INTERVIEW: ‘Whisper Darkly’ forges new path as electro-swing musical
Image courtesy of TBIC Music Group Music Group / Provided by Fortune Creative with permission.
The new musical Whisper Darkly, the creative output of Andrew Gerle (music and lyrics) and DJ Salisbury (book), will be released as a concept album today, Feb. 23, with the hope of drumming up support for a future production. The show is built around a unique sound, one perhaps never heard before in a musical setting: electro-swing. On its surface, this genre of music feels like an oxymoron, with swing harkening back to days of yore and electro very much planted in the 21st century. That’s the appeal of the mashup, old and new together at last, a little bit of the Roaring ’20s with the beat-beat-beat of modern-day EDM.
Gerle and Salisbury’s creation centers on a speakeasy called the Hush Club at the height of Prohibition, circa 100 years ago. Topeka McShane runs the joint, and she passes on her business lessons to a niece named Evie, according to press notes. One night, the club is visited by African American singing sensation Wysandria Cole Davis, and these three women form a unique connection that propels the plot forward.
Recently Gerle and Salisbury exchanged emails with Hollywood Soapbox to talk about the new concept album. Gerle’s other credits include Meet John Doe; Glory, Mississippi; and Prospera. Salisbury is known for his direction and choreography at leading regional theaters, including New Jersey’s Paper Mill Playhouse.
For this recording project, the two creatives were joined by cast members Aléna Watters (The Cher Show), Kayla Davion (Tina), Keri René Fuller (Six: The Musical), Tony Award nominees Brad Oscar (The Producers) and Howard McGillin (The Phantom of the Opera), Alli Mauzey (Kimberly Akimbo), Claybourne Elder (Company) and the West End’s Alistair Brammer (Miss Saigon), according to press notes.
Questions and answers have been slightly edited for style.
How did this musical project first begin?
GERLE: DJ and I had known each other from the New York theater community for many years and had written a bit together, working on a pitch for a reality TV show about teens writing a new musical.
SALISBURY: Though the project did not move forward, we enjoyed our collaboration, so when I determined an immersive musical was to be my next exploration as a writer, I thought of Andrew as a perfect match for the material. Thankfully, he was interested in the idea and eagerly joined me in ‘discovering’ a musical that we knew from the outset would be genredefying work.
GERLE: We were both fascinated by the new immersive theater being created recently, but had sometimes been frustrated by the narrative challenges it presents. Often, you enter into a beautiful, compelling physical world, but the story can sometimes get lost because of how difficult it can be to control the audience’s experience throughout the evening. DJ wondered if we could create a completely immersive world, where the audience feels like they’re an active part of the story and has the agency to make some choices, but where we can also control the experience enough to deliver characters we come to know and love and root for, with all the emotional payoffs that kind of deep narrative structure can bring. A speakeasy setting, where the audience is seated for most of the evening, but can eavesdrop on various playing areas around the club, seemed to be a great formula.
How do you define the electro-swing sound?
GERLE: Electro-swing is a mashup of classic jazz and Vaudeville harmonic and instrumental sounds with 21st-century EDM dance beats. Imagine a swing tune, with live saxes, violin, guitar, with a strong club kick and fantastical electronic textures laid on top. It’s a lot of fun.
Are you personally a fan of EDM beats? Do you feel this genre is untapped in the world of musicals?
SALISBURY: We were both fans of electro-swing before working on Whisper Darkly, and we saw a great opportunity in using the genre to “drop people in” to the world of a 1928 speakeasy, while creating a musical world that feels contemporary and fresh.
GERLE: We wanted our audiences to feel like club-goers in 1928 would have felt, hearing the hot new jazz sound. We didn’t want the show to have “antique” sounding music, and electro-swing gives us that. That being said, it was definitely a challenge to meld the two genres. Electro-swing is, at heart, a dance genre that generally stays within a fairly narrow tempo range, with harmonic and overall song structures that are pretty simple. Musical theatre songs have a lot of additional “responsibilities” — establishing character (each character’s songs should have a different sound), painting a dramatic or psychological picture, and allowing for lyrics and song structures that can be complicated and tell a lot of story.
SALISBURY: We were very lucky to be able to collaborate with the pioneering electro-swing arranger/producer Pisk (Roberto Costa). He has years of experience creating hit electro-swing songs, but was open to exploring how the two genres could combine to create something new.
GERLE: The mixing process was also very challenging. I was very conscious of trying to create a sound that honored my work as a musical theater composer — making sure the lyrics and voices were clear, that all the wonderful work by our jazz musicians was heard — but also to deliver an album that honored its electro-swing roots as well. Striking the right balance between driving beat and clear timbres, between danceable tunes and compelling storytelling, took many months of finessing. Turns out, combining two different musical genres to create a new hybrid form is a big challenge, but I think in the end we found exactly the right balance.
Is the hope that this recording project will build interest for a full-scale production?
GERLE: Absolutely! Our hope for the album is that we can bring together fans from the electro-swing and musical theater worlds, and that their response will generate interest in creating a real live Whisper Darkly.
SALISBURY: We already have significant interest in London to launch the first production there. We’re just looking for a producer to come forward and take us across the finish line. We feel that our story of three women living their lives to the fullest and on their own terms in a world that’s constantly telling them “no” is one a lot of people will respond to in today’s uniquely challenging times.
How did you gather these talented actors for the various characters?
SALISBURY: Casting the singers was a big task. It was important to Andrew and me that we find the appropriate vocal colors in singers of superb acting ability in order to have the characters’ personalities be front and center on the album. Fortunately, we have both been in the New York theatre industry for some time and have connections to a great many people with tremendous talent.
GERLE: We really needed actors who knew how to deliver a classic jazz/musical theater song and sound, but still feel completely contemporary, which is rare. We reached out to people who had worked on the show before, like Aléna Watters; to colleagues we’d worked with on other projects, like Brad Oscar and Claybourne Elder; and to Broadway actors whose work we’d seen and admired for years, like Alli Mauzey and Howard McGillin.
SALISBURY: Add to that a couple rising stars that were recommended to us, Keri René Fuller and Kayla Davion, plus West End favorite Alistair Brammer, and we ended up with truly a dream cast.
GERLE: We also enlisted some of the top young jazz artists in New York, and the electro-swing arrangements really let them shine.
Do you believe the individual songs can be enjoyed by themselves, or do people need to listen to the entire concept album?
GERLE: One of the reasons we thought a concept album for the show would work especially well is that the structure of the show is unusual — almost all the songs are performed by the cast of the Hush Club (the club in the show), as entertainment for the patrons. So they’re mostly stand-alone numbers that work well by themselves.
SALISBURY: But at the same time, Andrew managed to write these stand-alone songs so that they resonate with the action that’s going on behind the scenes in the club, all the backstage drama that is the story of Whisper Darkly. So although the songs do work great by themselves, listeners will get a deeper feel for the world and the story of the show if they listen all the way through.
By John Soltes / Publisher / John@HollywoodSoapbox.com
Whisper Darkly, created by Andrew Gerle (music and lyrics) and DJ Salisbury (book), will be released as a concept album Friday, Feb. 23, courtesy of The Music Group. Click here for more information.
