Ballet finished! The conductor’s score has around 360 of those big 11 X 17 pages! It will have to be bound in two books, one for each of the two acts. I wish I knew how many thousands of notes are on those pages without having to count them! (And I wish I had a dime for each note.) Now the clerical work begins, editing the scores and making the players’ parts for both versions of the music. There is the version for 42-piece pit orchestra (for use with dancers) and for 92-piece large orchestra (for the album and symphony concerts). All the copies of all the players’ individual parts, on smaller pages, will come to close to two thousand pages, bound in booklets for each person. I can’t fathom assembling all of this, but I have done it before, and behold, I will do it again!

Also, whilst working on the scores and parts for the ballet, if I can’t help myself, I will squeeze in an hour or two here and there completing the last half of the finale (4^th movement) of my new Symphony No. 3: “English”. I’m hoping to raise the funds for the overhead costs of recording both the ballet and the symphony in the same ten days in September. Funding in many (hopefully large) donations, if it materializes, will be done by means of personal contacts made by my friend, Steve, a D.C. attorney, using this GoFundMe page CLICK HERE, or by other generous souls who see that site advertised.

My Dear Miss Barrett show has now closed! Worrying like a mother hen over every detail of a show production is not really the playwright / composer’s job, granted. But especially after writing the script, lyrics, songs, and musical arrangements, it’s hard not to worry. It’s your child! But thanks to the dedication and hard work of many people, we ended up with a good production with many great singing voices and strong acting. Here is a photo of me (center) with the whole cast and crew. (Credit to Center for the Arts for the photo.)

Some behind-the-scenes stories: Audience attendance, alone, was its own dramatic saga, but it ended well. Of the eight performances scheduled over two weekends, the first one (Friday night) only had about 25 people. After all, it was a pretty unknown show. The second performance (Sat. matinee) was actually canceled due to lack of interest and too few tickets sold! I thought, “Oh no, this is doomed!”

But the next two performances, Saturday night and the Sunday matinee of the first weekend, grew to at least a performable-size audience. Those audiences gave increasingly enthusiastic ovations, indicating they really liked the show, and the cast got much better with each performance. Then I began to feel hopeful more people might come the next weekend, and they did.

By word of mouth, the next weekend’s audience size kept growing dramatically, as did the audience’s enthusiasm — until at the final Sunday matinee we were miraculously only a few seats shy of selling out the hall! You could see and hear people laughing out loud in the funny scenes, then sniffling and wiping tears away in the sad ones, and at the end standing and cheering wildly. I could hardly believe it and breathed many sighs of relief that my child had not bombed, as I had feared. Oh, me of little faith! All’s well that ends well.

In spite of this excitement, I’m already back to my classical music and don’t plan to solicit further performances of this show, nor to write another musical any time soon. However, if another theater offers on their own initiative to produce it, I would likely agree. Meanwhile, I will always remain grateful to those who took the time to produce and perform this one. And as the Composer Laureate of Tennessee, I found it a good way to share my music more publicly with a wider kind of audience than just those in the classical concert hall. Also, we were grateful to those loyal friends of Crystal’s and mine who came to see the show and her great performance.

Here is a photo of my close friend, platinum-selling rocker Kip Winger (L) with one of our lead actors, Tate Burgess, whose costumes (in the role of the modern young man “Henry”) included this Winger T-shirt, Kip’s group. And below, here’s a behind-the-scenes photo from the cast break room, where cast members filled the blackboard with graffiti and funny parodies of lines from the show. They had a lot of fun doing this show but also worked very hard to learn it. I am eternally grateful to them all.

Moving onward, I have agreed to give a talk in May from my book, The Sound of Beauty, at a big teachers conference in Denver, and then another in July, also on the book, at a retreat conference in the San Francisco Bay area. At both of these I am happy to have travel expenses and a nice fee provided and the opportunity to sell a good number of my books and CD’s on a book table for the participants. Mostly, though, it is an opportunity to share the joy of great music to people who really want to know more about it. I enjoy doing these talks a few times a year, which still allows me plenty of time to compose. I’m glad the invitations only come about that often, though, because it is hard to say no to them, and I do need mostly to compose.

Between her weekend performances in the title role as “Miss Barrett,” Crystal (circled here, right), figuratively wearing her school music teacher hat, put on a terrific “Evening of the Arts” at her school last week. The proud parents sat in an audience and also at some at café tables and had dessert while the kids, in various groupings, sang and played light music for them. A great time was had by all! She is next preparing a kids’ version of the show Annie for them to do in April. And she is already preparing with her vocal coach for her own upcoming show auditions. She really is an Energizer Bunny.

On the 17^th we are invited to a St. Patrick’s Day party with all the traditional Irish foods made by certain friends who, like me, fancy themselves amateur chefs. From my Irish cookbook, I’ll be bringing Sticky Carrots in Irish Whisky and Ginger, Mushy Peas (the fresh kind, mashed with butter and a little cream, not with the more traditional dried marrowfat peas), and Crystal is still deciding on what dessert to bring. Last time she made a wonderful Bailey’s Irish Cream cheesecake.

Yesterday I made my Romanian Sarmales at home, a favorite of Crystal’s, which in English would simply be called cabbage rolls. They are like the Polish Gulumpki I grew up with, but with paprika and other spices. And she made a delicious batch of scones. If music be the food of love, play on. And if food be the music of love, cook on!

I had another story to tell about springtime plans for our garden, but this is getting long, so I’ll save it for next time. Wishing you a wonderful start of spring and plans of your own!