Me: Mia, what do you think the point of practicing piano is?
Mia: Well…to get it perfect, I guess.
Me: No, I don’t think so. I don’t think there’s any such thing as ‘perfect’ in music.
Mia: Well if you can’t make it perfect, then what’s the point?
Me: Well, think of a painter working on a great work of art. Do you think he is trying to make his painting perfect?
Mia: No…
Me: I agree. What do you think he’s trying to do?
Mia: Make it beautiful, I guess.
Me: I agree with that too. Also, think of an actor playing a great role. When an actor is up on stage, do you think she’s trying to give a ‘perfect’ performance?
Mia: Well, no. Because…(pause)…perfect acting would just be…real life, wouldn’t it?

I love teaching piano.

• Accompanied three very successful concerts with the Gay Men’s Chorus of Los Angeles. “A Mighty Voice” in the spring, “Totally! Our 80s Show” in the summer, and, most recently, “Naughty & Nice,” our holiday show at the Alex Theatre in Glendale with guest artist Melissa Manchester.
• Performed for President Obama with the GMCLA at the House of Blues.
• Sang with the Horizon Chamber Choir in a choral concert entitled “In the Midst of Life.”
• Accompanied my dear friend Sevan Dekmezian in her B.M. Senior Voice Recital at USC.
• Accompanied Audra McDonald at the Alzheimer’s Association annual gala at the Beverly Hilton.
• Served as musical director for All Girl Band, a cabaret show produced by USC Musical Theater Repertory, directed by my good friend Matt McFarland. I also served as Matt’s musical director for his own solo cabaret show at Sterling’s Upstairs at Vitello’s in North Hollywood.
• Completed two new arrangements for my old college a cappella group, Reverse Osmosis, one of which won Best Arrangement at the ICCA Quarterfinals.
• Played piano for High Holydays at Temple Israel of Hollywood, an extremely fulfilling experience which I hope to repeat in future years.
• Performed with Speaking of Stories, a Santa Barbara theater company, in their production, A Night at the Opera.
• Accompanied the Los Angeles Daiku, a Japanese choral ensemble, in their performance of Beethoven’s 9th symphony.
• Served as adjunct professor (read: musical director/accompanist) for a summer musical theatre workshop for high school students at USC.
• Performed with the Pasadena Master Chorale in their holiday concert as a guest baritone soloist.

This past year has been busy and fulfilling, to be sure, but I intend to do even more in 2012. For starters, I am undertaking a solo project with my good friend Marisa Esposito, so check back for information about our videos and performances in the coming months.

Here’s wishing you and yours a happy and healthy 2012!

For this production I decided to use a piano trio as the pit orchestra. For the classically uninitiated, a piano trio is an ensemble consisting of piano, violin, and cello, and composers as far back as Mozart were writing for this ensemble. I did the orchestrations for the show myself and it turned out beautifully. The strings helped to transport you to the world of the story, which was expertly played out by these student actors. It was really nice to get intimate with a Sondheim score. The music was challenging, for sure, but every note was worth learning, because Sondheim is so meticulous, so concise, so precise with his compositions. My only regret is that we only ran for one weekend — I could easily see myself falling happily into a routine of playing this show for several weeks. And I wouldn’t say that about too many shows!

My continuing projects include accompanying for the GMCLA, providing accompaniment for musical theater classes at USC, accompanying for the Choral Society of Southern California, accompanying rehearsals and services at Temple Israel of Hollywood, singing at St. Mel Catholic Parish, and of course, teaching lessons. Even without a music directing job, that’s a pretty full plate, so I am just happy to be able to sail on through with my ongoing projects for a while.

Keep an eye out for an update regarding a solo project I have in the works.

And that’s awesome. While I loved working on shows such as Starmites and Urinetown, I am looking forward to working on a show in which I will be able to use more of my classical training. Stephen Sondheim’s a genius, you know. Every single note matters, and no note is out of place. I can only hope that my playing and my musical direction will do his creation justice.

Of course, this isn’t the only thing going on in my musical life. I am playing a run of Chicago at USC this weekend, and tonight is opening night. And of course, rehearsals for the Gay Men’s Chorus of Los Angeles are continuing along wonderfully. Our guest conductor for this concert cycle is Timothy Seeling, a choral icon best known for his work with the Texas-based Turtle Creek Chorale. He’s fabulous and I love working with him. Our holiday concert is about a month away, so if you want to come, make sure to grab tickets here! Oh yeah, and for some added incentive, our guest performer for the Sunday show is LeAnn Rimes.

One last thing: If you haven’t seen the GMCLA’s “It Gets Better” video, check it out. We gathered in a gymnasium on an ordinary Sunday afternoon to make this video, and I could never have guessed that our little video would have become a small-time internet phenomenon. But with over 300,000 views at the time of this post, I’d say it has.

Well, not really; a guy who writes a blog that I really admire declared it so. If that’s enough to make a holiday, then it’s a holiday. Why don’t you go read it for yourself? Go read up a bit about minimalism from Karol Gadja’s blog, Ridiculously Extraordinary. The article is called How To Declare A New Holiday: September 23 Is International Minimalist Day.

To say that minimalism is a ‘new’ current in the sea of self-help and personal philosophy isn’t quite right, because people were living minimalistically long before the Industrial Revolution; it’s more of a correction to the crazy way we live our lives today. And it’s really fascinating. Ask me about it sometime, if you’re interested!

…or go to my favorite blog of all time for the full (but simple!) story: mnmlist.

Since that concert, I’ve taken a job as the tenor section leader for St. Mel’s Catholic Church in Woodland Hills. The choristers of St. Mel’s are a lot of fun, and I’m really enjoying working with Francesco AlleRuzzo, the St. Mel Music Director. The job is turning out to be quite a challenge, though: my job is that of tenor section leader, despite the fact that my voice is better suited to baritone and bass choral parts. This typically isn’t a problem, except for Sunday mornings at 10 AM. It can be difficult to get my voice working that early, but I enjoy the challenge.

Auditions and rehearsals begin soon for the USC Musical Theater Repertory (MTR) production of A Little Night Music. MTR is the student-managed and student-directed musical theater production company at USC. I’ve served as musical director for MTR twice before: for See What I Wanna See in Fall 2009, and for Urinetown in Winter 2010. MTR is an excellent organization that puts out top-quality shows, so look for more updates on this project in the near future.

There’s one more thing to mention! Steven Stanley, the owner and writer of StageSceneLA, has bestowed upon me the award of 2010 Breakthrough Musical Director of the Year for my work with Urinetown, Starmites, and Rhapsody in New (Janet Krupin’s Cabaret show at Sterling’s Upstairs in North Hollywood). Thank you, Steven, for this honor!

These days I am busy with all sorts of preparation for the Gay Men’s Chorus of Los Angeles’ upcoming concert at Walt Disney Concert Hall. The concert is called Sure On This Shining Night, and while my primary job is as pianist, for this concert I am also serving as an arranger, singer, and beatboxer.

So my hands are full lately; tonight I’m finishing up work on an arrangement for the GMCLA Alive Music Project Youth Chorus (that needs a cool acronym or something), which will perform a three-song set on the concert. The arrangement is a medley of Like A Prayer (Madonna), I Wanna Dance with Somebody (Whitney Houston), and Just Dance (Lord Gaga). I hope that excites you.

And hey, even if it doesn’t excite you, you should still come to the concert. If pop divas aren’t your thing, then perhaps beautiful choral works by Eric Whitacre and Morten Lauridsen are. And if even that won’t do, then you might enjoy “The End of It All”, a newly commissioned piece for choir and electronica composed by the DJ John Tejada, to be performed by the chorus alongside the composer on stage.

I still haven’t quite come to grips with the fact that I’ll be playing piano in Disney Hall in three weeks. There’s a lot of practicing and rehearsing to do between now and then – not to mention the fact that I still need to pick out a good tie.

Beatboxing…to a Michael Jackson arrangement…in Disney Hall. We’re not trying to make any big postmodern statements or anything, but that’s what I’ll be doing in three weeks. One of many things I’ll be doing, actually. I hope you can come and check it out.

The Westminster Chorus is, for me, the latest in a string of musical blessings to come into my life. Westminster is a youth barbershop chorus based out of Orange County, and I joined in late May of this year. If you don’t know — and I certainly didn’t, a few short months ago — Barbershop is a uniquely American style of singing with a rich history and an organization to back it up. That organization is the Barbershop Harmony Society, an international organization whose membership numbers around 30,000.

I’ll spare you the technical details of what defines the barbershop style, and instead direct you to a few videos I’ve seen that exemplify what Barbershop singing is all about.

Love Me – Sung by the OC Times, a barbershop quartet, all of whose members sing with Westminster.
Let’s Burn Up The Town/Their Hearts Were Full of Spring/Goodbye Dixie Goodbye – Classic barbershop set from Westminster.
Chordbusters March – Sung by The Vagrants, also a Westminster quartet. The final chord is the clearest example I’ve ever heard of the “Barbershop Ring”. No one is singing that super-high note you hear at the end; those are the notes and their overtones lining up in perfect accord.

I’ll never forget my first Westminster rehearsal. I was a visitor, a potential member, a no one, but the moment I opened my mouth to sing the first warm-up, and felt my voice in perfect accord with the other sixty voices around me, I knew that I had found something really, really special. Westminster is a choral treasure, and I want more people to hear about the chorus — not just because I’m in it, but because I believe that the choral art in general could take a few cues from Westminster. Watch this video to see what I mean. Barbershop singing isn’t limited to barbershop arrangements. And have you ever seen a choir in which each member so thoroughly and joyfully takes responsibility for delivering the story and the spirit of the music? I show that video to my classical choral friends and most of them freak out. It’s enlightening to realize that the choral art does not require one to stand at attention, folder in hand, eyebrows raised, and expressionless for the length of the song. Choral singing can and should be an endeavor that involves one’s whole body and one’s entire spirit.

This, I believe, is what Westminster achieves, and why I am so hooked on it.

Not to mention the gold medal that we took in Philadelphia. Yep, we won it, beating out the longtime barbershop bastions The Vocal Majority by just 0.6 percentage points. And yes, we worked our asses off for those gold medals, both as a group and as individuals. But for me — and I’ve always been this way — the blessing of Westminster has nothing to do with a gold medal I get to pin on my shirt at future BHS conventions. It has everything to do with the hard work itself, and the lessons and insights and new understandings and new friendships gained from it. In just a few short months, Westminster has made of me a better musician and a more sensitive artist, and that is a gift far greater than any medal.

Yep, I’ll say it: I’m a barbershopper for life!

I really hope that the chorus gets a chance to repeat this telling of the life of Harvey Milk many times over. I found myself tearing up a bit at the piano near the end. The story was told beautifully and the chorus sang, as always, not just with their voices but with their bodies, hearts, and spirits as well.

People often ask me what Starmites is about, since practically no one has heard of this 1989 musical, despite its six Tony nominations. Starmites is billed as a ‘sci-fi comic book fantasy’ and that’s about all that can be said – you just gotta see it for yourself.

Steven Stanley has written an excellent review of our show, and you can check it out here.

We’ve had an amazing time putting this show together over the past couple of months. Our cast is amazing and I’ve had so much fun working with everyone throughout this process. Heck, on tech day, I even learned how to map and program dimmers to spotlights! And I am technologically challenged so this was an accomplishment for me.

If you haven’t had a chance to come see Starmites yet, get your tickets here and come see it! You’ll be glad you did!