It was an honor to perform "Prom Was A Promise" from STARBLASTERS last night at the BMI Showcase, an event featuring fantastic work from the last five years of the workshop. Thank you to my incredible cast, including the show's Book writer Katie Hathaway, and my ferociously talented ensemble of Jenny Rose Baker, Joey Goldberg, Sam Balzac, Jenny Singer, Jonah Weinstein, and Devin Lloyd.
It was truly an honor to get to have my first full concert last month at Ars Nova, showcasing music from 2 Original Musicals I'm writing with Katie Hathaway, Afterland & Starblasters, and accompanied by a remarkable slew of talented musicians and performers. Thank you to everyone who helped make it possible, including Music Director David Gardos, Producer Susan Griffin, Associate Producer Lilla Goettler, & Orchestrator Solomon Hoffman.
Please check out some of the videos below!
BAND:
David Gardos (Piano), Joe Nero (Drums), Ben Gallina (Bass), Hideaki Aomori (Reeds), Monica Davis (Violin), Adrian Aiello (Guitar)
PERFORMERS:
Alysha Umphress, Emily Skeggs, Arielle Jacobs, Lilli Cooper, Van Hughes, Robert Ariza, Benjamin Velez, Katie Hathaway, Joey Goldberg, Chris Silverberg, Jenny Rose Baker, Shannon Mullen, Yasmeen Audi, & Emma Hathaway
I had an incredible three weeks at the UCROSS foundation thanks to Sundance and met a group of inspiring artists while getting a lot done on my new Einstein musical. Thank you to Mame Hunt, and Philip Himberg for their wisdom! Here's the gang all together:
From left to right, Philip Himberg, Benjamin Velez, Billy Porter, Jumana Al-Yasiri, Mame Hunt, Kamal Khalladi, Kurt Carr, Theresa Rebeck and Leah Nanako Winkler
I'm excited to be invited as an artist in residence at the Sundance Institute Retreat at UCROSS Foundation in Wyoming from January 23rd to February 10th!
I'll be there with 5 other artists: Tony Award winner Billy Porter, Theresa Rebeck, Leah Nanako Winkler, Kurt Carr, and Kamal Khalladi.
Couldn't be more excited for the opportunity to write and get to know these incredible people! Check out the write up on Playbill.com.
Happy to be featured on Latinos@Sundance, by Cesar Arredondo.
I was honored to have "Prom Was a Promise" featured at the latest BMI Smoker concert November 17th, 2016! Thanks to David Gardos, Emily Kaplan, Joey Goldberg, Molly Heller, and of course Katie Hathaway for bringing it to life!
Check out the video below and listen to the demo along with other songs from Starblasters here.
STAR BLASTERS follows 5 friends in their late twenties who are spending the summer working at the same local theme park where they spent their summers in high school. Neil has just returned to work at the park for the first time since leaving for college and is immediately confronted by his ten-year-old feud with his ex-concessions colleague and former best friend, Freddie. Neil and Freddie were inseparable growing up, but after Senior Prom, the two stopped speaking and haven’t spoken since. What was all the bad blood about? Listen as each shares their side of the story…
I'm excited to partner up again with 4@15, this time working with students from the University of California, Irvine. Written with the talented Tim Duncheon in the course of a week, it's been a whirlwind and a blast to get this piece up so quickly.
A satire of the current republican primary, we couldn't have timed it better seeing as the New York Primary is coinciding with this premiere. You can reserve your tickets here and check out the write up in Broadway World!
Check out the video below or click through to read more about the piece here!
I had the honor of working with the Civilians Theater Company on their concert series "Let Me Ascertain You" where they take interviews and use them to create new songs and monologues around a certain theme.
This concert was all about ANARCHY, and I had the privilege of writing a song about a man named Kerry (Weishin) who emigrated from China at the age of 9 after the Tiananmen Square riots in 1989. In his interview he compares the police brutality he witnessed as a child with what he saw happen in Ferguson, and raised questions about how Democracy and Communism can look so similar despite their core fundamental differences.
I had the honor of having Cindy Cheung perform the song with me. Video is on it's way!
This past Friday the CenterStage Theater Company in Boulder, Colorado performed 6 songs from Afterland and 2 more from other projects as part of their show 40 Degrees North: A Cabaret of New Work and Great Talent, Directed by Jeanie Balch and Music Direction by Daniel Graeber.
Katie and I couldn't make it out to Boulder for the concert, but it was truly an honor to have them performing our work, and luckily they filmed it and put them on their YouTube Channel.
Here's Chanel Karimkhani singing "Philly Philly Philadelphia" from Afterland and absolutely NAILING it.
We feel incredibly lucky to have had our first NYC reading of AFTERLAND at the York Theater February 11th, 2016. Thank you to everyone at the York for making it possible, thanks to our year-long residency there through the NEO program.
Check out the cast photo of our INCREDIBLE team, which included:
Director: Mark Brokaw
Music Director: David Gardos
Stage Manager: Sonja Thorson
CAST
Christy Altomare, Alex Boniello, Daniel Jenkins, Rebecca Luker, Jacob Ming-Trent, Alexandra Socha, Alysha Umphress, and Donald Webber Jr.
We were lucky enough to get a write up in PlayBill and Broadway World!
It was such an honor to have my friend Emily Skeggs perform "I Can Always Feel the Rain" from our show Afterland at the Swish Ally Fund Benefit Concert "Songs in the Key of Equality" at Le Poisson Rouge this week.
She absolutely killed it and I couldn't have been more proud to have the song performed at such a wonderfully empowering and loving event celebrating both straight and LGBT volunteers who are fighting for equality around the country.
Next week I'll be doing this exciting and crazy event, self dubbed the "Musical Theater Olympics," in which writers who have NEVER collaborated are paired up randomly and tasked with writing a song from an invented musical, the title of which is picked from a hatful of audience suggestions. Then a giant spinning wheel determines the style of the song and you have 20 minutes to write the song before the clock runs out!
Should be fun, PLUS, they give everyone alcohol, so... you know it's going to be a riot if nothing else. Here's the link to get tickets!
I'm honored to be showcasing my work alongside some of Columbia's most talented songwriting alums, including Tom Kitt, Jeanine Tesori and Peter Lerman, as well as Legends like Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein/Lorenz Hart and John Kander and Fred Ebb.
The concert is being put together by Laura Pietropinto who is celebrating the Columbia tradition of theater writing largely indebted to The Varsity Show, the longest performing arts tradition at Columbia and where most of us got our first legs.
Katie and I will be doing two songs from Afterland with the help of Donna Vivino, Emily Walton and Michael Anthony Walsh. We couldn't be more thrilled and excited!
More info on the concert here: http://54below.com/artist/columbia-university-songbook/ I'll update with videos once I have them!
This past month I was lucky enough to be a part of 4@15: Four Fifteen Minute Musicals at NYU and write a short piece with Katie Hathaway about people applying to be the first humans on Mars. We met our cast in late December, then wrote the show over the two weeks of Winter holidays while I was in Miami and she was in NJ, then we had our first read-through with the cast the day I flew back! We had about 5 rehearsals spread over two weeks and then showtime.
It was such a blast to work with these talented students, and a treat to work with Director Brian Blythe and Music Director Ben Baker. Check out the video below:
MARS ONE - by Benjamin Velez and Kathryn Hathaway A private Dutch venture dubbed "Mars One" claims they can beat NASA to sending the first humans to Mars. The hitch? It's a one-way trip backed by questionable technology, and yet 200,000 people have already applied. But who are they?!
It was such an honor and a privilege to get to workshop the show at YIMT. Everyone involved was a joy to work with and thanks to the collaborative environment the piece came farther than we could have imagined possible. Special thanks to Mark Brokaw for his directing, Kim Grigsby for her musical direction, Catherine Sheehy for her dramaturgical support, Sonja Thorson for the best stage management possible, and our incredible cast: Nate Janis, Emily Skeggs, Alysha Umphress, Jay Armstrong Johnson, Jacob Ming-Trent, Theresa McCarthy, and Steve Skybell.
We're excited for the next stage of development! As they say in the Afterland, Wonder and Amazement!
Check out some photos from YIMT courtesy of photographer ©Tim Mannle
A reporter from the Associated Press wrote a piece on the BMI workshop and it features a new song from Afterland that Katie and I presented. It got picked up by a bunch of sites, including the New York Times. Check it out!
Afterland was selected for a workshop this summer at the Yale Institute for Music Theater! We are incredibly thrilled to have the marvelous Mark Brokaw directing and Kim Grigsby music directing. We are so looking forward to further developing the piece with them and the team at YIMT!
Katie and I are honored to be presenting a new song from our original musical Afterland at 54 Below on February 17th! We'll be showcasing it as part of the latest Cutting Edge Composers concert series with the incredibly talented Van Hughes (American Idiot) performing it.
Check out the event here and check back afterwards for a video link.
UPDATE: Check out the video from the concert on youtube, not the greatest quality, but Van killed it.
On Monday Feb. 4th @ 7PM, Katie and I are premiering the title song from our musical Afterland as part of the latest Cutting Edge Composers concert, produced by Laura Pietropinto and Jillian Robbins and music directed by Julie McBride.
We are so excited to have four incredible singers performing our song: Katie Thompson, Matt Saldivar, Jason Gotay and Preston Sadleir. Not to mention a full band along with the incredible Doug Goldstein on banjo!
I'll update with a video after the concert, but for now, here's the Press Release on Broadway World, and click HERE to BUY TICKETS!
I'm really excited to be a part of this great concert put together by my talented friend and fellow songwriter Drew Gasparini, featuring several new musical theater writers and performers.
The concert goes up this Sunday, December 2nd at THE FLUTE in Gramercy and I'm lucky enough to have the wonderful Beverly and Kirby Ward joining Katie Hathaway and I on "Old Country" and the mind-blowing Alexander Boikai on "Where Did the Wonder Go?", both from our new musical Afterland.
Will update with videos after the concert! In the meantime, check up the write ups at Playbill and BroadwayWorld.
***UPDATE*** Concert was a blast! Check out the video from "Old Country" below and find the rest of the performances at http://www.youtube.com/user/PlatformNYC
Kirby Ward, Bev Ward, Benjamin Velez and Katie Hathaway perform "Old Country" by Benjamin Velez and Katie Hathaway at the Flute Bar in NYC on 12/2/12 for Drew Gasparini Presents: The Platform! Filmed/Edited By: Christina Verde - cverde0312@gmail.com
My song "Neverland" was chosen to be performed at the third ever Cutting Edge Composers, which is partnering with the New York Musical Theater Festival to showcase the work of new composers. To top if off, I'm lucky enough to have the talented Nic Rouleau performing my song, who is currently starring in The Book of Mormon on Broadway. The concert is this coming Monday, July 23rd, updates to follow!
***Update - Concert was amazing! Check out the write up on BroadwayWorld.com
