Musical Theater Month

I guess I should kiss or at least shake the hand that feeds me, huh?  So I'm learning some musical theater songs this month.  The downside of doing this genre is that the songs are often much longer and more complex than the pop stuff I've tended towards - more to memorize.  The upside is that I can choose from the many standard and contemporary musical theater songs I'm already sort of familiar with, so I have a chance to practice them to the point where I feel secure playing them. 

I've learned "Adelaide's Lament" from Guys & Dolls (on the easy/standard side, memorization-wise), gotten a decent start on "Vanilla Ice Cream" from She Loves Me, and "When You're Home" from In the Heights.  The latter is proof that when reading music, the information goes in my eyeballs and out my ears: I've played this song a zillion times at rehearsals and auditions, and while a lot of it's in my muscle memory, I couldn't call it memorized.  I learned it long before I was of the mindset to internalize the form and changes - I was still learning everything note-by-tedious-note.  No time for that now.  It's interesting to see how much my music-learning process has changed in the past couple years. 

Anyway, must sign off now - I'm in the middle of an extremely busy week, and I'm up way, way past my bedtime.  I'll pay for it tomorrow when I'm trying to write arrangements on no sleep. It was worth it to socialize with theater friends on a rooftop in midtown with a view of the Empire State Building that was just amazing.  We won't talk about the fact that I overshot my subway stop by three avenue blocks and ended up taking a cab home... hooray for solitary walks and lemonade that might have been hiding some vodka...