Kimberly Akimbo National Tour

This was my first music-oriented interview, in the “orchestral composing/conducting” sense.

I think I've been fairly intimidated by that side of Broadway.

In high school, by virtue of so many of my friends & those I gravitated toward/meshed with having been in the school band, I used to joke that I was essentially a band kid who never joined the band.

But that's not entirely true.

Back in grade school, the band started with 5th graders. So, at the end of my 4th grade year, there was a big push to get us to sign up for the coming summer and school year.

Volunteers came in to the music classroom with an assortment of (sanitized) instrument mouthpieces and asked what instrument you wanted to play. “I don't” was not an answer they were willing to take, unless you tried it.

So you'd blow into each mouthpiece, one-by-one, following their direction, until you got something vaguely resembling a sound out of one of them. Once you did, regardless of how many tries it took or how inconsistent you were, they'd give you the hard sell for whatever instrument(s) corresponded to that mouthpiece.

I don't know if it's because I fell for the hard sell tactics or because my friends all joined the band—good thing they didn't jump off a bridge—but I ended up joining the band as a baritone horn.

The thing was slightly smaller than I was at the time and resembled a smaller tuba.

I was able to successfully make it make noise probably once every three or so tries.

Factor in my inability to remember which notes on the page were which, as well as the related finger positions, and I was not a good fit for that instrument or the band in general.

I lasted somewhere in the realm of 3 weeks of summer band sessions before quitting.

There do exist photos and videos of me outside, holding this thing that was seriously almost as big as I was, trying get it to make a sound (and only rarely succeeding). Apologies to the neighbors, but I completely understand why my parents strongly suggested I combine my need to practice with my need for fresh air.

So it's a world that, as a participant, I only very briefly dabbled in (to whatever extent you can say I even did that much).

As an audience member, I've long been fascinated by it. Being the resident band kid who never joined the band*, I went to many of their concerts, and I've, of course, been moved by the music in many theatrical productions.

I've mentioned before about my reaction to the Ashman/Menken song Part of Your World from The Little Mermaid, once I truly heard it.

In that song, among other things, Ariel sings of her desire to learn of this new world she's only observed by asking people questions about why and how things work.

That's how I look at these interviews.

I figure that my questions are also those of my audience, and I ask them so that we might all learn together about these “other worlds” that we may have observed, but otherwise know very little about.

With the launch of the Kimberly Akimbo National Tour, as well as the myriad of other productions he's worked on, Chris was a great choice for a first guest in this field.