AVAILABLE FOR DOWNLOAD at the i-TUNES MUSIC STORE.
NOW FOR THE FIRST TIME, recordings of all songs (all, that is, but the ever-popular "PUKE", which requires special attention) from the award-winning show THE BLUE FLOWER, with music and lyrics by JIM BAUER.
"I'M STRUCK that a show with The Blue Flower's originality has been written with such craft. I love its unflinching nature. It has so much to say . . . it's bursting. Every word is unexpected." -- MARK HOLLMANN (music, URINETOWN)
"THE MELODIES of Tori Amos, Sweeney Todd and southern rock meet a country/classical chamber band. Throw in some accordions and Dada lyrics and you have the ultimate postmodern sound." -- FRANK OTERI, editor, newmusicbox.com
"BRIMMING with the kind of feeling and inventiveness that musicals can never have enough of." -- talkinbroadway.com
"HAUNTING, BEAUTIFUL writing in both the narration and lyrics. We are living in a period of history now just like the characters in this play. They didn't know where they were going either." -- GREG KOTIS (book/lyrics URINETOWN)
"I LOVE THIS, just wild about it. It's not going to be a normal show, no matter what you do, and that's great. If anyone tells you to 'normalize' this, just run . . . and run fast." -- STUART ROSS (writer, RADIANT BABY)
"THEATER WITH A CAPITAL 'T' . . . brave, strong, unexpected and exhilarating . . . as delightful as it is moving, as smart as it is beautiful." -- JULIA JONAS, offoffline.com
Recipients of a 2004 Jonathan Larson Performing Arts Foundation award, the husband/wife team of musician Jim Bauer and visual artist Ruth Bauer created THE BLUE FLOWER through a unique collaboration as a "four-dimensional stage collage", their imaginations lit by the fat and unhappy Belle Epoque, the birth of Dada in 1916, and the live os artists before, during and after The Great War.
With main characters based loosely on the historical figures MAX BECKMANN, FRANZ MARC, HANNAH HOECH, and MARIE CURIE, THE BLUE FLOWER is a fictional story about Max, a famous German artist who dies alone in New York City's Central Park in 1955. The show is a tragic and playful Dada-inspired romp through closely-held memories unleashed at the moment of Max's death, centering on three friends and lovers he lost and the apparitions of events that overwhelmed their lives during World War I and the restless postwar years of the Weimar Republic in Germany. The story unfolds through the pages of a Fairytale book of collages Max has been working on for years, and that come to live on stage with the help of projected films and seven very physical singer/actors.
The show has been in development in New York City, giving workshop and showcase presentations at The Public Theater's "NEW WORK NOW FESTIVAL", The HERE Arts Center's Artists Residency Program, The ASCAP Foundation's Musical Theatre Workshop under the direction of academy and grammy-award winning composer & lyricist Stephen Schwartz, The NEW NOISES FESTIVAL at The Perry-Mansfield School for the Performing Arts in Steamboat Springs, CO, and the 2004 New York Musical Theatre Festival.
VIDEO TRAILER: See a 5-minute video trailer for the show on the Photos/Video page of the Blue Flower website (link on this page)
MUSICIANS ON THIS RECORDING:
vocals: JIM BAUER, MEGHAN McGEARY, BEN SCHRADER, JEN CHAPIN, ALICE MOORE (see individual song credits on the Weimarband/Blue Flower website)
"Wild Horse Dancing", "Eiffel Tower", "Not A Flaw", "Dark Party", "Slide Through Your Hands" and "Pro Patria Mori" performed by:
THE WEIMARBAND (piano & guitar JIM BAUER, pedal steel guitar JOHN WIDGREN, bassoon MARTIN KUUSKMANN, cello ANN KIM, piano & accordion MARK RUBINSTEIN, bass STEPHAN CRUMP, drums PATRICK CARMICHAEL, percussion DAVID ROZENBLATT
all other songs: guitar, midi instruments and midi percussion JIM BAUER; pedal steel TOM CAMP (except for "Fancy This" and "No Place But Up", pedal steel JOHN WIDGREN)
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