getting ready for performance

So tonight I join 30+ people to do a review "43 Summers at the Croswell" which will run for three performances this weekend.
The Croswell Opera House is officially the oldest continuously running theatre in Michigan and unofficially the third oldest continuously running theatre in the USA.  It opened in 1866 and because Adrian was on the railroad route from Boston to Chicago, the Croswell was on "the circuit" and for years had national celebrities performing there including John Philip Sousa and Maude Adams (and a bunch of others that I can never remember).  In the early part of the 20th century it switched from being a vaudeville house to being a movie house.  Then in 1967, when the Butterfield group decided to close it as a movie theatre, a private group purchased the building and the Croswell continued on, once again producing live theatre.
The Croswell's success for the last 43 years has come primarily from musicals, and that's what the review is all about this weekend, featuring songs from so many shows --- from Pirates of Penzance to Rent.
This is the theatre where we are going to premiere our show, "Obsession", and the artistic director is a dear friend of mine, so of course, I said "yes" when asked to be in the review.
I'm having a great time, but I have forgotten just how much work it is performing.  I'm tired!
But every night, no matter how tired or sore I am (I didn't know I had those muscles!), I am exhilarated every time I get on stage.
The house lights dim, the spot light shines, the music starts, and I'm alive.
That's what the Croswell has done for me --- and countless others who have graced her stage since 1866.  The Croswell is home to so many of us.  WE are a rather ornery and dysfunctional family; the Croswell ghosts do their best to corral us --- yes of course there are ghosts!  But the show goes on --- no matter what is going on backstage.
My dearest and closest friends all come from the Croswell.  I met my husband there.  My son first sang on her stage when he was three.
Now, part of the cast of this revue are kids my son grew up with who now are toting their own children into the theatre to become the next generation of "Croswell Kids."

We are blessed to have this building in our midst. http://www.facebook.com/TheCroswell

Morning Commute - the video

so the idea of putting a quick video of Morning Commute stuck with me all day --- here it is.  The video portion is all free stock footage, so please don't get too wrapped up in what you see; it's what you hear that I care about.

the car is not broken!

The car is not broken! which is very good news.  Yesterday, while driving to pick up Nolan at the airport -- Nolan who is like my brother and is an actor and is currently staying with us while he performs for the Croswell show this weekend  --- anyway, yesterday, while driving to pick up Nolan at the airport, I hit a piece of drywall with a metal piece sticking up.  I couldn't miss it; I was pinned in my traffic -- no where to go but straight.  argh
Anyway, when I got to the airport I turned off the engine to check the car; as I did the car began to smoke.  Someone nearby said that he smelled antifreeze, so as Nolan came out, we checked stuff; popped the hood and removed the radiator cap; added about a 1/2 gallon of water; drove to the nearest gas station; added antifreeze; limped the car home (50 miles away); and drove it to the garage.
The good news is this morning the garage called --- they can't find anything wrong with the car.
So who knows why it smoked yesterday and why we had to add water and antifreeze to the radiator.  It has healed itself!
I wrote a symphony piece about driving --- I call it Morning Commute and every time I play it on Finale (Finale is the musical notation software program I use) the piece makes me laugh.  I hear the traffic, the turn signal, the passing cars, the monotony of going the same way in the same way every day, the surprise of seeing something new.  It ends with the car door closing and the key fob beep to lock the door.  I want to hear it live, but I'm going to have to create a reason for someone to play it, so I guess I have to put it into a musical piece.
Finding a home for music that I write is a challenge.
Several years ago Michael and I wrote a piece as an auction item for very dear friends of ours --- the Toncres.  It's called "You Are Everything to Me" and we actually have performed it several times -- for the Toncres, in an ASO concert, a Hillsdale Chorale concert, and we've sung the song at several weddings.  But it still didn't have "a home" --- until last week when Michael and I realized it belongs in "Semi-Private" so I'm pleased.
One of the very first pieces I wrote as an adult didn't have a home for literally 30 years; so I deliberately worked it into "Jack and the Beanstalk." Now it's the cloud music as Jack is climbing the beanstalk.
Compositions need homes.
I've got to figure out a way to share "Morning Commute" with you.  hmmmm. I suppose I could create a video.

Cleaning Up

This morning I sat at the computer first, so I had to put my glasses on.  When I walked into the kitchen to fix breakfast I still had the glasses on and I could see just how dirty the stovetop was --- OMG!!!!!
The world looks so much better fuzzy!
Seeing the dirty stove reminded me of my mom.  We (I) finally pushed her to have her cataracts removed when she cleaned her solid glass stove top so hard she took the burner markings off.   She thought she was cleaning up a spill that had covered the markings. Mom was shocked when she finally had the cataracts removed. She had no idea how blind she had been.  She told me she hadn't realized that her sofa had a pattern in it; she thought it was just blocks of color.
I lost my mother this time last year --- August 20th, 2010 --- to be exact.  I miss her.  She had a completely unique way of looking at the world; we teased about "the world according to Margaret."  But it's true, and as I look back I realize that she taught me to "think out of the box."
Her passing really hit me hard. It had happened so fast and was completely unexpected --- and just  9 months after I lost my youngest brother to a heart attack which also happened so fast and was completely unexpected.  Last year was a long story and I don't want to dwell on it; I am grateful to my family -- to my husband --- we all learned just how strong we can be together.
After my mother's passing, I was a wreck, very emotional, the world was very fuzzy, filled with too much clutter, emotions spilling over everything.
But Thank God for Leah.  She knew what was going on for me --- she had just lost her dad two years before.
She said, "Betsy, I need you to write me some music."
So I wrote.  I write best when I have a deadline and I had a deadline; Leah was coming to Adrian for a concert in February and I had to have the music ready for her.
I said to her, "it's going to be sad," and she said, "The sadder, the better."
So I wrote about my mom.
At first, the emotion was so raw that I couldn't get through any of the notes without sobbing.  It's a good thing that most of the writing was me alone in the house with the cats.
But as I wrote, the composition took hold and began to have it's own life, as compositions do, and I found myself putting those emotions into beautiful patterns.  I began to hear my mother's voice, not just my memories of what she "would" say, but what she DID say to me after losing her son, about what her world had come to.  Now writing this to you --- I do NOT want you to think that my mom purposefully died.  That's not the case.  What we found out is that my mom had had a brain aneurysm for probably 30 years and had literally put the daily headache out of her mind everyday.  Actually the headaches had subsided when she had her cataracts removed, so for the last couple of years she had been feeling better. But it was just her time.  She couldn't stop the aneurysm anymore, and it took her.
Anyway, so I created the music; the piece; and the piece took all of that raw, fuzzy hot emotion and put it into patterns and swirls, beautiful notes.
And now I can play the music and think of my mother and not sob uncontrollably.
In fact, the "piece" is now part of a larger piece still in my head --- another musical to be written once "Obsession" has premiered.  The new piece is called "Semi-Private" and takes place in a hospital room.  But it's about family and loss and discovery -- but more about that later.

Nonetheless, I guess you can say I cleaned up. I put those emotions in a beautiful box and tied it with a bow --- a gift --- something to pull out and share with others.  My mother was a gift.
That's what music does for me.

Dropping Drew off at work

So I just got back from dropping Drew off at work.  Drew is my son and today is his first day at his new job.  His car is off limits until he and his buddy find the right pipe for his broken muffler, and his wife is at work, so I dropped him off.
I'm so excited about his new job because it brings a lot of his talents together --- first and foremost, my son, Drew, is a fabulous guitarist, great singer, all around excellent musician and performer.  He should be; I started him out early, tapping rhythms out on my belly when I was pregnant.  And of course he heard my music everyday because I was singing and playing the piano everyday.
But in today's world the joke:
"What do you call a guitarist that just broke up with his girlfriend? . . . Homeless"
is more true than funny.
So Drew, like lots of entertainers, waited tables.  And Drew, like lots of entertainers, is a natural at teaching.  So today he starts at LISD -- Lenawee (County) Intermediate School District -- as the culinary arts teaching assistant.
Food and music go hand in hand in our family.
I come from a family of really great cooks and so does Michael, my husband.  We both love to cook,   and Drew loves to cook, too.
In fact friends kid that the best time to come to my house to eat is when I've had a bad day because that means I'm chopping.  I love the rhythm of chopping; the patterns; the feel of the knife and the satisfaction of looking at uniform pieces of onion or pepper or mushroom.
In "Jack and the Beanstalk" the giant's wife cooks up a meal for Jack, so of course, when I was translating the story into music I had to put in the chopping sounds.  Now when I chop it's very steady and even, not too fast, not too slow, and, to be the most efficient, with as little extra movement as possible.  So the first time we did "Jack" with the ASO (Adrian Symphony Orchestra) that's how the drummer played the beat.
But listening afterwards to the recording, I realized that although it was correct according to the actual sounds, it was a little boring.  So for the performance we did with Davis High School, I added more syncopation to the beats.  Hmmm.  I'm still not sure if I like it; the piece is going to be performed again in January so that's one of the things I'll have to work on.
Next time I chop, I'll have to think about the music and decide how to fix it.

Getting ready to publish

We are finally there --- the point where I stop messing with the notes --- okay well that's not completely true; I'm always messing with the notes.  BUT, today I can begin to put the score together.  I have to start today because I'm meeting with the music director on Thursday and I should hand the piano score to her.
So today, I begin.
The short story is I've been writing a show -- a musical -- with my husband, and it's going to premiere in November.
The long story is how I got to this place.
For a very long time I thought that everyone heard what I did; everyone had music hanging out in their head, singing along with the fan whirling or the wheels skimming across the pavement.
It wasn't until I was actually in the middle of writing one of our first pieces that was performed that I learned that I'm the only one hearing what I hear.
Quite a shock to me.
But that's a story for another day.
Today let me just say that I "formally" started music when I was four.  We were living in Grand Rapids, MI, driving downtown, and there was a huge picture of a grand piano painted on the side of a brick building, all shiny black in contrast to the red brick surrounding what probably was an ad for a local store.  And I said, "I want that."  So my dad bought it for me.  Well not the big shiny black grand, but a lovely piano nonetheless that my mom loved because "the wood was so pretty" and it was "french provincial".  Only after they bought the piano did they find out that not every piano teacher would teach a 4 year old.  But they found one.  I don't remember his name --- and later on my mother told me he was a drunk and needed the money --- but I loved it all the same.  I never complained about practicing, or going to lessons.  And as soon as I learned "Blue Moon" probably when I was seven or eight --- you know "Da, Da Daahhh. Da, da-di-da-di-daaahhh." --- I played variations for hours and hours and hours after school.
Even then I was composing; but no one knew it or even paid attention --- well my dad did  ---- sometimes.  "Margaret!" he'd say to my mother.  "Does she HAVE to play the piano now?"
I guess the lesson for new parents is "be careful what you wish for" and "think before you give them the noisy toy."