Album Notes

“If music be the food of love – play on!” declares the delirious Duke Orsino in William Shakespeare’s classic comedy "Twelfth Night." But little could Shakespeare know that this beloved and much quoted line would inspire an after-school program combining music education, songwriting, recording, and wage paying jobs for Los Angeles youth.

Shakespeare Festival/LA is expanding its nationally recognized, award-winning Will Power to Youth, a model youth development program which, likewise, creates theater arts based jobs for economically disadvantaged youth. Focusing on music, songwriting, music production, sound design, acting, spoken word, and poetry, Shakespeare Festival/LA broadens the scale and scope of its youth arts services and augmenting Will Power to Youth with Play On.

Will Power to Youth pays young people to learn how to write, research, design, create and perform their own unique adaptations of Shakespeare’s plays. Play On hires teens to study Shakespeare’s sonnets and songs to learn structure and rhythm. The teens then conduct comparisons between Shakespeare and contemporary writers such as Charles Bukowski, Martin Luther King, Jr., Saul Williams and a host of contemporary Los Angeles poets. In songwriting they study the work of The Beatles, U2, Sheryl Crow, Alanis Morissette, The Killers and Alicia Keys for song structure, melody, rhythm, and production.

Participants select their ‘major’ and ‘minor’ focuses from from subjects such as songwriting, poetry, emceeing, sound design, acting, L.A. Poets, and an introduction to the music business.