There is something special about Jason Robert Brown‘s musical, The Last 5 Years.
We performed this at Dartmouth in 2004, and 8 years later, it’s still one of my go-to scores if I want to relax at the piano. In fact, I still hear new things in the music. And the music is quite difficult: some jazz riffs are written verbatim, there are unintuitive and fast runs, and time signatures bounce back and forth. I am a really good sight-reader, and generally not such a good practicer; much of this music was hard to sight-read, and required significant amounts of practicing to learn.
This Dartmouth 2004 production stars Ivan Grant and Anna (Moschet) Rathbun, and was directed by Victoria Saxton. Danielle Strollo on the violin, Meg Boyar and Myra Choo on cello, Dan Kozikowski on the guitar, and of course me on the piano.
The Last 5 Years – Dartmouth Harlequins – 2004 (B) from Craig Perler on Vimeo.
(There’s a second perspective of the performance which has slightly better video in some places, worse in others: http://vimeo.com/38195838.)
Anyways, over the last few months, in my spare spare time, I’ve been converting old videos into digital formats and uploading them to YouTube and Vimeo (Vimeo does a better job with my video format). I’ve really enjoyed re-watching all these performances:
- Guys & Dolls, pt1, 2000 and Guys & Dolls, pt2, 2000
- A Funny Thing…, 2001
- Taxi Cabaret, pt1, 2002 and Taxi Cabaret, pt2, 2002
- Love, Sex & Everything In Between, pt1, 2002 and Love, Sex & Everything In Between, pt2, 2002
- Little Shop of Horrors, 2003
- Still to be uploaded: Chorus Line, 2003
- Gone missing: That’s Entertainment (musical revue)
- The Last 5 Years, camera 1, 2004 and The Last 5 Years, camera 2, 2004
- Gone missing: You’re A Good Man, Charlie Brown, 2004
