THE NEXT GENERATION

MARISA MICHELSON

Marisa Michelson currently lives in New York City, where she teaches singing and piano to children and adults both privately and through Soyulla artists (www.soyulla.com). Her original musical (written with Joshua H. Cohen), Still Life With Toe Shoes will have its world premiere this July with Old Deerfield Productions in western Massachusetts, before traveling to Macedonia in November as part of the Albanian National Theatre festival. Marisa and Joshua were also recently commissioned by the Prospect Theater Company to create a short musical based on Rene Magritte's painting "The Lovers." Marisa's full-length musical, Hotel Sarajevo, which she co-conceived with Stephanie Johnstone and for which she wrote book, music and lyrics, has received readings at CAP 21/NYU and Smith College, and is currently being developed for education and outreach with the New York- based QuoVadimus Theatre. Last year she traveled to India on a fellowship to compose music and study Hindustani singing in the Global Arts Village for three months and this past March, Marisa was selected to participate in the New Dramatists Guild's Composer-Librettist studio. Marisa graduated with a BFA in Drama from NYU's Tisch School of the Arts. She has studied composition with Adam Guettel and is the winner of the 2006 St. Botolph Award for Excellence in Composition.  For more inforation, visit www.MarisaMichelson.com. 

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Q. What was the first thing you did after you learned you'd been given this American Musical Voices Project: Next Generation grant?
A. Well, I was actually in Massachusetts holding auditions for a piece of mine that's happening this summer. I was driving in a car with my mom so she was the first to know. Then I called my most supportive and amazing boyfriend, Franz. But sometime after hanging up with him it occurred to me that I must have imagined the whole thing. So I promptly denied any award for about the next month until I found an email inviting me to a celebration for the five of us. Then I knew it was real. So I baked some delicious local eggs and butter brownies.

Q. Do you have any specific plans for your composition?
A I have a journal in which I write down thoughts and feelings, words, images, anything that occurs to me as something worth playing with. There are a couple of beautiful novels I've been thinking of adapting into music theater pieces. But I feel blessed right now with this gift I've been given – this opportunity to create anything at all, to be able to freely follow my artistic impulses – so I'm taking time to find the right idea.

Q. Are there any performers you are longing to work with?
A. I long to work with performers who sing with life and heart and spirit, who commit to their craft with love. Because of the deeply human nature of both speaking and forming words, and singing and hearing music, this form of music plus theater, has the inherent ability to be powerful and spiritual, and I am most excited by performers who are all around creative people interested in collaborating and discovering the work together. I recently participated in a workshop at New Dramatists where the emphasis was on collaboration and co-creation between writers and performers. I was excited by Manoel Felciano and Gabrielle Stravelli, who both sang solos I'd written specifically for them and were inspired by them. Also at New Dramatists I got to work with the great bass, Charles Temkey. Wow. Look out for him.

Richard Croft because of that soaring simplicity and the ease with which he sings.

A couple years ago I wrote a short musical called The Airplane and I wrote that with Victoria Clark in mind. Her voice and energy inspired the lead character. I just saw her in Michael John's LaChiusa's piece at the Zipper Theatre and am continually amazed by her.

Oh, and does Ben Daniels sing?

Q. How did your musical journey begin? When did you first begin playing music? Composing?
A How it began... with piano lessons at age four and performing in community theater of course. I wrote plays and stories as a kid. My first musical compositions were classical piano pieces with titles like Spiral, Atlantis, and Birch. I performed them at a concert.I think I was eleven. Then in my pre-teen years I started writing angsty singer-songwriter stuff (titles like Society with lyrics like "I am the rabbit and you are the mountain, I am the rabbit and I'm trying to sleep... first look, marbleized paper, first dance crystallized wood" – VERY deep). When I was 15 I went to a summer program at NYU- GMTW and that's when I discovered the joy of writing for the theater.

Q. Do you have formal music training?
ABFA in Drama from Tisch (CAP 21) at NYU. Formal singing and piano training my whole life, studied opera at Tanglewood, composition at NYU, with Adam Guettel... I'm training right now with the Libero Canto School of free singing (based in Vienna) to teach singing in this amazing way. I've been studying this technique myself for the past few years and I currently teach singing and piano privately to children and adults in NYC. This kind of training, and my work with kids, actually, has recently helped me to become more consciousness about what is behind my own creative impulses...

Q. Who are your biggest music inspirations?
A. In no particular order: Benjamin Britten, Tori Amos, Adam Guettel, Beethoven, Stravinsky, Philip Glass. Throughout my life I've been inspired by world music: recently by Indian music – Abida Parveen as a singer and Hindustani rags in general.

Q. Who's on your iPod?
A. Today: Sufjan Stevens, NPR's On Point with Tom Ashbrook "Our Daily Meds," (about how our pharmaceutical companies are actually more like legal drug pushers), Nellie McKay, Coldplay, Joan Baez, John Adams' Dharma at Big Sur, Kate Bush, Amelita Galli-Curci.

Q. What current artist, besides yourself, of course, are you most excited about?
A. Adam Guettel for his musical brilliance, the rhythms in his music, and his ability to maintain his own voice even as he continually reinvents it, and Michael John LaChiusa for the power and relevancy of the themes and stories he works with and how much heart and passion he has for this form. I am also excited by Bruce Coughlin's orchestrations.

Q. What's next for you? Any projects, beyond this commission, that you are working on currently?
A. I begin rehearsals in just a couple weeks for a workshop of my piece, Still Life with Toe Shoes, written with the deeply insightful lyricist, Joshua H. Cohen, (we collaborate on book). It's being directed and produced in Western Massachusetts by Linda McInerney with a mostly local cast of incredibly talented singer/actors. The piece is inspired by Degas' paintings of dancers and is about perception and different ways in which people, particularly women, define themselves and others. I'm so excited about the piece, which doesn't follow a traditional narrative, but plays with genre and combines music, dialogue, dance, and gesture. We're also taking the piece to Macedonia in the fall, which is random but perfect.

INFORMATION ABOUT MARISA’S MUSIC
"Airplane Trio" also sung by Stephanie Johnstone and Sal Sabella
"Climb" Lyrics by Joshua H. Cohen, sung by Doug Shapiro and Sarah Corey
"Things to Chase"