SKIPPING CHRISTMAS the MUSICAL demos released!

I’m in development for new projects most of the time… but new work takes years! I thought it would be a worthwhile exercise for a composer collaborator and I to whip up something with a month’s deadline. We took a break from the “serious” musical we’d been writing to compose a mini Christmas adaptation. Using a chapter from John Grisham’s Skipping Christmas as source material, we wrote, recorded, and released a section of what could be part of a larger musical idea.

Go to skippingchristmasthemusical.com to hear more!

May Yoshioka recording “Blair”

While admittedly light and fun, through the process of writing the piece, we discovered something meaningful about examining our commercialized American traditions. As hyper-capitalism barrels towards the increasingly radical, and anti-capitalist movements pick up steam, we wanted to carve space to ask: how can we earnestly participate in an economy that is all-consuming? When our American traditions are commercialization, and when joy is so fleeting in that culture, is it so easy to just skip out?