On Saturday, May 8, 2010, I took a trip down to Gallia County to check on the progress Scott Michal is making on the music for The Last Oz Story.  I was encouraged by the fact that Scott asked me to bring along several copies of the script because he wanted to do a complete read through of the show.

Now, it’s not unusual for a composer and a lyricist to work apart.  Gilbert and Sullivan (or, rather, Sullivan and Gilbert, since the former was the composer of the pair) pretty much loathed one another.  That’s not our situation, though.  I have a high regard for Scott’s talents as a musician and he admires my ability to put words together in a semi-coherent and reasonably amusing fashion.  However, we are physically separated by about 90 miles of highway, including a gravel and, occasionally, dirt road.  So we don’t get together very often.

I am happy to report that the songs are 98% complete.  There’s a few spots where I will have to adjust the meter of my lyrics to his music and vice versa, but it shouldn’t take long to make those changes.  However, Scott still has to score the dances and some incidental music.  He is also finishing up the arrangements and doing some other computer stuff so that he will have an audio recording of the whole show.  He even has some singers lined up to contribute the vocals to our project.  Once that’s completed, we will be able to start lining up a theatre company to perform it.

Those who attended the read-through gave us encouraging feedback regarding the songs and the story.  They felt it had definite potential.  We shall see.

In the meantime, Scott mentioned that his violin concerto is going to be recorded by an up-and-coming classical music label.  If all goes well, the session will take place in the Czech Republic with Scott in attendance.  The piece was introduced by the Huntington Symphony last year.  Scott also has a cello sonata that is being performed in Turkey this summer.

My hope, of course, is that Scott’s growing fame as a composer will increase interest in his musical theatre work, as well.  We are already planning the follow-up to Oz (which I have 80% written).  I keep telling him that it is going to be a very big show (size-wise, anyway).  It will be of particular interest to students of Ohio history (but that’s all I’m going to say about it for now).

Eventually, I will be putting audio links to our songs, here.

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