Songwriting Workshop Produces Music for Insomniacs

Unrequited love, a first grader’s prayer, scrumptious Italian food—inspiration came in all forms for 13 Harvard students during a six-week songwriting workshop led by Clifton Visiting Artist in Residence Jenny L. Garring ’92.

The workshop culminated in two performances entitled “Songs From Sleepless Nights” in Adams House last Sunday, where the participants sang, played piano and guitar and joked with the audience.

“Some are first songs, first lyrics, others are fiftieth, all are impressive,” Garring, a professional musical theater writer based in New York City, told the audience. One student, Michael C. Mitnick ’06, had already written four full-length musicals when he started the seminar. Other participants in the workshop, sponsored by the Office for the Arts Learning from Performers program, were relative novices.

Each student had three writing assignments during the workshop: a song about passion, a duet involving conflict and a free team-made composition. From these three fairly simple challenges came a wide breadth of style and creativity.

The show opened with a song entitled “Song from a Sleepless Night,” composed by Mitnick about the songwriting process.

“We’ve got every quarter note crossed and every quarter noted dotted,” crooned participants Aoife E. Spillane-Hinks ’06 and Matthew V. Anderson ’03.

But halfway through, the music stopped as the duo turned to Mitnick at the piano—and asked where the rest of the music was.

“I’m almost finished,” Mitnick told them, scribbling furiously. “Just improvise ‘Bye Bye Birdie,’ everyone loves that!”

The two then launched into a humorous medley of Broadway parodies from Chicago to West Side Story, singing about their lack of music and frustration with their songwriter. As they finished My Fair Lady, Mitnick rushed over to their music stands, song complete.

Many other tunes proved just as humorous: the audience laughed at twin sisters competing over the same prom dress and an Italian bravado about the merits of macaroni and gnocchi by Anderson.

Though several of the performed works could have fit nicely into a Broadway show, the audience was treated to a diverse range of style. An ode to the guitar by Matt V. Cantor ’06 bordered on folksy, while Kamala S. Salmon ’03 performed her breathlessly soulful song “Fly.” Ally C. Smith ’06 performed Mitnick’s lullabye from a mother to a newborn daughter, a wish that her daughter believe in angels made even sweeter by Smith’s angelic voice and heartful performance.

One of the most memorable pieces was a clever bluesy take on Original Sin written and performed by Alvin E. Hough ’06, Robert P. Young ’06 and Salmon. With slyly tongue-in-cheek lyrics, the piece chronicles an argument over dinner between Adam and Eve. She doesn’t want to prepare a meal, and sends him out to find an alternative food that doesn’t need to be cooked.

The show opened the way it began, with a ditty about the songwriting process. Samuel H. Perwin ’04, Laurel T. Holland ’06, Derrick L. Wang ’06 and Smith created a fun number about early morning writer’s block.

“Typically inspiration comes last minute and from that idea we wanted a gospel, hand-clappy closing,” Holland said of their opus.

The program showed a combination of the professional and casual. The variation in musical styles and humor combined with the strong voices and musical abilities of each performer made every tune interesting for the audience.

And all the songs were entirely original, though the thirteen composers did give credit to their muses.

“This was inspired by Schubert,” Wang told the audience before his “Duet for Dueling Divas.”

“So if it sounds like I stole it, I did,” he says.

Salmon, who is considering music as a possible career, saw the workshop as a chance to work with someone with professional experience and to test out her material. In one of her songs she intones, “What makes it all okay? / The music that we play / What makes the dark light? / The music that we write.”

Andrew D. Sternlight ’06 says meeting Garing convinced him to do the workshop.

“I always thought I’d study government or science,” he says, “But now I’m thinking music. It was a great opportunity to meet someone who does it.”

Garring is a working composer in New York City, where she creates her own pieces, records and performs music and writes for modern dance and cabaret acts. Formerly a music concentrator in Dunster House, she said representatives of New York University’s Graduate Musical Theater program advised her to go to Harvard.

She performed in about five shows a year as and undergraduate. Her senior thesis, Supporting Rommilly, was performed at the Agassiz Theater.

Last Sunday she presented a song that her 13 workshop students challenged her to write about returning to her alma mater entitled “Going Back.”

“The greatest gift anyone can give someone is a song,” she told the audience.

—Staff writer Kristi L. Jobson can be reached at jobson@fas.harvard.edu.