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NAVIGATION

HeARTbeats: Music Department Staged Show

This week, NMSA’s Music Department will bring
two timeless stories to life on stage!  

 

One of NMSA’s most unique annual productions is coming your way this weekend!

The Music Department’s Staged Show brings classic musical theater works to life in a medley of selections from longer theatrical productions. This year, NMSA will be presenting three abridged musicals: Cinderella, by Richard Rogers and Oscar Hammerstein, a fairytale known and loved by everyone followed by two musicals by Adam Guettal, Richard Roger’s grandson: The Light in the Piazza, a unique Italian romance set in the 1950s and Floyd Collins, a true 1920’s story of a Kentucky family’s devotion to save a courageous cave explorer. A gorgeous array of genres will be featured in the show – Floyd Collins, for example, weaves together bluegrass, classical, and more!

Vocal instructor Kirsten Lear, who is also the driving force behind the staging and arrangement of the pieces performed, pays close attention to the strengths and potential of NMSA’s singers in which musicals to select. “I choose a show based on helping juniors and seniors taking that next big step, coming into themselves emotionally, and bringing them up to a level of performance,” she says. The way these stories weave together, maintain their relevance through the years, and challenge students both in technicality and personal expression are all factors Ms. Lear considers when crafting the show.

“Vocalists are performers – we’re actors,” she says. “In this show the students learn how to trust opening your heart up in front of others. In order to understand [the characters], you find places inside yourself you never knew you had.”

Beyond helping NMSA’s vocalists further refine their skills in singing, a show like this emphasizes developing skills in movement, collaboration, and stage work. Ms. Lear has been heartened by the students’ emotional response and dedication to the music, especially in a show that allow students to weave both music and acting together. “Eighty percent of the students I teach want to go into musical theater,” she says, “but don’t really know what it takes. I get to touch on all those thing.” In the performing arts, she continues, “you need to be so multi-dimensional. Staging, movement… people don’t understand how hard that is!”

See our students in this fabulous show this Friday (3/18) and Saturday (3/19) at the Scottish Rite Temple, 7pm! www.nmschoolforthearts.org/tickets

NMSA is proud to dedicate Saturday’s Staged Show performance in memory of Greg Grissom, and is thrilled that the Greg Grissom Scholarship fund has generated nearly $18,000 and is giving aspiring young singers access to the unique dual-track-mastery arts and rigorous academic education that NMSA offers. It provides support to talented youth in New Mexico for whom vocal music, particularly, has early on become a core aspect of their identity and dreams.