Long Time, No Post

Well hey there!
It's been a while.  I know.  I've started playing and teaching at Second City so that fun.  I just booked a Second City boat for next year, which means I'll be music directing on a cruise ship for four months next summer.  "HINT" the murder mystery musical I wrote just closed at pH Productions.  We had the privilege of playing to sold out houses for most of the run.   Here are new projects that I'm working on that are awesome:

The Improvised Sondheim Project - This incredibly talented group combines two of my favorite things:  Sondheim and musical improv.  Check out the website for more info on this group: Sondheim

MINt - Put four teams together with an always changing second act and you get Music Improv NighT.   I'm coaching/music directing for a team with Tiffani Swalley.  

Handsome Naked - One of my secret dreams is to produce for a comedy rap album.  Well, enter Handsome Naked, a comedy rap group.  It's officially dropping in a couple days.  But here it is.

I have other projects in the works, but will keep posting...every now and then!
Brad

Ivy and other new videos.

Yes it's been a while.

2011 was extremely busy for me: a new website (www.BradKempMusic.com), numerous world premier performances, transcription gigs, music directing, writing new musicals and much more. BKM3 is my new website. It has a cleaner look and I am really happy with the way it turned out.

I had several choral world premier performances, including concerts featuring Octarium

, Green Bay Southwest Chorale

, First Church Chancel Choir

, and Good Shepherd Lutheran Church Choir. I also had performances by Axiom Brass Quintet

and Dal Niente.

I had a mini musical performed at Columbia (A Wicked Woman).

Speaking of musicals, I currently have 4 in the works. The first is Soulmate?, which has been in the works for a while, but I now have a table reading scheduled and a possible production scheduled for the summer. HINT is on the table for a production by pH in the fall. pH productions is currently working up 2 new musical, both of which I will be writing music for. First is a musical adaptation of a movie, The Room. The last project I am working on is OrpHan: The Musical, which is a friend’s project, that I am joining her on, to write music.

In March of this year I was named the Head Musical director of pH Productions. pH is a comedy theatre company, based in Chicago. They specialize in Improv, Sketch, and Musical theatre. As their head musical director I play piano for an hour long, fully improvised musical every week. I also just finished music directing and playing piano for the Christmas show, The Santa S tories.

We are currently working on launching two new full- length musicals (The Room and OrpH an: The Musical). I am composing original music for both projects.

It is a really exciting time for pH Productions right now because we are celebrating out 10 year anniversary in 2012. We are also moving into our own theatre in the next month, thanks to a $20,000 grant from chase bank.

Please visit www.WhatIspH.com to see more info on the company.

Finally to get to the title of the post, I recently finished a new recording project. I recorded a short melody that I wrote 10 times. Then I auto-tuned it to create harmonies. Enjoy!

Brad

Choral Music

Choral music has been my life for the past couple of months. I have had four world premier performances in various locations. One performance was in Kansas City with the outstanding vocal group, Octarium. I have mentioned that in the past and hope to have a recording soon. Another performance was in my hometown of Green Bay, WI. The performance was by Green Bay Southwest High School's Chorale. They sang "Gray Steel Morning" an original composition with lyrics by my good friend Dan Lowry. The third group that premiered my compositions was the choir I sing with every week, The First United Methodist Church Chancel Choir. In the past two months they have performed two new pieces of mine. The first was a setting of "Agnus Dei" that I composed specifically for the choir. The second was a setting of "Psalm 130", which I also composed specifically for this choir. "Psalm 130" was performed on 4/10/2011 and I recently posed a recording of that performance for everyone to listen too and enjoy.

Here is the video:

Please let me know what you think by commenting and listening to the recording.

That is all for now.

-Brad

Soulmate?

I know I keep talking about this show, but it has been consuming almost all of my time outside of school. The script and score are done and now I'm going through making edits. I wrote a new song for it yesterday. I hope to have a demo of it up soon. Speaking of demos, the soulmate demo recording session is finally mixed. I have had a couple samples of songs from it up on my website for a while, but they are completely finished now. I wanted to post a recording of Alex singing "David's Message" since that was a song I posted a while ago with me singing. This way you can hear the before and after of the project.

Enjoy!

In other news I'm writing a mini-musical for my detective fiction class. I'm really excited about the concept because I've wanted to write more orchestral music (ie. Jekyll and Hyde, Frankenstein) for a long time.

When I get recordings of things I'll post them.

That's all for now,

check out the website for the new soulmate recordings soon!

-Brad

Octarium Competition

Hey there!

The newest news from me is that the mixes from the "Soulmate?" demo are almost done and I won a composition competition. You can hear a sample of some of the demos on my website ( www.bradkempmusic.com ). There is one on the main page and both of the samples are under the music tab, musical theatre section.

The other big news is that I won a composition competition. I was recently chosen as the Winner of the 2010 Octarium Composition Competition. The competition this year called for arrangements of pre-existing pieces. I did an arrangement of Claude Debussy's "La fille aux cheveux de lin". This piece is one of my favorite of all of Debussy's preludes for piano. Here is a video of the original piece:

The arrangement I did was for Octarium, an eight member choir. My piece is for soprano soloist and choir. Sometime in the next year there will be a performance of the piece in Kansas City by Octarium.

This is not the first competition I have ever won. In the spring of this year I won the 2010 Turner Award in Composition. My piece "numbers between brackets" for flute and cello won the competition. There is a sample of the recording on my website which can be seen here along with other samples of classical pieces I have written. Here is the video I posted of the entire piece:

That is all for now. Check back soon for more of the "Soulmate?" demos and thanks for reading!

Brad