The opening chorus of “Bobby” in this clip gets stuck in my head so much. I’m not majorly well versed in Sondheim’s work, to be perfectly honest, but every time I catch something like this I feel like I should try and catch more performances of his musicals.
However, my love of musicals really began when I took a tape of the music from Cats out on loan from the city library as a child. I totally fell in love with those musical numbers as a kid, without ever seeing a production of it.
As a teenager, I ended up performing in school musicals, singing musical theatre pieces with choirs, or playing in the orchestra for various amateur productions, and got to know a wider variety of musicals, from Les Mis and How To Succeed In Business… , to Fiddler On The Roof and The Best Little Whorehouse In Texas.
Even now, I make a living doing musical direction for amateur musical productions, or playing piano for them, and I guess it is only natural that a lifelong association with musical theatre in various ways has informed my own music as much as my classical training, or the music I listen to myself for pleasure.
As a performing art, it intrigues me as it covers so much ground musically – from jazz, to Disney, to rock, to country… you name as style of music, and there’s probably a few musicals in that style. One of my favourites of recent years are two movie musicals, with very contrasting styles:
Here’s some folky french chanson from Les Chansons d’Amour. I like that the actors sing quite naturally, and it completely surprised me when I rented it out on a whim from a local video shop a few years ago. The soundtrack is one of my favourite albums to be honest, and I need to find more of Alex Beaupain’s music. This isn’t the strongest song from the movie (that would probably be “Brooklyn Bridge” or “J’ai Cru Entendre” I think), but it’s my favourite this morning:
And this wonderful piece from Were The World Mine, which took inspiration from Shakespeare‘s “A Midsummer Night’s Dream”, and added gays, rugby, and musical theatre. Obviously. And it’s a must-see for any gay guy that ended up getting a lead in their school show which helped change people’s opinion of them. *ahem* I love the transitions between reality and fantasy in the musical number in this movie too.
I could go on and keep posting videos from other more well known musicals, or other favourites of mine, but I won’t. I’ll leave it with what is still perhaps my favourite number from a musical ever. The weaving of the different melodies from other parts of the musical into this one big showstopper never fails to wow me:
Which of course was parodied brilliantly by South Park, Bigger, Longer and Uncut:
