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MAY 2017 | SCENE 41 A UNIQUE MUSICAL STYLE MEETS 1959 Greenwich Village By Steven J. Smith Photos by John Revisky Asolo Repertory Theatre’s much-anticipated world premiere of the musical “Beatsville” features a distinctive jazz form called “vocalise,” according to book writer Glenn Slater, who developed the project with his wife, composer and lyricist Wendy Leigh Wilf. “Wendy and I met at a musical theater writing workshop,” Slater said. “Soon after that, though, she decided to leave the world of theater and go back to her first love, which is jazz. But she quickly realized she missed the theater and told me she wanted to find a way that combines the two in a way that hadn’t been done before.” Slater, 49, is a three-time Tony nominee for the international hit musicals “The Little Mermaid,” “Sister Act” and “School of Rock” and is a co-creator of Disney’s worldwide smash “Tangled.” Wilf holds a Masters in Jazz Piano from the Manhattan School of Music, and Slater said she had discovered a certain style in jazz language called “vocalise,” which was popular in the late 1950s and served as their way into “Beatsville.” “Musicians would take an existing jazz track, such as a saxophone solo,” Slater said. “Then they’d set lyrics to it, so it would have the freshness, inventiveness and the extemporaneous feel of actual jazz, but have words and carry meaning.” That style, he added, runs through the couple’s new musical, which is set in Greenwich Village, circa 1959 — a world of subterranean coffee shops, goateed artists, turtle-necked poets and bongo-playing jazzbos. Tragically square busboy Walter Paisley wants nothing more than to be one of the beatniks, but he has no


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