Call Answered: Georgia Stitt Interview: My Lifelong Love
Jan 28, 2012
I am so excited to finally spotlight Composer/Lyricist Georgia Stitt, whom I first came to know in 2007 with the release of her album, This Ordinary Thursday: The Songs Of Georgia Stitt.
Now, Georgia has released her newest album, My Lifelong Love.
In this interview, Georgia answered my call to share:
- Her inspirations
- What she hopes listeners will come away with after hearing My Lifelong Love
- What she gets from working on an album that she doesn't get from musical theatre
- Best advice she's received
- So much more
Connect with Georgia: Website, Facebook
My Lifelong Love is a collection of songs about love in its many incarnations: first love, lost love, love of music, love of children, and ultimately, love of self. Deeply personal and written from a distinctly female point of view, Georgia’s music draws from classical, pop, gospel and musical theatre influences. With lush orchestrations by Don Sebesky, Jason Robert Brown, Sam Davis and Georgia herself, each of these songs illuminates an emotional truth with thrilling and sensitive musical storytelling.
In addition to the lyrics by traditional musical theatre writers like Marcy Heisler and Bil Wright, My Lifelong Love also features Georgia’s settings of poetry by Dorothy Parker, Derek Walcott, Alicia Partnoy and the Bard himself, William Shakespeare. Music by Sam Davis and David Kirshenbaum is also showcased, with lyrics by Georgia.
My Lifelong Love features thirteen of Georgia Stitt’s original songs performed by some of the entertainment industry’s most exciting singers, including Jesse Tyler Ferguson (TV’s Modern Family, The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee), Anika Noni Rose (The Princess and the Frog, Dreamgirls, TV’s The Good Wife), Brian d’Arcy James (TV’s Smash, Shrek, Titanic), Susan Egan (Beauty And The Beast, Thoroughly Modern Millie), Shoshana Bean (Wicked, Hairspray), Heidi Blickenstaff ([title of show], The Addams Family), Christopher Jackson (In The Heights, TV’s The Electric Company), jazz duo Jessica Molaskey and John Pizzarelli, Kate Baldwin (Finian’s Rainbow) and Michael McElroy (Rent, Broadway Inspirational Voices).
Georgia Stitt
Photo Credit: Maria Rosenfeld
1. Who or what inspired you to become a composer/lyricist? My very earliest inspirations were classical composers. I was a piano student before I was anything else, and I loved playing Bach, learning to understand how those notes made sense in patterns and chords and structure (I told my mom that when I grew up I wanted to be Beethoven... or Scott Joplin).
I studied music composition formally for the first time at a summer music camp when I was in high school, and I had been writing poetry in my journal since I was a teenager. In college, I started setting other people's poetry to music, but it really wasn't until graduate school that I began to entertain the idea that I could do it all by myself.
Writing music started out as a hobby, a thing I was good at, but over time the other "things I was good at" fell away and this one kept getting more and more important. Now, I find I am inspired by anything that is good. I see a great play and I want to come home and write. I read a great book and I want to write. I hear an amazing singer and I want to write.
I want to create something magnificent that moves people the way I have just been moved.
2. If you could work alongside anyone, who would you choose? There are many people I really admire in our business. I want everyone I work with to be smart and creative and brave. I don't sit around with a list of people I'm dying to work with, because I believe if you want something bad enough you go and figure out how to get it.
But, before I die? Oh, Audra McDonald. Julie Andrews. Barry Manilow. (Not on the same project. Can you imagine??)
3. What made you want to write an album about love? I didn't set out to write an album about love. I started out with about 30 songs -- some more pop, some more arty -- and the first task was figuring out which ones belonged on the album and which ones didn't. I wanted the album to be balanced -- not too heavy on male voices or female voices and not too many string quartets and not too many groove songs and not too many ballads. I wanted the experience of the whole album to be like a great meal with many different courses, each a refreshing change from the one before. Once I culled my selections down to 13 songs, I thought, "Now: what have we got here?" And all of those songs were about love.
4. What do you hope listeners come away with after hearing My Lifelong Love? From my point of view, the central idea of the album is in the title song -- what you think you're going to be and what you actually become are not the same thing. And along the way you love and you lose love and then you find yourself again. That seems to be the story of this album.
5. How did you decide which artists you wanted to sing on My Lifelong Love? The trick for me is matching song with singer. Honestly, if Jesse Tyler Ferguson had not been available I probably would have had a woman sing "My Lifelong Love." (Lauren Kennedy recorded it first on her album Here and Now). Jesse sang the song in a concert of mine in LA a few years ago and I loved his take so much I wanted to preserve it.
And if Heidi Blickenstaff had not been available I probably wouldn't have included "Not Yet" on the album, because that song is from my show MOSAIC and she created the role. I have always wanted Brian d'Arcy James to sing my material and I knew "Sonnet 29" would soar in the sweet spot of his voice. It's not that nobody else can ever sing the songs, but at least for their first incarnation, the one that I arrange and produce and put my seal of approval all over, I feel like there's an essence of the singer (fragile, silly, earthy, vulnerable, wise) that has to match the essence of the song.
So I had my lists, and I just reached out to my very favorite singers asked them. It's a dream cast, as was This Ordinary Thursday, as was Alphabet City Cycle. I love my friends. Everything is so much better when you get to work with your friends.
6. In addition to the songs you've written for My Lifelong Love, what made you want to set some poems to music? How did you decide which poets and poems you wanted to use? I read poetry all the time. I'm constantly on the lookout for words that might blossom when set to music. I underline passages in books, memorize Biblical verses, pull quotes out of magazines and put them in my file cabinet -- ideas, phrases, sources for future songs or even future musicals. When it comes to poetry, I find there's either music in my head while I'm reading or there's not. I can't force it. If the idea of music can help to illuminate the meaning of the poem, or at least my interpretation of the meaning of the poem, then I give it a shot. And if the music gets in the way of the meaning, then it's no good. Music and text and singer all have to be telling the same story or there's no point in doing it.
Georgia Stitt performing, Photo Credit: Maia Rosenfeld
7. What do you get from working on your recordings as opposed to a musical theatre piece? Oh, so many things. First of all, there's the immediacy. It took me a year to make my album. Most of my shows are more than five years into development. I love them. I love working on them and I don't even mind the rewrites -- the many, many rewrites. But shows are never finished, not until they've run on Broadway and had their National Tour and gotten published and even then, sometimes, they're not done.
My album was done the second I sent it off to be mastered. And then there's control. With the album, I made all the decisions. On every show I have collaborators, directors, designers, producers, music directors. Lots of cooks in those kitchens, and they all have opinions.
And finally, on the album, the music comes first. The goal for a recording is to capture a perfect performance, and you only have to do it once. Those goals are completely different with a show. In a show, the music is there in support of the story, and it's competing with things like lights and lyrics and (hopefully) laughs. It's living and breathing; it changes from night to night.
I have been really lucky to have opportunities to work on both at the same time. The albums keep me sane while the shows are taking forever to grow up.
8. What has it been like to work on so many high profile television shows? What does it mean to you to be featured on such programs? The TV shows have been both a lot of fun and a lot of work. I think it was part of my initiation when I moved to Los Angeles that I had to build up some credits on the IMDB.
Honestly, the work I did on the TV shows (Grease: You're The One That I Want and America's Got Talent and Clash Of The Choirs) was not all that different from the work I did when I was music directing and coaching in the Broadway community.
I enjoy working with singers and asking them why they're making the choices they're making. Why breathe there? What does that lyric really mean? What's happening in this musical phrase, and what's the most interesting choice you can make within it?
I loved the theater kids on the Grease show, and it's been fun to keep up with them as they find their way into the business. And as far as the other two shows, well, I adore the musicians I got to work with and I gathered a LOT of great stories about the insanity of Reality TV!
Georgia Stitt Singing
Photo Credit: Maia Rosenfeld
9. What have you learned about yourself from being a composer/lyricist? Your voice matters. Often I think a song I've written is just the most obvious thing in the world and anyone could have done it, and then I hear from people how unique and specific it is (Somebody call Humblebrag, quick).
And I realize that the point of having a voice is being able to say the things that seem so obvious to you in a way that could only have come from you.
10. What's the best advice you've ever received? My mother had lots of advice over the years and I find that I quote her all the time. But right now, I'm thinking about how overwhelmed I get with the things that accumulate in my life that I'm supposed to respond to. And I'm remembering that once -- probably about 20 years ago -- I read a magazine article about getting organized. It said, "Read each piece of mail only once." Funny that I remember that one thing, but it has evolved into my mantra.
Deal with things quickly so they don't pile up. Don't go back and re-read that message forty times. Just write back. Don't say you're going to start keeping a journal someday. Start now. Don't wait until you've lost 10 pounds to buy clothes that make you feel attractive. Buy them now, and then buy more later.
My new year's resolution for 2012 was to say no to the things that bring me more burden than joy. Because there will never be enough time, and you don't come back for the things you put on hold.
BONUS QUESTIONS:
11. If you could dream about anyone while you sleep, who would it be? My grandchildren.
12. What's your favorite way to spend your day off? Beachside.
13. Favorite skin care product? Lancome Renergie. It smells like my grandmother.
14. Favorite website? Today: http://
15. "Glinda" or "Elphaba"? Stephen Oremus.
More Georgia Stitt Interviews:
2025 (Read Here): Maestra Music, Amplify 2025: Celebrating Women and Nonbinary Musicians
Georgia Stitt
More on Georgia Stitt:
Georgia Stitt is a composer/lyricist, music director, pianist, and music producer. Her original musicals include Big Red Sun (NAMT Festival winner in 2010, Harold Arlen Award in 2005, written with playwright John Jiler); The Danger Year (a musical revue); The Water (winner of the 2008 ANMT Search for New Voices in American Musical Theatre and written with Jeff Hylton and Tim Werenko); Mosaic (commissioned for Inner Voices Off-Broadway in 2010 and written with Cheri Steinkellner).
Georgia’s non-theatrical compositions include Fanfare for the Ups and Downs, commissioned by the Cincinnati Symphony and premiered by clarinetist Chris Pell, and several choral pieces: With Hope And Virtue, using text from President Obama’s 2009 inauguration speech and featured on NPR as part of Judith Clurman’s Sing Out, Mister President! cycle, De Profundis, premiered by the International Orange Chorale in San Francisco, and Joyful Noise, a setting of Psalm 100 (all published by G. Schirmer), as well as A Better Resurrection and The Promise of Light, published by Walton Music, and Let Me Sing For You, performed at The Kennedy Center, and Echo, performed by the Women’s Chorus at the University of California, Berkeley.
In 2007 Georgia released her first album, This Ordinary Thursday: The Songs Of Georgia Stitt, featuring an impressive array of Broadway singers such as Kelli O’Hara, Faith Prince, Carolee Carmello, Sara Ramirez, Susan Egan, Tituss Burgess, Keith Byron Kirk, Andrea Burns, Matthew Morrison, Will Chase, Jenn Colella, Lauren Kennedy and Cheyenne Jackson.
With lyricist Marcy Heisler she wrote and in 2009 recorded Alphabet City Cycle, a song cycle for soprano and violin featuring Tony-nominated singer Kate Baldwin. Georgia’s latest album, My Lifelong Love, was released in 2011, featuring performances by Anika Noni Rose, Brian d’Arcy James, John Pizzarelli and Jessica Molaskey, Jesse Tyler Ferguson, Shoshana Bean, Susan Egan, Heidi Blickenstaff, Michael Arden, Christopher Jackson, Laura Osnes, Kate Baldwin, and Michael McElroy.
Georgia produced and arranged Susan Egan’s album The Secret of Happiness and Robert Creighton’s album Ain’t We Got Fun. Additionally, Georgia has written songs that are included on Susan Egan’s Coffee House and Winter Tracks and Kevin Odekirk’s Unheard (all LML Records), Lauren Kennedy’s Here and Now (PS Classics), Daniel Boys’ So Close (Eden Records), Caroline Sheen’s Raise The Curtain, and Stuart Matthew Price’s All Things In Time (both SimG Records). She contributed songs to the 2008 MTV movie The American Mall.
Georgia was the vocal coach for the NBC hit show America’s Got Talent. She was the assistant music director for the NBC TV special Clash of the Choirs, the on-camera vocal coach for the NBC Reality TV show Grease: You’re The One That I Want, and the Production Music Coordinator for the Disney/ABC TV musical Once Upon A Mattress starring Tracey Ullman and Carol Burnett.
On Broadway she was the assistant conductor of Little Shop of Horrors and the associate conductor of the Encores! production of Can-Can starring Patti LuPone. Other theater credits: Sweet Charity (starring Sutton Foster), Avenue Q, Sweet Smell of Success, The Music Man, Titanic, Annie, and the 2000 national tour of Parade. She has also served as musical director and arranger/orchestrator for The Broadway Divas in concerts in New York, California and Australia and was a music consultant for the feature film The Stepford Wives, directed by Frank Oz. In 2005 she served as an arranger for the Boston Pops Orchestra (Keith Lockhart, conductor) in their 75th Anniversary Tribute to Stephen Sondheim at Tanglewood and Boston’s Symphony Hall.
Georgia’s work as an arranger, pianist, and coach can be heard on Kate Baldwin’s record Let’s See What Happens (PS Classics), as well as on the Broadway Cares Home For The Holidays CD (Centaur Records) and the cast albums of After The Fair, Shine, DoReMi, and Little Shop of Horrors.
Georgia received her M.F.A. in Musical Theater Writing from New York University and her B.Mus. in Music Theory and Composition from Vanderbilt University, where she graduated magna cum laude. She currently teaches Musical Theater Writing at Princeton University and has previously taught at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles and Pace University in New York.
Georgia lives in New York with her husband, composer/lyricist Jason Robert Brown, and their two daughters.
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