Let your Christmas cheer last you through the year

It's that time of year again! It's nice to get out and experience all the holiday cheer around Denver, but let's not forget to stop and thank the people that make the sights and sounds that fill the air in our malls and community spaces possible this time of year.

Our PAP performers get an extra holiday boost from local businesses looking for everything from Dickens quartets to string quartets. Our performers see a real boost this time of year and we enjoy teaming up with colleagues over at accompanist.com for all sorts of different performing arts projects.

Christmas is a time for giving. The spirit of Christmas is in the 'togetherness' we share with each other, it's in the thought to which you put into thinking about others, where we forgive, take stock of what's important and become 'better' versions of ourselves.

Indoor Vax or Mask mandates in Denver

On Tuesday, the City of Denver announced an indoor mask mandate for most businesses and venues. It's a public health order and it will go into effect on Wednesday, November 24th, 2021 and will stay in effect until Jan. 2, 2022. “Denver’s vaccination rate is stellar, we’re just at under 70%,” said Denver Mayor Michael Hancock. 

PAP personnel getting vaccinated at CU Health

Currently all Performing Arts Project personnel are 100% vaccinated. “Our people understand why getting vaccinated is important.” said April Alsup. "Our teams have been meeting remotely over the last year, but it's impossible to be completely isolated in our business. At PAP, we take our health and the health of others very seriously." 💉

Glow at the Gardens

Performing art projects are all over Denver this time of year and taking a walk through the spooky, illuminated landscape at the Denver Botanic Gardens all dressed up for Halloween has become an annual tradition for PAP. The performing artists brought life to the enchanting autumnal event with monsters, dancing skeletons, ghosts, coffin brides and brew mistress witches. It's always a treat to see former Performing Arts Project artists at events like this!

The gardens event team always does a good job with this sort of thing. They use local talent from organizations like accompanist.com and real pumpkins harvested from Colorado farms. Pumpkin artists from all over the state create sculptures and dense displays of jack-o-lanterns, with grins and grimaces fit for the season. It's so much fun, weather permitting of course.

Live theatre update for Denver

The last few years have been really tough on the entertainment industry; fortunately, venues around Denver are starting to open up again so let's all take a deep breath and hope it stays that way. If you are interested in a Sunday matinee, Tenderly is playing at the Mizel Arts and Culture Center (MACC) in the Denver Jewish Community Center throughout August. The theater had a facelift a few years back and it's footprint is perfect for the Denver audience.

Beki Pineda and April Alsup
at the Mizel Arts and Culture Center

It's a sentimental Musical about the life of Rosemary Clooney that features all sorts of songs from the 40's and 50's. It was a real learning experience and brought back all sorts of childhood memories of the music of that time. It's so nice to get out and see live theatre again!

Shoutout Colorado features April Alsup

Here's an interview with one of our clients about her experiences composing music theatre and there's plenty of touching anecdotes about working in the Performing Arts too. April Alsup was selected by the Los Angeles based Voyage Group to discuss the inspiration behind composing music theater works. April used our Crossroads facility back in 2014 for a workshop performance of WYSIWYG (What you see is what you get) the Musical which went on to win one of New York City's most prestigious music theatre awards. To read the interview and see all the pictures select the link below.

Read the Interview at:

https://shoutoutcolorado.com/meet-april-alsup-composer-of-musical-theatre/

Colorado opens entertainment venues to the public

It sure has been a tough couple of years for theaters across the country; fortunately, things are starting to comeback now in Colorado. The Denver Center for the Performing Arts, The Arvada Center and Central City Opera have all announced plans for 2021 and 2022. It's refreshing to see audition notices being posted on all the social networks and the buzz of new shows hitting our Colorado stages. During the pandemic there was a lot of online discussions about the state of theater in Colorado. It's nice to get back to entertaining again; after all, that's really what it's all about. It'll be nice to get out and see our local talent back on stage developing their skills. Be sure to check out the latest events at all the local theaters.

The folks at the Performing Arts Project have been hard at work too! Shows like WYSIWYG have already received a lot of national attention, but over the pandemic the team was able to create a brand new musical arrangement for upcoming shows with larger casts. We're even making plans to take a new show to the Edinburgh festival in 2022. So please stay tuned for any audition announcements.

Standing with our friends in Boulder Colorado

We are heart broken at the recent mass shooting in Boulder, Colorado and the Performing Arts Project sends our condolences to the family and friends of all the victims that were tragically taken from us last week. We stand in solidarity with our colleagues in the Boulder arts community and hope that we can all work together to build a stronger world that overcomes hate, misogyny and racism.

#BoulderStrong

Online collaboration software streamlines artistic workflow

Artistic workflow has been changing quite dramatically over the last year. Making audio tracks for new Music Theatre works used to be a bit of an after thought, but since we are all collaborating remotely these days it's becoming more and more part of our processes. It doesn't seem that long ago that we'd all gather around the piano with sheet music in hand for our early rehearsals. Nobody was focused on producing audio recordings, but now it's all done online (digitally) and we can just save the parts for mastering at a later date.

Unfortunately, online latency issues between computers really prohibits audio from multiple sources in real-time So we use small in-home studios with audio software to record and deliver our tracks remotely. This too can be a bit troublesome, since everyone seems to use a different DAW and organizing all the files for your project is not for the faint of heart.

WYSIWYG Workflow Schematic

Over the last several months, the Performing Arts Project has been using the online collaboration software known as Soundtrap. The cloud-based application allows our development teams to work on their scores while the actors add their vocal parts in a cloud-based DAW. Once the parts are approved by the producer the audio mastering team creates the master tracks for the show.

Soundtrap has built-in notifications that can notify each participant when the project has been updated. This sort of functionality has been utilized by project managers in business for quite some time and is now being used to streamline the unique requirements found in an artist's creative workflow.

Get your Musical's soundtrack on Spotify

Music theater is ephemeral by nature and many of the songs we hear coming from our stages never make it to commercial streaming services like Spotify, Apple, Amazon or Google. Major record labels just aren't that interested in new musical theatre works and some artists are turning to an "Indie" label as a result. It's relatively simple to manage the song distribution for a single artist or group and the good news is that most streaming services will pay you royalties directly for each time someone plays your music.

April Alsup Records
FOR THE BEST

First you'll need to apply for a label ID or GTIN so your brand can be uniquely identified online. The cost is relatively small, but many of today's music streaming services have lots of independent labels and GS1 US provides you with a W-9 for any end of year tax liabilities. Let us know if you have any questions, we'd be happy to help.