NEW YORK (AP) — Ryan Miller, lead singer of alternative rock band Guster, has a new gig that even he’s a little surprised about: Musical theater songwriter. He laughs that he’s gone all Broadway.
“I just went full-into the ballpit — just, like, face-first, take-me-wherever-this-is-going,” he said before a recent rehearsal of his bright new musical “Safety Not Guaranteed” at Brooklyn Academy of Music.
Miller is part of a growing trend of alt-rockers bringing a new sound to the space carved out by giants like Stephen Sondheim and Andrew Lloyd Webber.
The Avett Brothers are about to have “Swept Away” land on Broadway, Florence + The Machine frontwoman Florence Welch is working on a musical about “The Great Gatsby” and Jack Antonoff is scoring “Romeo & Juliet.” Radiohead’s Thom Yorke is laboring on “Hamlet Hail to the Thief,” a mashup of Shakespeare’s “Hamlet” and his band’s music.
“I just went full-into the ballpit — just, like, face-first, take-me-wherever-this-is-going,” he said before a recent rehearsal of his bright new musical “Safety Not Guaranteed” at Brooklyn Academy of Music.
Miller is part of a growing trend of alt-rockers bringing a new sound to the space carved out by giants like Stephen Sondheim and Andrew Lloyd Webber.
The Avett Brothers are about to have “Swept Away” land on Broadway, Florence + The Machine frontwoman Florence Welch is working on a musical about “The Great Gatsby” and Jack Antonoff is scoring “Romeo & Juliet.” Radiohead’s Thom Yorke is laboring on “Hamlet Hail to the Thief,” a mashup of Shakespeare’s “Hamlet” and his band’s music.
Arcade Fire’s Will Butler is fresh off the success of the Tony-winning play “Stereophonic,” Sufjan Stevens songs found a place on Broadway last season with “Illinoise” and the folk-rock band Jamestown Revival is fueling the reigning best new musical, “The Outsiders.”
via apnews.com
