FRONT & CENTER with TOM KITT
New York City Center’s musical theater masterclass series, Front & Center, brings musical theater masters together with emerging artists in front of a live audience. This composition master class with Tom Kitt (Next to Normal, If/Then) was designed for emerging composers and lyricists, challenging them to tell new stories in musical theater. He examined song structure, musical embodiment of character, and how the composer/lyricist moves from an idea to songwriting.
Artists were selected through an online audition process and were asked to bring in a song of their choosing. We performed these for Tom and then had individual talkbacks with him about the specific contents of the piece. A video of my song, Maybe, from Annie Aspen’s Musical Space Spectacular! can be seen below. This song was the first piece of Annie Aspen that I wrote and this masterclass took place when it was the only piece of the puzzle I had. You can tell by the way I get lost in giving context for it…
