(Photo: Andre “Virus” Karkos – Guitarist for Rock of Ages 2015)
Just finishing up my second contract as music director and keyboards for Rock of Ages out of New York with NCL International. What an awesome run this has been! The arsenal band for this run are some of the most talented and just all around cool musicians I have ever worked with. Awesome grooves and strong, hard hitting rock performances throughout the entire contract. Way to go Arsenal!
100 Rules for Drummers is a video compilation put together by my Rock of Ages bandmate and drummer, Steve Such. The catch is: each person could only use three words. My contribution is around #4 with “wear your earplugs!”
Peter Erskine, Jeff Hamilton, Zoro, Johnny Rabb, Curt Bisquera, Ari Hoenig, Victor Indrizzo, Jonathan Mover, Walfredo Reyes Jr., Steve Fidyk, Bermuda Schwartz, Dan Needham, Bruce Becker, Conrad Askland, Bill Bachman, Jeff Queen, Pete Lockett, Andre Boyd, Nick Ruffini, Dave Kropf, Richie Gajate-Garcia, Tim Lefevbre, and many more give their top piece of advice to drummers.
I am very honored to be included in the book Music Direction for the Stage: A View from the Podium
, by Joseph Church and published by Oxford University Press. This textbook also includes a forward by Alan Menken.
Continue reading “Music Direction for the Stage – Oxford University Press”
Are you working in Ableton Live and trying to unsuccessfully load a set that crashes with “Out of Memory” warnings? A very simple workaround (as seen in the graphic above) is to turn off “Use Audio Units”. This will load the set without plugins so you can get the set up and running in order to cut it down and resave.
Continue reading “Ableton Live – Out of Memory and Unable to Load Set”
This is the original full length overture from the premiere of my theatre work “Romeo and Juliet the musical” which premiered February 2015 at the Historic Lincoln Theatre in Mount Vernon, WA.
So once again I join the Rock of Ages cast as music director and keyboardist for the 2015 runs in New York and Bermuda. The band “Arsenal” is rocking hard this year with Guitarists Gino Del Sole, Andre “Virus” Karkos, Steve Such on drums and myself.
Continue reading “Rock of Ages the musical in New York and Bermuda”
Most people know me as a music director, pianist or conductor for live shows and recordings. But what is very dear to my heart are my new musicals. These have all had an amateur 3 week premiere run to work out all the script, score and technical elements. They are all currently unpublished and await a professional run and agent representation.
I hope you will contact me either about agent representation of these musicals, or about performing them with your theatre group. I am very excited to see what other groups will do with these new works!
Overview: Set entirely to William Shakespeare original text. In over 400 years there has never been a successful musical version of Romeo and Juliet using only Shakespeare’s original words. I believe this could be the first.
Reviews: “Revolutionary music”
For more info visit: http://www.RJmusical.com
Overview: A retelling of the Peter Pan and Wendy story by JM Barrie. A new Peter Pan musical with classic score and updated for contemporary audience interaction.
Reviews: “Askland creates magic again”
For more info visit: http://www.PanMusical.com
Overview: The Salem Witch Trials come to life in 1692 Massachusetts.
For more info visit: http://www.WitchesMusical.com
RHS 2015 musicians. Here is all the info for musician rehearsals and performances for TAG’s 2015 production of The Rocky Horror Show at the Historic Lincoln Theatre in Mount Vernon, WA.
Thank you to Marla Bronstein and Entertainment News Northwest magazine for their cover story on the premiere of my third full length musical: Romeo and Juliet.
Read the full article on the ENNW website at http://issuu.com/ennw/docs/ennw-january_2015
Continue reading “ENNW Jan 2015 Cover Story: Romeo and Juliet the musical”
Romeo and Juliet the musical will have it’s world premiere January 30 – February 15, 2015 at the Historic Lincoln Theatre in Mount Vernon, WA.
RJ is my largest and most advanced musical score to date and features 10+ live musicians with a cast of 30+. The script and lyrics use only the original source text from William Shakespeare’s original Romeo and Juliet. Our time period is the authentic time period of Shakespeare’s original world premiere of RJ, late sixteenth century (1592-1594).
This work is orchestrated for Key 1, Key 2, Trombone, Horn, Flute/Piccolo/Recorder, Oboe, Clarinet/Bass Clarinet, Drums Bass and Guitar.
In over 400 years, since the original premiere of Romeo and Juliet, there has never been a successful musical rendition that has been embraced by both audiences and theater critics. Artistically this is a momentous challenge as we aim to do just that. We are brave. We are strong. We are RJ 2015. HUZZAH!
Follow our progress at the website for Romeo and Juliet the musical