Happy 4th Anniversary To Un-Block The Music

Happy 4-year anniversary to “Un-Block The Music”!  I have certainly traveled “The Long and Winding Road” to get to where I am right now! Yes…I am still a Paul McCartney fan. Yes, Joan Jett is still my alter ego. HOWEVER, I not only hike the streets of Greenwich Village as I once claimed, I also excitedly scurry through the streets of Broadway and Times Square attending as many shows as I can. I have ALWAYS enjoyed theater, but in doing my interviewing and listening over the last few years, I found a heck of a lot of innovation going on there. A lot of that innovation has to do with people I interviewed when I wrote for publications such as Billboard, Pro Sound News and In Tune Monthly. There is a lot of crossover in music genres today. Thank you, Sara Bareilles and Lin-Manuel Miranda!

As I started digging deeper into composing, sound design and musical directing for theater, I found it all to be fascinating and the artists there to be very accessible and willing to talk to me and teach me about what it takes to get a show to the stage. Just as CO-VID 19 was about to wreak havoc on our lives, I attended a Women On Broadway event presented by Disney at the Amsterdam Theater. I sat in the audience and listened to amazing women speak about their experiences in theater and I found out that 93 percent of Broadway was still controlled by men. Don’t get me wrong…I love men…(I have interviewed extraordinary talents such as Tom Kitt, Nevin Steinberg, Nicholas Skilbeck and Lindsay Jones). I want to continue to talk with them of course, but I think women need to be represented, don’t you? We are…after all…51 percent of the population and buy 70 percent of the tickets. Ultimately, I decided to create a column dedicated to Women in Theater. Not only has that column been a rousing success, but…I signed a deal with McFarland Publishing to make it into a book!!!! My goal is to honor women who have overcome the odds in a man’s world, and to put fire under younger women; don’t let anyone tell you “no!”

My blog format is changing a bit with the “Women Wonders” column offering just a snippet of what will come in my book. It’s all to get some excitement going. I hope blog readers will offer suggestions as to who I might interview whether…they don’t have to be female! All I know is that we need live performance to return in full force! I will do what I can to support that. I hope you will too.