I spent a wonderful evening with Skye Crawford and Whitney Mosery at the Georgia Stitt concert at the Garrick Theatre on Sunday night.  Georgia is a rising star from the USA, a composer, lyricist, MD and, as I discovered after the show – she is also a really lovely person. Her songs are  so honest and personal, funny and poignant.

She was joined on stage by a cast of great singers including Simon Bailey, Norman Bowman, Cynthia Erivo, Jamie Muscato, Eva Noblezada and the lovely Caroline Sheen as well as the choir from Arts Ed. Drama School.

The producer for this great show was Danielle Tarento.  After sitting on an MMD panel with her and John Cohen, talking about stage rights and writers, I seem to meet her everywhere. Her  wonderful productions including: Dog Fight, Titanic, Mack and Mable and Parade.  Read more…

My Lifelong Love – An Evening With Georgia Stitt and Friends was performed at the Garrick Theatre, London.

US composer and lyricist Georgia Stitt’s performance in My Lifelong Love at the Garrick Theatre marked her solo West End debut. The show featured songs from her three albums: This Ordinary Thursday, Alphabet City Cycleand My Lifelong Love, and also her shows Big Red Sun,Mosaic and Samantha Spade – Ace Detective in Act I, while Act II showcased her current work in progress, The Danger Year, which I hope we hear more of very soon.

There is no denying Stitt’s immense talent as a songwriter and musician. Every song is superbly crafted. She may often be called Mrs Jason Robert Brown, but her music has its own wonderful energy: strong pulsating rhythms, cross rhythms and shimmering running passages combine with classical, jazz, dance and R&B influences, and soaring melodic ‘hooks’ reinforce central themes. Her orchestral writing, and command, is wonderful – Stitt writes music for singers AND instrumentalists and it was notable that she credited her superb musicians and singers in equal measure. Read more…

Reviewer: Ava Eldred

In recent years, an abundance of ‘One Night Only’ concert engagements seem to have popped up in and around the West End. As with any instance of over-saturation, some are average, some are terrible, and then there are the rare ones, such as last night’s performance of My Lifelong Love: An Evening with Georgia Stitt and Friends, that are classy, have a reason for existing, and for the most part are truly excellent.

A lot of this is to do with the material. Georgia Stitt manages to be both mature and youthful in her writing; she sounds contemporary and fresh but always with a solid assurance that she knows exactly what she’s doing. Interestingly, the programme lists the years in which the songs were written, and for the most part, Georgia’s writing gets better and better as time goes on. Particular highlights include Palimpsest, written in 2013 for the Once Upon A Time In New York City concert series and Stop, from Georgia’s current projectThe Danger Years, which formed the entirety of the concert’s second act. This is usually a structure I find dull, but it worked well here. The Danger Years is pacy and engaging, and will become even more exciting as it is developed. Read more…

Making her West End debut with My Lifelong Love, composer Georgia Stitt is still probably best known as the wife of that other composer of modern musical theatre: Jason Robert Brown.  Yet in this one-off evening celebrating her music, she proved that she’s certainly his equal.

Stylistically there are clear similarities between their music.  Both follow a comparable dramatic rhythm, merge word painting and a sense of classical composition with accessible pop melodies, and hold storytelling as a core focus.  Every song is a story in its own right, both composers having a penchant for contemporary subjects – brutally honest and believable love stories in our modern world.  Yet where so many New York composers attempt to replicate JRB’s sound, only Stitt can truly compete. Read more…