i’ve always loved putting on a show.
My instincts have always led me to storytelling and live performance. As a kid, this manifested in crafting elaborate plays with entire Lego villages which my parents were audiences at, or pop concerts with original songs “sung” by my sister’s Barbies on long car trips. This instinct has never gone away; if anything, the desire to create live musical experiences for audiences has only gotten stronger, and I’ve had the fortune to meet others with the same drive.
west fourth new music
W4 at the premiere of our most ambitious project, Moby Dick: Extracts on Death and Other Curiosities, in 2014. Photo: Bruce Kung.
West Fourth New Music (W4) was essentially a composers’ collective — but we more often thought of ourselves, especially in the early days, as a new music production company. We met in NYU’s graduate composition program in the fall of 2010 and, upon learning we wouldn’t be given the opportunity to publicly perform any of our own music until our graduate recitals two years later, immediately banded together to begin producing our own events.
Emo phase? NYU, 2010. L-R: Matt Frey, Molly Herron, Ruben Naeff, Tim Hansen. Photo: Casey Harris.
Not only did we present music that the four of us (myself, Tim Hansen, Molly Herron, and Ruben Naeff) wrote, but we actively worked to commission and present music by our peers and mentors as well, producing concerts at venues across New York City including 92Y TriBeCa, Exapno, and Issue Project Room; along the way we collaborated with many talented musicians, ensembles, filmmakers and choreographers.
Ten years later we are no longer actively presenting music as a group, but we remain close friends and support each other’s endeavors. A summary of some of our favorite media from our events is on our website, which we plan to keep active for the foreseeable future.
Abby Lee Mosconi, singer (and comedian, apparently) sings some of my musical theater and shares a story about our past.
inside the underground
Inside the Underground was a semi-annual event I co-hosted with composers Julia Barry and Joseph Rubinstein, writer Melisa Tien, and singer Tracy Michailidis. Having met through a collaborative music-theater residency hosted at New Dramatists in 2016, we formed this showcase to continue collaborating and presenting new vocal music spanning a unique cross-section of what’s up-and-coming in New York’s songwriting, musical theater, and opera scenes. Unfortunately, our home, the underground cabaret space at the iconic Cornelia Street Cafe, closed suddenly at the end of 2018.
Oldie but goodie? Rachel Fischer, Napat Mingkwanyuen, Conor Ryan, Dusty Francis, and Peiharn Chen resurrect a short musical I wrote with Alan Gordon for the BMI Musical Theater Workshop in 2004.