I grew up in the heart of the country in Eastern Kentucky where the arts are neglected. I did “110 in the Shade,” which is (Tom) Jones and (Harvey) Smith, which is pretty special musical theater. But, is that the brand you want? Sometimes people might think of that as a Rodgers and Hammerstein-type performer. So “Once” has given you the brand of a Tony Award-winning musical theater guy. So now I’m afforded the opportunity to play these cabaret houses across the country and people come out because I’m a musical theater performer and I get to mix the two genres. It wasn’t until “One” – and this is the great thing about that show - I’ve become known as a guy who plays guitar and sings. But the reality is, I don’t really have a name, so nobody’s going to come and see you. I used to play little coffee houses in New York. Everything in that song I can relate to.Īre concerts a side project or is this becoming a career emphasis?įor me, it’s a passion, not a career. So what I’m trying to do is pay tribute as well as I can and try to connect to it in ways I can relate to. It’s such an optimistic line, but it’s filled with an immense sense of dread. That lyric, “Take that sinking boat and point it home, we still got time,” it’s a contradiction. It’s representative of love and loss and struggle and that thing we all go through. But it connects with you, for some reason. What Glen did when he wrote that song, he captured an essence of a feeling with a very simple melody – maybe three or four chords. Was it challenging to make it your own after Glen Hansard’s Academy Award-winning version? “Falling Slowly” is such a penetrating song in the film. But, once I met those guys, I knew it was in the best of hands. My biggest thing was, I didn’t want to be the guy that was involved in destroying one of my favorite things on Earth. It’s real and raw and honest (and) it’s sometimes hard, I feel, to capture that on stage, especially in the current landscape where everything is bright, big, wild and quick.
PURE HEARTS KAZEE MOVIE
What made you think the story wouldn’t work on stage? The movie is a simple story and it doesn’t have a lot of different scenes. It’s one of those stories you hear that is just absolute luck. Our director has gone on to be nominated for a Tony for directing “Cherry Orchard” this year. I don’t toss the word genius around because I think it’s way overused, but I truly believe that these people – the director, the choreographer, the playwright, the guy who did our arrangements – are just geniuses and I think it’s showed. Then they couldn’t find anyone and they came back a day later and said, “Could you come and just do the workshop and there will be no further commitment? We basically just need a body that can sing and play guitar.” I was like, “Ok, sure.” And in the first 10 minutes I knew I had landed in something really special. At the time, I wanted to focus on television, film and music, and they called and said, “Would you be interested in coming to New York and doing this workshop?” That movie was one of my favorite movies – still is – and I thought it sounded like a terrible idea. I was living in Los Angeles and they had hired an actor to do the first workshop of the show, and he had to pull out because he got a film. Then I play songs from “Once,” which a lot of people come out to hear. Each song has a little bit of an introduction and I talk about why I’m playing it. It reminds me of those old VH1 Storytellers. I share some songs that shaped my journey and some songs that I’ve written. Will this be a pure concert or will you present a thematic thread like a cabaret show? He elaborated in a recent telephone interview.
Kazee, 38, won his honors as the lead actor in the 2012 stage adaptation of “Once.” He’s also starred in such Broadway hits as “Spamalot” and “110 in the Shade,” and the Pulitzer Prize-winning “The Subject Was Roses” at the Kennedy Center in Washington D.C.īut, in this “once only” run-out from his home in Los Angeles, Kazee will mix songs from his stage career, his own compositions and covers of what he calls “very obscure” singer-songwriter tunes. The Copa Palm Springs will present a Tony and Grammy Award-winning musical theater star Saturday in Steve Kazee.
0 kommentar(er)
