#preludeslct3

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PRELUDES has been nominated for 4 Lucille Lortel Awards! Congratulations to cast members Gabriel Ebert, Or Matias, Chris Sarandon and Eisa Davis!

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The PRELUDES original cast album is dropping soon! Pre-order your copy today!

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PRELUDES cast album coming soon! Nikki M. James, Gabriel Ebert and the rest of the company are recording today. Stay tuned for release date!

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Extended!

2 weeks added to PRELUDES, playing now through August 2 at the Claire Tow Theater! Tickets and more info.

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LCT3-D: Preludes, Part 2

Natasha: Dave, you wrote the music and the book for PRELUDES— and of course you did the orchestrations –  and while it’s a piece about a figure in history, it doesn’t have a traditional biographical linear plot.

Dave: Certainly.

Natasha: So once you honed in on wanting to write about these particular three years [when Rachmaninoff had writer’s block], how did you decide what to include?

Dave: Well, I started reading Rachmaninoff’s biography and what was most fascinating to me was reading about him and his collisions with all these great figures of Russian culture. In this period, he had a disastrous meeting with Tolstoy. In this period, he and his cousin had to have an audience for the Tsar to get permission to marry. Tchaikovsky was a very prominent figure at his school. He met Chekhov during this period. So knowing that he met all these people, that was the first thought: ‘I want to get all those scenes in place.’ A young composer getting advice from these mentor figures—sometimes good advice, sometimes bad advice, sometimes… ambiguous? [Laughs]

Rachel: Enigmatic!

Dave: Enigmatic advice! And then also just thinking about writer’s block. The first piece I wrote for this show was the very first scene, which is about ‘What does it actually look like to live with writer’s block and what is a 24-hour period of someone suffering from writer’s block?”

Natasha: We’re fully launched into Rachmaninoff’s mindset with the first scene about his day.

Dave: That section in particular was one of the most effortless pieces of writing I’ve ever done, which was so strange! [Laughs] Whereas I have encountered writer’s block with various other pieces I’ve been working on during the last two or three years. But this show itself has actually been quite easy.

Natasha: What got you through writer’s block? Not hypnotherapy, I’m guessing…

Dave: [Laughs] I’ll let you know when I can figure it out! Or [Matias] had talked about this TEDTalk he had seen… who was it again?

Rachel: Elizabeth Gilbert.

Dave: Yeah, talking about the muse and how fickle the muse is and how your job is just to show up for work every day. You show up and sometimes the muse will appear and sometimes the muse will not and your job is to show up no matter what. So I have not figured out the secret to how you make the muse show up every day. [Laughs] I actually had a meeting with Stephen Sondheim after COMET and that was one of the questions I asked him. [Laughs] And he had not solved that. So I thought, ‘Well, okay.’

Natasha: Good company, at least! So in figuring out this piece—the build and the structure are unconventional, but you guys found such richness and specificity in each scene, and they all connect. Is that something that developed along the way? How did you consider how to move from one scene to another?

Rachel: When we first started, it was very clear that the first scene was the first scene, and we knew that the ultimate what-lives-in-the-place-of-a-climactic-scene-although-it-doesn’t-follow-the-usual-rules is this major hypnosis section. We knew that those were the two points around which the structure was going to build. And I think a lot of it was really kinetic as Dave and Or settled on which Rachmaninoff pieces would underplay which scenes in terms of energy. So there’s that scene ‘Cactus’ which is really jumpy—

Dave: I believe that’s a B minor etude…

Rachel: —and which is really light and high. So as we figured out order, a big part of it was just metabolic variation. Alec Duffy [THREE PIANOS co-creator] and I were talking about different ways of structuring when you’re not following a linear narrative. And he was saying that Chuck Mee had talked about this idea that you could look to different structures. Chuck had proposed a seasonal structure where you move from fall to winter to spring to summer. You want to have basic variation from moment to moment. And Gabe [Gabriel Ebert, playing the actor-half of Rachmaninoff] and I were constantly trying to figure out where he begins a scene and where he ends a scene and then how that positioned him for the next scene. It’s always been a big conversation: how much should whatever happens in a previous scene get emotionally carried into the next scene (or just dropped entirely while moving into the next scene). So, early on in the show, Rachmaninoff is able to be at 90 degrees, and then 30 degrees, and then 60 degrees… different emotional core temperatures. As we hit the second half of the show, it’s about slowly growing that in a steady line, so that you’re progressing to the release of the ‘Hypnosis’ scene.

Natasha: Another element in the piece that offers variation is the contemporary spin that COMET also had (as did other pieces you’ve written, Dave). When you’re working on PRELUDES, how much does the 1897-1900 period factor in and how do you bring in the contemporary part?

Dave: I feel like all of my work has always straddled that. I’m just so fascinated by the dialogue between our contemporary life and the life of people we read about in fiction or historical periods. So it’s very intuitive in terms of how much of 2015 you want to layer in, and how much of 1900 you want to layer in. Certainly in the design as well— it’s a real collision.

Rachel: There’s not any hard-and-fast rule to it, because those tend to fall apart pretty fast. It’s emotional. It felt very important that we saw Rachmaninoff in a classical setting versus a Bushwick setting. And by that, I mean specifically the costume. We all deeply responded to one of the images of Rachmaninoff that I pulled when we were first starting. It was a picture that Dave immediately pointed to and was like ‘Oh yeah, that’s the Bob Dylan picture!’ Where Rachmaninoff totally looks like this romantic, glorious, awkward, gothic, tortured artist.

Dave: Like a 20-year-old Bob Dylan.

Rachel: Like a 20-year-old Bob Dylan! I was so excited by that picture. Then, thinking about the cerebral setting of the piece— the idea that we are living in his mind—we got the idea to dress everyone other than Dahl [the hypnotherapist] in individualized versions of that picture. But it also felt really fun. And in thinking about Lincoln Center as a setting, the idea of dressing up to go to the opera felt really, really succulent—thinking about Natalya putting on a Fashion Week dress. But it all follows this monochromatic black-and-white image.

Natasha: Natalya’s symphony costume is gorgeous! Another anachronistic reference in the show is to Thelonious Monk, who is also a big part of Dave’s GHOST QUARTET. Are there any other contemporary influences for PRELUDES?

Dave: The way the music is scored actually is a lot of that. The music is scored for piano and two synthesizers. So a lot of the music is in dialogue with this weird little subset of music that popped up (when synthesizers were getting invented) of synthesizer renditions of classical music. So, the CLOCKWORK ORANGE soundtrack, which is Wendy Carlos. SWITCHED-ON BACH is another thing that she did that was all Bach being done by Moog synthesizers. A lot of the music has that kind of synthesizer sound in it, which is playing music of 1900, but also harkens to this period of 1960/1970 when synthesizers were getting invented, and also incorporates modern elements of 2015.

Natasha: And the music itself sort of lives in three “categories”: Rachmaninoff’s, your own, and then a twisted version of Rachmaninoff’s.

Dave: Right, the hybrid. And there are more direct references. There are references to Gordon Lightfoot and reggae and doo-wop and just thinking about the whole history of music and how as a composer in 2015, I’m very excited about using everything available to me, and the whole history of music.

Natasha: You alluded to this process a bit, but how did you decide which Rachmaninoff pieces felt right to include?

Dave: For the most part, they’re just my favorites!

Natasha: Like you have the Prelude in C# minor, of course, with that amazing monologue structured over it. And the prelude and monologue rise and fall together.

Dave: Yes, some were just my favorites and others were ones that were super important to Rachmaninoff’s life. That piece in particular was this piece he wrote when he was 19 and it kind of catapulted him to fame a little too soon. (That’s what it seems, with how his life unfolded.) So it seemed critical that that piece was part of it. And obviously the whole show is about writing the second piano concerto, so most of the major themes of the second piano concerto crop up in one way or another. And then it felt important to do ‘Vocalise’ because that’s such a well-known and utterly beautiful piece. The G minor prelude is kind of my favorite so I wanted to make sure to get that in there.

Rachel: Which one is that?

Dave: That’s the beginning of the ‘Music’ scene. [Sings the beginning]

Natasha: You’re drawing on both musical and biographical material for this show, whereas for COMET, you had the book material from Tolstoy. And I remember you saying that Tolstoy was the best collaborator because he’s both ‘brilliant and dead.’

Dave: Sure! [Laughs]

Natasha: It’s funny because this piece has more book than I’m used to from your work…

Dave: God, me too! [Laughs]

Natasha: Is there a reason why you veered toward having more book in a show about a composer?

Dave: You know, there’s a line in the play which is such a ‘me’ line, which is ‘This is just what happens!’ Like, I don’t know! I didn’t have pre-conceived notions when I started writing the piece. That is just how the piece ended up happening. I think some of it is about Rachmaninoff being a character who is a depressed, blocked character. So it actually didn’t feel right for him to be singing very much, because his whole struggle is that he is unable to sing in this period. He does in fact have a few songs, but there was an early thought where I thought ‘Oh, will this first scene all be sung and will this be another sung-through piece?’ But then when I started writing the text, I thought ‘Oh, this text for the most part should not be sung.’ Song can creep up into it, but for the most part, it’s spoken. And then as I kept writing… I mean, no one was more surprised than me to find out that I had written a play! [Laughs] With scenes!

Rachel: You’ve totally written a play! It makes sense also that Tolstoy brought the words, so you got to add music to it. And in so many ways, Rachmaninoff brings music (though not all of it) to this one. It’s so beautiful seeing you in dialogue with him.

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LCT3-D: Preludes, Part 1

LCT3-D Adding a new dimension to LCT3 with a series of in-depth conversations.

DAVE MALLOY AND RACHEL CHAVKIN In conversation with LCT3 Associate, Natasha Sinha Natasha Sinha (LCT3 Associate): Welcome, Dave and Rachel! You both make theater that’s so bold and theatrical. Did you start out studying theater, or were you on a different path that ended up here? Dave Malloy (Playwright/Music/Lyrics): I did not come here through theater— I went to school as a music person. So I got a degree in music composition. And then I moved to San Francisco and was playing in a lot of bands. I was in an electrojazz trio and in rock bands, and I was not doing theater at all. I think in college I played in some pit orchestras, like summer stock pit orchestras. And I sound-designed one show in college. But I had actually no real interest in theater.

Rachel Chavkin (Director): Do you have any recordings of your bands? I want to hear your electrojazz orchestra!

DM: I sure do! I totally have recordings of those. We did a really great rendition of ‘Subterranean Homesick Alien’—you know, the Radiohead song. That was kind of our crown jewel… Anyway, then I was working at a record store in San Francisco. And someone needed a keyboard player for a theater show they were doing and I’d just moved there and I was like ‘Sure that sounds fun!’ And basically, I can trace my entire career to that one show. The director asked me to do her next show, an actor asked me to do his next show… so little by little, I just started doing more and more theater. That was like 15 years ago.

RC: I totally studied theater. I didn’t do theater growing up particularly, because my school didn’t really have a theater program. I started going to a summer camp for theater. And then I did theater in college. I went to NYU and did drama there, and I was both acting and directing right off the bat—and then declared myself a director upon graduating (after my very first audition, when I was like ‘Never again’). [Laughs] And I’ve been doing it ever since.

NS: And you first worked with each other six years ago?

RC: Fall 2009 was our first collaboration. That was at Vassar College, actually. I had been working with a playwright named Talaya Delaney—I’d met her years before when I was a Drama League director in 2004. Talaya was a professor, writer-in-residence and teacher at Vassar and she wanted to work on this play that we’d been developing, but she wanted to make it into a musical. And I had gotten to know Dave’s work—and Dave himself—through our very dear mutual friends Jessica Jelliffe and Jason Craig, who have a company called Banana, Bag & Bodice, that Dave is a member of. I saw I think every incarnation of BEOWULF, from the “Prelude” festival in 2007 up until its premiere. And I just flipped for Dave’s music. We got to know each other and so I called him when Talaya said she wanted to make the show into a musical, and said ‘Do you want to do this?’ It was right after you’d moved here…

DM: I just moved here, so I was like ‘Sure!’

RC: And it was a really great, super low-stakes way for us to get to know each other. I think we actually started talking about [NATASHA, PIERRE AND THE GREAT] COMET [OF 1812] then. And then Dave was doing the show THREE PIANOS…

DM: Yeah, THREE PIANOS was the first show we did together in New York, which was a show that Alec Duffy, Rick Burkhardt and I were developing about Schubert’s “Winterreise.” At first we had the idea that just the three of us would make it without a director… and then quickly—well, not quickly—but eventually we realized that that was a terrible idea! [Laughs] So we were talking about directors we wanted to work with, and I said ‘Well, I just had this amazing experience working with Rachel up at this show at Vassar.’ We brought her in to do that, and she worked magic on a sprawling, three-hour opus of a mess.

NS: Yes, I remember! So much playful riffing around Schubert. Dave, you’re so well-versed in music history that I’m sure you’ve been interested in Rachmaninoff for a while, but when did you learn about the three-year period following the disastrous premiere of his first symphony? What was the trajectory from then, to wanting to write about that in PRELUDES?

DM: Hmm, I don’t remember. It was actually my high school choir director, I think, who first introduced me to Rachmaninoff. That’s John Drotleff.   He’s like my most what-do-you-call-it…

RC: Mentor?

DM: Just like the person who got me interested in music. So more than a mentor. Like an initiating…

RC: Dealer?

DM: … Creator? Anyway! Sometimes before rehearsal, he would play Rachmaninoff’s G minor prelude, and the C# minor prelude… And then when I went to college and studied piano there, my piano teacher Richard Syracuse used to play at a wings joint on Wednesday nights. He was mostly playing jazz standards and stuff like that. But when enough of the music department was there at this wings night (drinking lots of beer and eating chicken wings), we would coax him into playing masterpieces of the classical repertoire. So he would play those preludes at like 1am at this little wings bar.

RC: We should do a late-night show with buffalo wings!

DM: Totally. So good. I think sometime in there is when I was playing some Rachmaninoff music. And also when I learned about this three-year period. The fact that he solved his writer’s block through hypnotherapy in 1900 was just such a fascinating idea to me. And so it was one of those things—like COMET—where an idea kind of squirreled away, like ‘Oh, that would be a great show to make some day.’ But I never really thought I’d be able to make it, because I thought ‘Well, we need a virtuoso piano player in order to do that...” And then, fortuitously, we met Or Matias [Music Director, Pianist and plays Rachmaninoff in PRELUDES] who was the Music Director on COMET. On a break one day, I heard him playing some Rachmaninoff. We started talking about Rachmaninoff, and he revealed that Rachmaninoff was one of his favorite composers, and that he had played tons and tons of his music. So we started talking about this piece, and now here we are!

NS: And when we met, I remember you saying that you get inspired by writing for a specific venue, and so you saw the Claire Tow Theater. Did that factor into when we commissioned you and when you were writing PRELUDES?

DM: Absolutely. Both the theater itself and its location at Lincoln Center. It felt like it’d be so appropriate to do something that’s in dialogue with classical music and with the other kind of events that happen around here. Also, the size of the space is perfect for this since it’s kind of a chamber musical. It’s just six people onstage and the score is mostly on a grand piano, so it felt like the right size for that as well.

NS: And Rachel, what was your introduction to Rachmaninoff?

RC: This project, basically. Well, I had come to realize I had heard a lot of Rachmaninoff in movies, as Dave and Or moved through all the different Rachmaninoff pieces during the course of the workshops to figure out what would be in the show. And I was like ‘Oh, that’s familiar! I think I’ve seen an ice-skating routine to that!” [Laughs] But reading the biography for the initial research on this piece was my real introduction.

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Opening night pictures of PRELUDES.

Photos by Jenny Anderson.

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A smashing, gloriously fun production! PRELUDES stands tall!

- The New York Times