Tag Archives: Stew

Asphalt paves the way tomorrow night

Posted on August 4, 2009 | Leave a comment
The co-conspirators in Asphalt Orchestra, which makes its world premiere at Lincoln Center Out of Doors tomorrow.

The co-conspirators in Asphalt Orchestra.

As Will You Miss Me When I’m Gone? has been telling you, Asphalt Orchestra is makes its world premiere performance tomorrow night, the opening night of the Lincoln Center Out of Doors free music festival.

The off-kilter marching band has lots of interesting music on the program, but I’m particularly excited about the world premiere of a piece composed for the group by Stew and Heidi Rodewald, bandmates in The Negro Problem and the creative team behind the musical Passing Strange.

The New York Times did a piece on Stew and Heidi the other day that touched on their work for Asphalt Orchestra:

“These are not musicians who follow the rules,” said Bill Bragin, director of public programming at Lincoln Center, explaining their approach to music and hence their appeal.

The work that they created for the opening of the festival, “Carlton,” is an instrumental piece that Ms. Rodewald described recently in a phone interview from her home in Brooklyn as “pretty marching band-ish.” The work is part of the debut performance by the Asphalt Orchestra, an avant-garde marching band that is an outgrowth of the Bang on a Can music collective. The show, which will be performed on Wednesday and on Aug. 9, will be something of a spectacle, with contemporary dance choreography by Susan Marshall and costumes designed by Elizabeth Hope Clancy.

The iconoclastic Bang on a Can ensemble will perform other new works by Tyondai Braxton (of Battles) and Balkan legend Goran Bregovic, plus explosive arrangements of songs by Bjork, Meshuggah, Charles Mingus, Conlon Nancarrow, and Frank Zappa. The group comprises some amazing players around,  featuring Jessica Schmitz (piccolo), Ken Thomson, Peter Hess, Alex Hamlin (saxophones), Steph Richards, Shane Endsley (trumpets), Alan Ferber, Jen Baker (trombones), Ken Bentley (sousaphone), Yuri Yamashita, Sunny Jain, Nick Jenkins (percussion).

Click here for my previous post about Asphalt Orchestra, which includes a rehearsal video.

Of course the Asphalt Orchestra presentation is just one of dozens of amazing performances that will be taking place in the outdoor spaces of Lincoln Center through Aug. 23. Everything is free and no tickets are required. Click here for the full schedule.

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Hey, Strange Freaks — Stew and Heidi are really Making It

Posted on July 31, 2009 | Leave a comment
Stew at the Belasco Theatre's stage door after the final performance of "Passing Strange" last summer. (Copyright 2008, Steven P. Marsh)

Stew at the Belasco Theatre's stage door on July 20, 2008, after the final performance of "Passing Strange" last summer. (Photos copyright 2008, Steven P. Marsh)

If you’re a true Strange Freak — a fan of Stew, Heidi Rodewald and their extended theater family from the musical Passing Strange — you already know that Stew and Heidi aren’t resting on the laurels they received for that show. They have a new project in the works slated for a short run next February at St. Ann’s Warehouse, the arts center in the DUMBO section of Brooklyn.

Heidi Rodewald greets fans outside the Belasco Theatre.

Heidi Rodewald greets fans outside the Belasco Theatre.

But early this morning Will You Miss Me When I’m Gone? exclusively revealed that the prestigious arts-funding organization Meet the Composer‘s grant program for 2009 includes an award to Stew and St. Ann’s for the show, called Making It. This is not their next play, which has commitments from The Public Theater in Manhattan. It’s a multi-media rock-show presentation (something that should seem familiar to anyone who’s seen Passing Strange) featuring a collage of song, text, and video tracing “the unlikely careers of Stew and Heidi from the dive rock clubs of Hollywood to the footlights of Broadway — with Stew as your helpful guide to Making It,” according to the St. Ann’s web site.

Meet the Composer today announced a slate of $450,000 in grants to 61 composers, performers and arts presenters. The the majority of the grant-winners are from the classical side of the contemporary music world. So it’s truly gratifying to see Stew, a remarkable talent from the pop world, recognized alongside composers like Steve Reich, John Harbison, David Lang and Julia Wolfe.

Tickets are available to St. Ann’s members now, and go on sale to the general public on Sept. 2. Click here to join St. Ann’s online and get immediate access to tickets for all of the upcoming shows there.

Congratulations to Stew and St. Ann’s!

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EXCLUSIVE: Reich, Signal, Stew, ETHEL, Muhly, DuBois and more win Meet the Composer grants

Posted on July 31, 2009 | 2 comments
Signal performing at (Le) Poisson Rouge.

Signal performing at (Le) Poisson Rouge.

It’s an exciting morning for new music. Meet the Composer, the leading new music commissioning organization, is announcing the winners of  $450,000 in grants to composers and performers for 2009, and Will You Miss Me When I’m Gone? has the list first.

The list includes many of WYMMWIG? favorites like composers Steve Reich, David Lang, Julia Wolfe, Nico Muhly and R. Luke DuBois and performers like Signal, Talujon Percussion Quartet, ETHEL string quartet, Alarm Will Sound and So Percussion.

Awards also went to some pop and jazz projects, including Stew, the co-creator of the Broadway musical Passing Strange, and the Village Vanguard jazz club.

MTC doubled the pool of money this year as part of what it’s calling a “new music stimulus program,” awarding $300,000 to 31 composers through its Commissioning Music/USA program and a total of $150,000 to 30 NYC-based new music ensembles and presenters through Cary New Music Performance Fund.

MTC President Ed Harsh says: “At this critical moment for artists around the country, we wanted to be aggressive in multiplying the effect of Meet The Composer’s continuing programs. We are dedicated to keeping creative musicians on the job doing what they do best, which is to make music.”

The increased funding and extended deadlines this year flooded MTC with three times the usual number of applicants for composer awards.

Panelists for the first round of the composer awards were Christian Amigo, Elizabeth Brown, Conrad Cummings, Jenny Lin, Eleonor Sandresky, Steven Swartz, Theodore Wiprud, and Du Yun.  The panelists for the final round were Edmund Campion, Jeremy Geffen, Joan La Barbara, Oliver Lake, and Matt Haimovitz.

The committee that picked the performer winners was composed off Darcy James Argue, Allen Blustine, Margaret Leng Tan, and Randy Woolf.

See the full list of grantees after the jump. Continue reading →

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Behind the scenes with Bang on a Can’s Asphalt Orchestra

Posted on July 16, 2009 | 1 comment

Even though Midsummer Night Swing has only just begun its reign in Lincoln Center’s Damrosch Park, it’s not to early to start thinking about its sister program, Lincoln Center Out of Doors, which knocks down the dance floor and turns the park into a concert venue in August.

We’re just three weeks away from the debut of Asphalt Orchestra, an out-of-the-ordinary marching band created by Bang on a Can to perform world premieres of works by Stew and Heidi Rodewald of Passing Strange fame, Tyondai of Battles and Goran Bregovic, along with tunes by Icelandic pop star Bjork, Swedish experimental metal band Meshuggah, Charles Mingus, Conlon Nancarrow and Frank Zappa.

While many marching bands are heavily choreographed, I’m guessing no other band will be under the dance direction of modern dance choreographer Susan Marshall.

Asphalt has already started rehearsing. And here, thanks to Time Out New York, is a behind-the-scenes video about the group.

Vodpod videos no longer available.

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Stew and Heidi are in good hands

Posted on July 15, 2009 | Leave a comment
Director Joanna Settle at the post-show talkback at the final Shakespeare on the Sound show. (Copyright 2009, Steven P. Marsh)

Director Joanna Settle at the post-show talkback at the final performance of A Midsummer Night's Dream for Shakespeare on the Sound. Jesse Perez (Puck) looks on. (Copyright 2009, Steven P. Marsh)

Director Joanna Settle says she first met Stew at NYC’s Public Theater in 2007, when she went to tell him to turn down the volume of the music for Passing Strange. She was in another theater in the building, working on what she called a “little genocide play” — aka the developmental production of Winter Miller’s In Darfur — and his rock music was just a little too loud to suit her at that moment.

Heidi Rodewald

Heidi Rodewald

bigstew

Stew

After they got that out of the way, though, it seems that a great working relationship was born.

Judging from the way Joanna has continued to work with Stew, commissioning him to compose an original score for A Midsummer Night’s Dream,  her first production as artistic director of Connecticut’s Shakespeare on the Sound, it truly is a great relationship.

The score for the Shakespeare production, which closed on Sunday, was vintage Stew, full of the lush pop sounds that characterize his appealing work. (You’ll be able to judge for yourself soon, as the Shakespeare company is releasing a CD of Stew performing the songs.) It was perfectly paired with the Bard’s words, and organically integrated into the structure of the show. That was a treat, as I’ve seen too many outdoor Shakespeare productions into which some pop songs awkwardly shoehorned.

And the production, played out on a serpentine boardwalk of a stage, was imaginatively conceived and directed. It gives me high hopes for Stew and Heidi’s collaboration with Joanna.

Joanna Settle continues her conversation with the audience.

Joanna Settle continues her conversation with the audience.

As I’ve reported before on this blog, Joanna will continue to work with Stew. She’s signed on to direct the next play that Stew and his longtime collaborator Heidi Rodewald are working on. There’s no date or title announced, but it’s slated to be presented at The Public Theater.

It’s a good bet that we’ll get more clues about the nature of the new piece when Stew, Heidi and The Broadway Problem take the stage at Lincoln Center Out of Doors on Aug. 19.  Click here for more information.  The show will be at the bandshell in Damrosch Park at West 62nd Street and Amsterdam Avenue at the southwest corner of the Lincoln Center campus. The performance starts at  7 p.m. Free.

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Stew and Heidi are working on a Passing Strange followup

Posted on June 20, 2009 | Leave a comment
stew-autograph

Stew outside the Belasco Theatre after the final performance of Passing Strange. (Copyright 2009, Steven P. Marsh)Attention, Strange Freaks! Stew and Heidi are at work on a new show.

Attention Strange Freaks: Stew and Heidi are at it again!

Stew, who won a 2008 Tony Award for the book of the hit rock musical Passing Strange, and Heidi Rodewald, who co-wrote the music, have another show in the works!

Stew, who has repeatedly and vigorously made it clear in song and speech that he’s glad he’s not on Broadway anymore, never said he wouldn’t write another play. But his grueling Broadway experience made him realized that  if he did another show, he would not write himself into it. (Passing Strange is a fictionalized version of Stew’s coming of age, in which actor Daniel Breaker portrayed Stew under Stew’s watchful eye as narrator.)

Heidi Rodewald

Heidi Rodewald

Stew talks about the work in progress in a new interview with Theatermania.com, revealing that Joanna Settle will direct the show at NYC’s Public Theater, a venue that played a pivotal role in the creation and nurturing of Passing Strange.

Stew and Settle aren’t strangers. Stew recently composed the music for a site-specific outdoor production of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream that Settle is directing for Shakespeare on the Sound in Connecticut.

Here’s an excerpt from Stew’s wide-ranging interview:

I had wanted to work with the director Joanna Settle, who is also going to be directing the new work at the Public that Heidi Rodewald and I are doing. And, of course, working with Shakespeare’s words is like a great vacation for me. I like nothing more than writing music. I don’t particularly like writing lyrics or books or prose, but music is a joy for me. I’m like a kid with a basketball; it’s not really work. I love that people think it’s work, but the truth is it’s fun. Making words, that’s a job. … [The new show in the works] has nothing to do with me. I mean, I’m writing it so it has something to do with me, but the subject matter doesn’t. We’re having fun with a few historical figures, and that’s about all I can say about it at this point except that it’s music-oriented. I have not cast myself in it because I now have the brains to know I won’t be able to get anything done if I am trapped in a play.

The interview doesn’t answer the question of when the show will be staged. So it’s likely that Strange Freaks — as members of the Passing Strange family are known — will likely have to wait awhile to see it. But, as with Passing Strange, Stew will almost certain try out the songs in his upcoming concerts. Passing Strange, for instance, was developed in part from his Travelogue shows back in 2004.

(For the full interview, visit Theatermania.com. Thanks to Bill Bragin (@activecultures) for bringing it to my attention.)

Luckily,  Strange Freaks won’t have to wait for that show to get another dose of Stew and Heidi. Keep reading for all the details. Continue reading →

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Passing Strange heading to TV

Posted on May 1, 2009 | Leave a comment

passings2Great news: Variety reports one of the best pieces of news to come out of this year’s Tribeca Film Festival: Spike Lee‘s film of Passing Strange, the Tony Award-winning Broadway rock musical, has been picked up by PBS. (Read more here and here.)

This fantastic news, plus the prospect of a limited theatrical run, will give Strange Freaks plenty of opportunity to recuit more people to their ranks.

It’s an awesome testament to the talents of the show’s creators, Stew and Heidi Rodewald, the amazing cast, and to Spike and his 40 Acres and a Mule Filmworks team. Congratulations!

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