Harman Patil (Editor)

Blast! (musical)

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Date opened
  
17 April 2001

Venue
  
Broadway Theatre

Director
  
James Mason

Blast! (musical) static1squarespacecomstatic551eb398e4b0b101cf7

Awards
  
Tony Award for Best Special Theatrical Event

Producing companies
  
Star of Indiana Drum and Bugle Corps, Cook Group

Nominations
  
Tony Award for Best Choreography

Choreographers
  
Jim Moore, Jonathan Vanderkolff, George Pinney

Blast! is a Broadway production created by James Mason for Cook Group Incorporated, the director and organization formerly operating the Star of Indiana Drum and Bugle Corps. It was the 2001 Winner of the Tony Award for "Best Special Theatrical Event" and also won the 2001 Emmy Award for "Best Choreography".

Contents

Blast!'s instrumentation is exclusively brass and percussion, a nod to the show's roots in the drum and bugle corps activity. Blast!'s performers use trumpets, flugelhorns, mellophones, baritone horns, tubas, trombones (including one on a unicycle during "Gee, Officer Krupke!"), french horns, and a full complement of percussion instruments including snare drums, tenor drums, bass drums, xylophones. vibraphones and marimbas, timpani, and other standard percussion equipment. In addition, Blast! adds instruments not normally found in drum corps, such as French horns, concert euphoniums, trombones and bass trombones, didgeridoos and synthesizers. Accompanying the wind and percussion is the Visual Ensemble (or VE for short), a group of dancers who manipulate a variety of props, similar to a color guard.

History

The Star of Indiana Drum and Bugle Corps, founded in 1984, began competition in the Drum Corps International circuit in 1985 and continued through the 1993 season. Highly successful, it won the 1991 World Championship, and was a respected Midwestern corps. After an historic showing in the 1993 season, the program left the DCI circuit to tour with the Canadian Brass, in a new program dubbed Brass Theater. On December 14, 1999, Blast! premiered at the London Apollo in Hammersmith, and arrived in the United States on August 23, 2000, at the Wang Center in Boston, Massachusetts. On April 17, 2001, Blast! opened on Broadway at The Broadway Theatre, and later that year commenced its first national tour starting September 7 in St. Louis, Missouri.

Following the success of the original production, Blast II Shockwave was developed and toured the United States in 2002-2003. This production added woodwind instruments. Shockwave has not been released on CD or DVD. Additionally, a second sequel, MIX:Music in Xtreme, debuted in 2006 and toured in Japan in 2008.

A shortened version of the show, called "The Power of BLAST!" played at the America Gardens Theatre at Epcot in Orlando, Florida for the summer of 2001, before moving to the Hyperion Theater in Disney California Adventure in Anaheim, California from November 22, 2001 until September 2, 2002.

Act One

Overture of color

  • "Boléro" – (Maurice Ravel)

    • Violet

  • "Villa Borghese" – (Ottorino Respighi) (Performed 1999-2000)
  • "Color Wheel" - (Jefferson Lee)
  • "Split Complimentaries" – (Josh Talbott)

    • Blue

  • "Everybody Loves the Blues" – (Maynard Ferguson/Nicholas Lane)
  • "Loss" – (Don Ellis)

    • Green

  • "Simple Gifts"/"Appalachian Spring" – (Aaron Copland)

    • Black

  • "Battery Battle" – (T. Hannum/Jefferson Lee)
  • "Medea" – (Samuel Barber)

    • Act Two

    Color Wheel

  • "Color Wheel Too" – (Jonathan Vanderkolff)

    • Yellow

  • "Gee, Officer Krupke!" (from West Side Story) – (Leonard Bernstein/Stephen Sondheim)
  • "Lemontechno" – (Jonathan Vanderkolff)

    • Orange

  • "Tangerinamadidge" – (B. Epperson/Jonathan Vanderkolff)
  • "Land of Make Believe" – (Chuck Mangione)
  • "Marimba Spiritual"/"Earth Beat" – (Minoru Miki)/(Michael Spiro)

    • Red

  • "Malagueña" – (Ernesto Lecuona) [1]

    • Recent editions of Blast! have omitted "Simple Gifts" and "Gee, Officer Krupke!", and moved "Tangerinamadidge" immediately before "Lemontechno".

    Act One

  • "Starburst" – (E. Finkel/Gene Krupa)
  • "Prelude, Fugue, and Riffs" – (Leonard Bernstein)
  • "First Circle" – (L. Mays/Pat Metheny)
  • "Blue Rondo à la Turk" – (Dave Brubeck)
  • "Guaguanco" – (Arturo Sandoval)
  • "God Bless the Child" – (Arthur Herzog Jr./Billie Holiday)
  • "Drum, Drum, Drum" – (Louis Prima/B. Dubinski/D. Delucia/Jefferson Lee)
  • "Adagio for Strings" – (Samuel Barber)
  • "Channel One Suite" – (W. Reddie)

    • Act Two

  • "Excerpts from Carmina Burana" – (Carl Orff)
  • "Good Vibrations" – (Brian Wilson/The Beach Boys)
  • "Star Children" – (Don Ellis)
  • "Uninvited" – (Alanis Morissette)
  • "Turkish Bath" – (Don Ellis)
  • "Bohemian Rhapsody" – (Freddie Mercury)
  • "Lullaby for Nancy Carol" – (Chuck Mangione)
  • "Swing, Swing, Swing" – (John Williams)

    • MIX: Music in Xtreme

    Act One

  • "Ourverture" - (V. Corradi)
  • "Shapes" - (Jefferson Lee)
  • "Blue Rondo à la Turk" - (David Brubeck)
  • "The Lady from 29 Palms" - (Allie Wrubel/Frank Sinatra)
  • "Night on Bald Mountain" - (Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, Modest Mussorgsky)
  • "Tribal Towers" - (Jefferson Lee)
  • "Malaga" - (B. Holman)

    • Act Two

  • "o2" - (Jonathan Vanderkolff)
  • "Didgeritoo" - (James Mason, Jefferson Lee, Jonathan Vanderkolff)
  • "Star Children" - (Don Ellis)
  • "Uninvited" - (Alanis Morissette)
  • "Turkish Re-Mix" - (Jonathan Vanderkolff, Jefferson Lee)
  • "Turkish Bath" - (Don Ellis)
  • "Open Wide" - (Don Ellis)
  • "Lullaby for Nancy Carol" - (Chuck Mangione)
  • "Encore" - (Jefferson Lee)

    • The Power of BLAST!

    Epcot version

  • "Boléro" – (Maurice Ravel)
  • "Color Wheel" - (Jefferson Lee)
  • "Battery Battle" – (T. Hannum/Jefferson Lee)
  • "Land of Make Believe" – (Chuck Mangione)
  • "Malagueña" – (Ernesto Lecuona)

    • Disney California Adventure version

  • "Boléro" – (Maurice Ravel)
  • "Battery Battle" – (T. Hannum/Jefferson Lee)
  • "Lemontechno" – (Jonathan Vanderkolff)
  • "Land of Make Believe" – (Chuck Mangione)
  • "Malagueña" – (Ernesto Lecuona)[2]

    • References

    Blast! (musical) Wikipedia
    (Text) CC BY-SA


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