This music was composed for the ISOMATA / Idyllwild Arts Theater Department

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In the fall of 1989 when I first joined the faculty of ISOMATA / Idyllwild Arts, I immediately looked for compositional opportunities — which I found in the Theater Department’s production of Shakespeare's Twelfth Night.

 

I approached the Director and boldly volunteered my services to create original music for the production. And, he said yes!

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The result was some of my favorite music that I have composed; certainly not  avant garde, but well crafted and perfectly suited to its task as incidental music to Shakespeare’s comedy.

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I became very involved in the production, attending all rehearsals from the very beginning. In the process I learned a lot about Shakespeare and how his plays work. The director, Marc Weishaus, was himself a Shakespearean actor, and watching him work with the actors inspired me to write music which sounded appropriate for the Elizabethan period, yet somehow modern and fresh. The score is vivid, vivacious , and full of pathos, whimsy and delight. In addition to the incidental music, comprising an overture, entr'acte, and exit music, there are short transitional segments, or "cues", as well as the songs:  my original musical settings to Shakespeare's lyrics.