Show: West Side Story

MYTS are doing the classic show West Side Story from 9th July to Saturday 12th. These talented kids won a NODA for best overall show and best youth show for Children of Eden a couple of years back, and have shown their great versatility on stage and in concert. It’s the hardest piano part I’ve had to learn in a while!

Show: How To Succeed In Business

From 8th April I’ll be playing Piano for How To Succeed In Business Without Really Trying, at the Stafford Gatehouse for Stafford Operatic. 

Show: The Sound of Music

Stoke Youth are doing the classic musical from 25th March to 29th. This has been an epic task - working with the MD, Matt Davis, to reduce the large orchestration down for keys. Strings are on K3, Woodwinds on K2, and there is a Guitar / Harp pad already for K1.

One of the major things about this project has been my use of the MIDI Scripting plugin in MainStage. This enables you to write JavaScript to modify MIDI events. In my case I’m using this to split a chord across several instruments in a Garritan instrument, to give a lovely, authentic woodwind sound rather than some crappy synth “woodwind mix” type patch.

I’ve created a couple of scripts, freely available at https://github.com/rogerfoxcroft/logic-midi-scripts