Music for StickFly

19 October 2011

This just in: not only will Alicia Keys be producing the Broadway production of Lydia Diamond’s play StickFly, but she will also be composing music. This is great news for all sorts of reasons, including:

  • Original music for a play! This is less and less common these days, and unfortunately so – many great works of music came out of the theatrical tradition, ranging from Grieg’s “In the Hall of the Mountain King” (from Peer Gynt) to Mendelhesson’s Midsummer’s Night Dream suite to the works of John White. It’s the predecessor of the modern TV and movie soundtrack.
  • A new opportunity to heighten and reinforce the overall affect [sic] of the entire production.
  • An additional entry point for non-theatregoers to discover a wonderful play and theatrical experience.

Great news all around.

: Misc, Theatre
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The most beautiful college campuses in the United States

7 October 2011

Yahoo Travel (of all places) has an article on the best-looking college campuses in the US. It’s actually just a crib of the first ten slides from this Travel and Leisure feature – lazy Yahoo! My alma mater, the University of San Diego, is on the list – no surprise to anyone who has been there. It really is very inspiring to live and work in a beautiful space.

The complete list, in the order presented, includes:

  • Bard College
  • Stanford Universty
  • Notre Dame
  • Florida Southern University
  • University of Cincinatti
  • USD (that’s San Diego, not South Dakota)
  • Berry College
  • Lewis & Clark College
  • Rice University
  • Cornell
  • Sewanee, The University of the South
  • University of Washington-Seattle
  • Princeton
  • Kenyon College
  • Swarthmore College
  • Indiana University (although their chosen photo shows Brutalist architecture, of which I am decidedly not a fan)
  • University of Virginia
  • Yale
  • Duke
  • University of Colorado-Boulder
  • University of Wisconsin-Madison
  • Wellesley College
  • William & Mary
  • St. Olaf’s College
  • Scripps College
  • University of Chicago
  • Bryn Mawr
  • Furman
  • Vanderbilt

 

: Aesthetics, Misc
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Alicia Keys presents Stick Fly (on Broadway)

29 September 2011

Several years ago, I had the privilege of study with Lydia Diamond, a playwright on the School of Theatre faculty at Boston University. A frequent source of examples was Lydia’s play Stick Fly. It was quite exciting to see a revised version of Stick Fly sell out a run at the Huntington, get extended and sell out again, finally capture multiple awards. It was a “Miracle Year” for Lydia, as one critic opined.

Well, perhaps luck had something to do with it. But there was definitely something more, because look what’s happening this fall: Stick Fly is opening on Broadway! Tickets are available now; the homepage features a short video with interview excerpts with Lydia and the production team. And, yes: Alicia Keys is the producer. And she is also one of the people contributing soundbytes.

: Misc, Theatre
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