for the week!

A magnificent first table reading!

We have a full draft!

And Julia and I gathered a wonderful group of friends and collaborators together to hear the entirety of The Magnificent Seven for the first time.

Thanks to Shaleah Adkisson, Renee Albulario, Delaney Amatrudo, Ian Axness, Ally Bonino, David Friedlander, Holly Gould, Brandon Michael Lowden, Ellen Macy, Lynne Marie Rosenberg, Keith Rubin, and Hana Slevin for a great read and a great discussion.

I’m so excited to get down to work based on the wonderful feedback I already did some rewriting… (And USA Gymnastics is certainly trying hard to keep the sport in the collective consciousness.)

For now, though, it was the perfect way to cap off a creative summer!