A concert to celebrate the Chamber Musical Project took place on Monday 4th October at 7:30pm at the Garrick Theatre in the West End.
Audiences joined the selected fifteen writing teams from across the UK to hear an array of new songs from the chamber musicals that they are writing. This concert celebration of the Aria-ALP Chamber Musical Project will give audiences a chance to hear extracts from all of the longlisted shows and get to know a new generation of musical theatre artists. The writers will be joined by some of the West End’s biggest stars, new faces and a house band to share an evening of unexpected, exhilarating and extraordinary new musical theatre.
The two newly commissioned shows which have been selected as the winners by the Aria ALP Chamber Musical Project for further development, mentorship and financial support are:
EARTHA, EDDIE, AND THE UPSIDE-DOWN TREE
by Leo Munby & Annabel Mutale Reed.
A contemporary fairy tale about wishing for love in a world of missed connections.
AND
ECHOES
by Freya Smith & Jack Williams
A new musical about a queer relationship told from two perspectives, in two parts. Agnes and Bea meet unexpectedly and become entangled in a web of lies and deception, while falling in love. Two complex, flawed and relatable young women explore themselves and each other in this new piece which examines themes including sexuality, class and the unreliability of memory.
The concert will also include work from the writers Christina Bloom (Detached), Cordelia O’Driscoll (Bitter/Sweet), Emelie Odukwe and Lily Vincent-Frankland (At The Centre), Guy Woolf and Isla Van Tricht (How To Save The World), Tommy Antonio and Robert Casey (Harder Baby), Hilmi Jaidin (Clickbait), Jen Green and Caroline Wigmore (Elizabeth Holmes: How to bleed dry in Silicon Valley), Michelle Payne & Craig Webb (Enthusiastically, Yes!), Natalie Pound, Sam Young and Sam Hoppen (Thanks I’m Cured), Jonathan O’Neill and Isaac Savage (Letting Go), Poppy Burton-Morgan and Robin Simões da Silva (Treehouse), Sarah-Louise Young, Richard Link and Paul Chronnell (Escape Room) and Eden Tredwell (Open Mic 1803).
The commissioning fund was set up as a response to the lack of established British chamber musicals within mainstream publishing and licensing houses and would like to help support UK-based writers in creating content which in the long term could fill these gaps.
Both companies are hugely committed to new musical theatre, evidenced by Aria’s FROM PAGE TO STAGE festival and full-time literary department, and Lenson’s regular SIGNAL concerts. There were over 200 entries for this opportunity with each writing team submitting a pitch and a sample of previous work.