I recently spent a week in Pittsburgh (south of my hometown) to teach a singing workshop to 28 pre-college students. Many of these students are pursuing a career in musical theater, but all of them are enrolled in a phenomenal theater summer camp that also serves as a year round musical theater training program. These high school students turned out to be possibly the most driven, attentive, talented and respectful individuals I have ever seen in one room together. Throughout the course of the week, I "demoed" a contemporary pop/jazz/blues/studio singing workshop in which I used a combination of approaches and philosophies including what I've picked up through my graduate school training, late night jam session hangs with crazy blues folk, teaching insight, and love of gospel music. Each and every student was eager and willing to try everything-from circle singing with hand weights, to reading down a jazz chart, to writing and performing his or her own blues song. By the end of the week I taught a small group of these students a song I had written as the title track of my upcoming album, "Anthems". It was written as a duet but I rearranged it as a 4 part choral number.
I'm completely basing my upcoming album on the very idea of an "anthem". What does it mean? What styles of music over the years compliment these statements of passion and loyalty to whatever cause we have in our hearts...a reason for living; and moving forward. When the actual song "Anthems" came to be, I was looking up the Webster's dictionary definition of the word...and found literally what became the chorus of the song (I don't owe Webster any royalties, now do I?). A song of loyalty. Devotion. Is it my strongest and most advanced song, harmonically speaking? No. Is it my new hit single? Hardly. However it is one of those songs that has shifted and changed meaning once I heard it in a different form...this being a group setting. For what is an anthem but a song sung collectively: varying takes on similar opinions...souls moving forward in stride with one another; as composer/lyricist Adam Guettel (and also many philosophers and poets before him) described the desired "Migratory V" for all of humanity.
I made a (very) raw recording via Garage Band of these singers performing this song for the first time. I've listened to it nearly 80 times and still I am gathering new meaning from some of these lyrics. As a singer, my musical ear often draws me to songs with slick key changes, money notes and power house refrains; be it as interpreter, composer, lyricist or listener. Whether you are a Broadway baby---scouring your industry connections to get your hands on that latest "patter song turns to 11:00 number in 4 minutes flat" musical theater ballad or digging around for a lesser known Sarah Vaughan standard to wow that retired jazzer bar fly at your friday night gig...do YOU have an anthem? Not a torch song; in which we are often times left feeling far less resilient than we hoped to be afterwards...but a SONG of STRENGTH that lifts us up and sets us back down rebooted and refreshed...FURTHER grounding us in our own beliefs. I have an Anthem. I have a few, actually...and I can't wait to collect many more.
Stay posted for recordings of some brilliant 16 year olds performing this song; as well as the debut recording with "Anthems" in it's original form.
P.S. You must NOT forget-be you a native of Pittsburgh or an out of towner-to check out Pittsburgh's Act One Theater School. There are things happening here be it staff or students that far surpass many of the more acclaimed K-12 theater training programs in the country.
Breathe deep, friends :)
