A Little Flashback

My friend Stephanie Johnstone, who was the composer that brought me on to the LET US NOW PRAISE FAMOUS MEN project back in January, just got her website back up & running! On it, along with info about glorious Stephanie, are some recordings of various things she's written. Among them is a rough recording done at the final day of the workshop of one of the big songs. Usually, the actors did their thing, and the singers did their own, but this brought all of us singing together. You can hear me on THE WILL TO LIVE for a hot second when the music swells and everybody comes in. It's so funny listening to it - everyone involved has such fabulous voices, but on a lot of these pieces, Stephanie and Rachel (the director) worked very hard to make us sound pedestrian. So you've got a lot of highly trained, professional singers, taking out vibrato, flattening their sound, and allowing their pitches to be a little iffy. It was oddly quite difficult. But fun! And you can definitely hear that on here. Go listen and see what I was up to in January, and then check out more of Stephanie's stuff!

Click HERE to go to Stephanie's website!

My Friends are Talented!

Had such an amazing evening. I went to a concert tonight, all of music composed by my friend (and fellow BoCo '05 alum) Jon Gealt. He had a lineup of a bunch of our amazingly talented friends from school, as well as various amaaaazing singers he's come into contact with over the years. Let's just put it out there - it was very BROADWAAAAAAY! (For those of you who don't know many musical theatre people, I'm sorry, because there is such a specific voice I'm using in my head to say that, along with a ridiculously over-the-top sensibility that isn't quite as stupid as it sounds when I type it. Trust that you'd know it if you saw it. You'd have to. It makes itself known.) Anyway, listened to the concert, then hung around for an hour or so and chatted with so many wonderful old friends from college. What really struck me, too, while watching it, was the incredible support and sense of community that was in the room. Of family. Actors are a very clannish, loving bunch, and it was just so evident that everyone in the room was obsessed with how great everyone else in the room was. We were all there to cheer on Jon and our singing friends...and everyone sounded incredible. Quentin Earl Darrington? FORGET IT! He had this lyric at one point that went, "Will you marry me?" You could feel virtually everyone in the room silently mouth, "Yes, PLEASE!" I know RAGTIME just closed yesterday, but get that man back on Broadway STAT, okay? Ridiculous. So good.

Anyway, after the socializing, a bunch of us went to SPLASH, an infamous gay bar that I had somehow never made it to. Monday evenings are "Musical Mondays," where they play video clips of old musical numbers, stitched together by a DJ the way club music would be played in...oh, I dunno. A club? Anyway, as I walked in, it was Angela Lansbury and Bea Arthur singing "Bosom Buddies." My friend Saum and I determined that Mame would be a good show to win a second Tony with. Then we danced over to a table. Oh, it was as gay as I'd anticipated. They played Liza, they played Dreamgirls. They played Liza, they played Dreamgirls. Then the live performances started, I listened for a bit, and then finally had to head home, happy as a clam. Such good people.


So, I have to post a few fun photos from my photo session at The Met with RL Procter. He and I shot a bunch in Central Park this past September, a few of which you'll be able to see on my website, when that goes live. The Met was a fun challenge - a lot more people wandering around than in some areas of the park. Anyway, we had a ball, and I'm sharing a few of my favorites! Hopefully you enjoy them as well!




I'm feeling happy and inspired. We love both of those things. I have a lot of friends with amazing things happening for them in 2010, and I think amazing things are going to happen for me as well. Which is exciting, exciting, exciting. Good things in 2010: The Year of Living Dangerously.

By the way, amusing side note - I realized that was a movie when I named my year after it, but, in a big ironic twist, did NOT realize at the time that it was a movie starring Sigourney Weaver. Those of you who know why this is funny know why this is funny. Let's just say that I love her, and I am encouraged, by her example, to live in a brave, bold, powerful fashion. Dangerously.

Lady Jo is off to bed now. The hair is going to get the re-platinum treatment tomorrow!