H.W. Pennywell and His Unstoppable Robot Army of Doom

Written for wind ensemble. For Doctor Pennywell, fictional father of modern weaponized robotics. May your warriors shine like the morning sun!

Amy Pence's Armor, Amour

A very cool book of poetry by my step-mother-in-law. My song cycles are printed in the pages, and one of them was art-ified for the cover! There's also a sweet digital download of the poems being read, on top of my awesome background soundtrack. Cool enough to buy 4 or 5 copies I'd say.

http://www.ninebarkpress.org/order.html

I Am Watch Television Zombie

This interdisciplinary production explores our addiction to television with a team of 20 actors, musicians, technicians and aerial dancers. With no seating, audience members will wade through a transformed theater space waist-deep in balloons, immersed in thousands of animated TV images projected on four walls.

Actors will interact with audiences as musicians appear and perform seemingly out of nowhere. With a rich mix of aerial dancers, actors, live music and thousands of moving images and balloons, there could be moments of sensory overload, overwhelm and laughter.

The production was conceived and produced by Hunter Ewen, a CU doctoral candidate in music and Nicole Predki of Frequent Flyers (MFA Dance 2009).

Taking place January 26th and 27th 2012, at the ATLAS Black Box Theater in Boulder, CO, I Am Watch Television Zombie is an exploration of the nature of our mutual addiction to the television screen.  With an all volunteer team of over 40 actors, dancers, musicians, technologists, videographers, welders, chefs, computer-programmers, and balloon inflaters, the show will be an unrelenting assault on the eyes, ears, and taste buds of the audience.  Instead of sitting in chairs, the audience will be directed by invisible voices in the concert hall to stand and move throughout the 2,400 sqft performance space. Audience members will wade, waist-deep, in a sea of balloons that fill the entire hall as projections flash all around them and aerial dancers take to the sky on custom-built contraptions above everyone's heads!

Throughout the performance, people will be completely surrounded by moving images projected onto a 360 degree, wrap-around screen.  We will be projecting 58 hours of television (the average amount a person watches in a week) during each performance. Musicians will emerge from nooks and crannies in the space and play along with the BOOMING 13.1 surround-sound system while mingling with the audience.  We even have a mechanically controlled grand-piano ready to do our bidding!  The wails and cries of the actors will be reflected, projected, and transformed by a suite of custom-built computer applications to form the terrifying roar of the zombie apocalypse.

What we have:

This project was the winner of the 2011 ATLAS Arts and Technology Fellowship, and as such, much of the technical support will be provided freely by the ATLAS Center for Arts, Media, and Performance.  This includes use of projectors, computers, audio equipment, lighting design, audio and video recording equipment, as well as an excellent support team to help make sure everything behind-the-scenes runs the way we want.  The black box theaterat The University of Colorado Boulder, is quite possibly the most technologically advanced performance venue of it's size in Colorado, and it is a great honor to be producing the show alongside their team.

We are also blessed with an incredibly passionate and creative group of on and off-stage performers.  The team of aerialists are volunteers from Colorado's pre-eminent aerial dance and theater company, and the musicians and performance artists are all volunteers from the Boulder and Denver areas.  We have the passion, drive, and experience to make this project a great success.  We have all been involved in large-scale performances, and we're raring to go.  And with YOUR help, this project will be bigger, better, badder, and bolder than anything we've done before!

What we need:

Volunteer performers are the backbone of this project, but we're still a long way from financing our endeavor!  We need money for costumes, set design, props, welding of aerial dance equipment, software, and wires and cables to make the fleet of projectors and computers work.  We need wood, canvas, and paint for the scenery.  We need metal to build rigs for the dancers and to build percussion instruments for performers.  We want to build special rigs for the performers to hide in, emerge from, and be flown to the ceiling as they explore every inch of the space, horizontally and vertically.  We need money for exotic and spine-tingling foods to entice the audience.  We need money to buy and fill the entire performance space will balloons (and if we're lucky, we'll set a Guinness Record doing so).  We will need safety equipment for the aerial performers: harnesses, ropes, fabric, and pulleys.  It's a tall order, but a little bit of money goes along way (especially since we're all volunteering our time)!

We also need people who can become involved creatively in the project!  Our reward system is setup such that everyone who donates becomes involved in the show.  Not only will you get some epic loot (not available to the public), but we want images and videos FROM YOU - things you think would be appropriate for our show.  So we're asking everyone who donates to send us names, pictures, and/or videos.  It could be you and your friends posing like zombies - it could be you making a crazy face, or dressed up as your favorite TV/movie/internet character - it could be a great drawing you make or even something completely unrelated!  We want everyone to feel like they have astake in the project, so the wackier, crazier, and more unusual your pictures / videos, the better!  We're looking forward to seeing what awesome stuff everyone comes up with!

Circles on Quiet Water

For those in the Boulder/Denver area tonight, come out and see the performance of my viola and electronics composition, Circles on Quiet Water!  It's being played by the excellent Cassandra Mueller, and there are many other excellent new works on the show as well.

Why Write Casanova

At first glance, Giacomo Casanova represents a technically demanding and intellectually daunting character to bring to life on the stage. Casanova’s public stereotype far outshines the significance of his exploits. His adventures took place in an era far removed from our own. And on the subject of himself, Casanova has already written 1.3 million words about his conquests. Known as the most prominent paramour of his time, the greatness of Casanova’s love is not measured in breadth. It is measured in depth. Instead of aspiring to love as many as he, maybe we can learn to love as much. This simple statement gave me my first insight into the character and proved to be a “eureka moment” for my musical journey.

Every story has to begin at the beginning; mine started in a meeting with the charming and effervescent Bill Mooney. Through his assiduous passion and rapier wit, he helped me appreciate the creative possibilities in retelling Casanova’s story. Casanova at Twilight provided a great opportunity to reimagine a familiar archetype. With the help of his delightful wife, Valorie Goodall, we set off on a grand adventure of sex and deceit in 18th century Italy.

After adventuring for some time, I began to realize that Casanova and I were connected in ways I never anticipated. As a composer and lyricist, I found inspiration in Casanova’s witty, scandalous tales of debauchery. They fascinate and titillate. However, Casanova’s true brilliance resides in his autobiography, Histoire de ma Vie. He articulates the intimate details of his life with critical objectivity and a frankness that many others are unwilling or unable to achieve. As his story progresses, Casanova reveals the true depth of his character, his naked soul emerging from page after page of brutal, unapologetic honesty. I try to capture the same feeling of integrity in the music for Casanova at Twilight.

The music is ribald at times, and soothing at others. It bounces capriciously from one idea to the next as Casanova’s mind wonders. Themes from Casanova’s past are often misremembered or misinterpreted, especially when in pursuit of a lovely lady. He never developed a strong understanding of musical technique, so phrases and motifs often fluctuate in style and historical context. It is at once loud and brash, soft and sweet, angry, funny, ugly, and sexy. As with literature, true musical expression can only be achieved through self-reflection and a fearless exploration of the human condition. In this way, Casanova and I are brothers.

The Story of Casanova

From the Daily Camera:

Be careful what you choose for casual reading. It may lead to a musical. That's what happened when Bill Mooney decided to tackle Giacomo Casanova's 12-volume, 3,700-page autobiography a couple of years ago. The deeper he made his way into the prolific, famous -- or infamous, depending on your point of view -- 18th-century paramour's pages, the wilder the tales became. And the more Mooney discovered Casanova's life was filled with much more than wooing women. "Everybody knows Casanova's name," Mooney said. "We use it all the time, either flatteringly or pejoratively, to describe some men. 'He's a real Casanova.' But nobody really knows anything about his life." What Mooney discovered, he said, is that Casanova was an intellectual and a writer. He wrote 43 volumes in all, including a translation of "The Iliad" into Italian. He was at home in 18th-century power circles, socializing with much of Europe's political and religious elite. He became rich by starting a lottery for King Louis XV, and he was a spy. "And in his spare time," Mooney quipped, "he loved women." Mooney was so inspired by the man behind the legend that he approached people in CU's School of Music about producing a musical comedy about Casanova. "Casanova at Twilight" plays at the ATLAS Black Box Theatre on CU's campus Sept. 23 through Oct. 2. Mooney wrote the book for "Casanova," and CU doctoral student Hunter Ewen composed its eclectic score, brought to life by a live orchestra that features piano, strings and percussion. "Casanova" director Valorie Goodall has assembled a talented cast. Along with Mooney, who plays the show's narrator, Old Casanova, CU Opera Program Director Leigh Holman will perform, as will Raouf Zaidan. Zaidan's performance is a homecoming, of sorts, as he starred regularly in CU Opera in the Summer's early days when the summertime program featured Gilbert and Sullivan operettas. Also, local gender illusionist Jeffrey Kash will play two female roles in "Casanova." Mooney has a history with the university. He went to school in Boulder in the late-1950s -- he acted in the first season of the Colorado Shakespeare Festival in 1958 -- before moving to New York City and cultivating a 35-year career on stage, television and in film. In the 1990s, he returned to Boulder to direct CU Opera in the Summer shows, and transitioned into a second career as a professional storyteller. When he first picked up Casanova's autobiography, he wondered if it might spark an idea for a one-man show. Soon, though, Mooney decided Casanova's life was too rich, and it needed to be told in musical form. Casanova was born in Venice in 1725. He began writing his autobiography, "Histoire de ma vie," in the 1780s, about a decade before he died in 1798. The work is regarded by scholars as an authoritative look at European life in the 1700s. For Mooney, the details Casanova described were a revelation. "Several people have written that the 18th century in Europe was very different (from today)," Mooney said. "Sex back in Italy during that day was about as common as blowing your nose. It's a good insight into why Casanova got his name."

Casanova is Coming

Lock up your daughters! Casanova at Twilight is a scandalous new musical comedy written by Bill Mooney, with original music by Hunter Ewen, based on Casanova’s autobiography. This musical romp through Casanova’s scandalous life is directed by Valorie Goodall, choreographed by Marilyn Cohen, and features Bill Mooney as Old Casanova, Garrett Smith as Young Casanova, with Leigh Holman, Jeffrey Kash, Raouf Zaidan, Emily Murdock, Lukas Graf, Kari Kraakevik, David L’Hommedieu, and Bruce and Jere Mock.

Author Bill Mooney has written a number of plays and one-man shows; he has performed on and off-Broadway; and played the role of Paul Martin in ABC's All My Children for fourteen years. 

Composer Hunter Ewen is completing a Doctoral of Music Arts in composition at CU Boulder. 

Proceeds from the production will benefit the College of Music, ATLAS, and other CU Performing Arts participants.

Parental guidance is advised.

World Record Ballon Blower-upper

Hello all.  Many have seen this on Facebook, but here is the video of me breaking the Guinness Record for most balloons inflated in 1 hour by 1 person.  The new record is 582, as you can see below.

Ohia and Lehua Friday Night

Hello Lexingtonians! I will be performing my solo sax and electronics piece Ohia and Lehua Friday night as part of the Studio 300 festival at Transylvania University.  The concert starts at 7:30pm, in Haggin Auditorium at the Mitchell Fine Arts Center.  Hope to see you there!

Kickstarter is online

Hello bloggers!  The official Kickstarter page to fund my multimedia extravaganza "I Am Watch Television Zombie" is online!  Check it out here:

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/905261689/i-am-watch-television-zombie-a-multimedia-extravag

We need your help to make the project a huge success - both in terms of donations and in terms of helping us come up with names, images, and videos to project during the show!  Brraaaaaaaains!!!