SOUNDTRACK. COME FROM AWAY: Tiny Desk Concert #890 (September 11, 2019).
When I first heard about story of Come From Away, I was intrigued. Could you make a musical–a musical–about the events of September 11, 2001?
At the end of this performance, the narrator says that this is really a story about September 12, 2001. And that is true. And the story is powerful and fascinating and really really interesting. And yes, the music is fantastic.
So is this story about the attacks? No. The story is set
In the aftermath of the Sep. 11 attacks, 38 planes carrying thousands of passengers were grounded in remote Gander, Newfoundland in Canada for five days. The creators of Come From Away traveled to Gander 10 years later and collected the tales that make up the musical.
In Gander there’s an expression that, if you’re visiting, you’ve “come from away.” The people of Gander took in the come-from-aways, and their stories have resonated with audiences worldwide. The Broadway cast recently celebrated 1,000 performances and there are simultaneous productions running in London, Toronto, Melbourne and a national tour.
I listened to the soundtrack when it was streaming on NPR. I was able to get through about half of it–the songs were great and the kindness shown was incredible. I have yet to hear the end and I sort of imagine I might try to see the performance someday. So for now, I’ll just enjoy these excerpts.
Sixteen performers from the Broadway production of Come From Away recently climbed out of a chartered bus in front of NPR and crammed behind Bob Boilen’s desk. They condensed their nearly two-hour show about the days following 9/11 into a relatively tiny 17 minutes. By the end of the diminutive set, there were more than a few tears shed.
In the show, the songs have full orchestration. But here, the songs are played with great Irish instrumentation: keys, accordion (Chris Ranney); fiddle, fiddle in Gb; (Caitlin Warbelow); high whistles, low whistles, flute (Ben Power); bodhran, cajon (Romano DiNillo) and acoustic guitar (Alec Berlin:)
I don’t know who the lead vocalists are. But two women take the majority of the songs. And one of the men narrates the truncated version of the story. The vocalists here include:
Petrina Bromley; Holly Ann Butler; Geno Carr; De’Lon Grant; Joel Hatch; Chad Kimball; Kevin McAllister; Happy McPartlin; Julie Reiber; Astrid Van Wieren and Jim Walton.
They sing five tracks:
“28 Hours/Wherever We Are” sets the stage–people were on the planes for 28 hours–just imagine that.
“I Am Here” is wonderful. The way the singer has to interrupt herself as if she were on a phone call–it’s a great performance.
“Me and the Sky” is based on an interview with Beverly Bass the first female pilot for American Airlines. She was flying from Dallas to Paris when she was grounded. It’s an amazingly personal story–I’ll bet she loves it.
“Something’s Missing” is a song I hadn’t heard before. It’s amazingly powerful–the reactions of people who returned to New York and New Jersey to see what they didn’t know anything about–and to see what’s left. The most incredible line:
I go down to Ground Zero which… its like the end of the world. It’s literally still burning. My dad asks were you okay when you were stranded? How do I tell him I wasn’t just okay. I was so much better.
They end with the uplifting “Finale.”
As one of the actors explains, “The story we tell is not a 9/11 story, it’s a 9/12 story. It’s a story about the power of kindness in response to a terrible event, and how we can each live, leading with kindness.”
This is a great tribute to not only Gander, but also to the victims of the attacks.
[READ: June 20, 2019] The War Bride’s Scrapbook
Seven years ago, Caroline Preston created The Scrapbook of Frankie Pratt.
I summarized it:
it’s a biography of a lady named Frankie Pratt from the ten or so years after she gets out of high school. She went to high school in Cornish, New Hampshire in the early 1920s; that’s when this scrapbook starts. Over the decade, Frankie goes to college, gets a job in New York City, travels to Paris and then returns home. That is the basic plot, but that simple summary does a grave, grave injustice to this book.
For Preston has created a wondrous scrapbook. Each page has several images of vintage cutouts which not only accentuate the scene, they often move the action along. It feels like a genuine scrapbook of a young romantic girl in the 1920s.
For this book, take that premise and move it forward twenty years.
This is the scrapbook of a woman, Lila Jerome, who was a bit of a wallflower, who then married a soldier just before he went off to World War II. The book is structured in four parts: (more…)
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