Daron Hagen

Music Text
Book and Lyrics by Daron Hagen

Scoring
solo voices: S, T, Bar; Onstage / Offstage Piano or jazz trio

Publisher:
Peermusic Classical (Burning Sled Music)

Territory
This work is available from Peermusic Classical for the world.

World Premiere
spring 2014 Broadway Theater Center, Milwaukee, WI
Daron Hagen, director
Music Director: Robert Frankenberry
Company: Skylight Music Theater

Roles
Robbie (T)
Rose (S)
Roger (Bar)

Time and Place
Robbie's bachelor apartment on New York City's Upper West Side sometime during the 1990s.

Synopsis
Three middle-aged Juilliard grads rehearse numbers from the revival of a musical revue called I Hear America Singing prior to a backers’ audition. Is it a dream, a mid-life crisis, a reunion, or an intervention? Love, the unreliability of memory, and personal reinvention intertwine as they swap old and new songs -- from pop song to art song, Victorian parlor tune to operatic aria, agitprop to jingle -- compulsively recontextualized by Robbie, a becalmed middle aged commercial composer striving to regain his self-confidence and sense of identity by obsessively revising the show that launched his career on Broadway twenty years earlier.

Production Stills
Here

Links
Score

Selected Press
"Hagen has composed a message that ‘love abides,’ whether in love of art, country, music, personal relationships or self. In this inventive production that defies conventional definitions, each of the 18 original musical numbers fuses musical genres with sincere inspiration that uncovers the buried meanings to the word love." -- Peggy Sue Dunegin, Broadway World

“The words and music are both clever and compelling. The harmonies are rare and exciting. This is a work where you have to pay attention. I Hear America Singing is the kind of impressive, unique and fascinating production that deserves a full house every night.” — Dave Begel, OnWisconsin.com