Playing Through Blues

Wicked the Musical: Where are They Now? Kristin Chenoweth   by Brian Sarna

Kristin Chenoweth’s career had been an up-and-coming sort since she graduated with a BFA in musical theater and a master’s degree in opera singing from Oklahoma City University in the early 1990s. She had participated studio recording of The Most Happy Fella in 1992, impressed stage audiences in Animal Crackers in 1993, and showing promise in the her own short-lived NBC sitcom in 2001, but it was not until her role as Glinda, the Good Witch of the North, that the national audience really took notice of her.

The role earned her a Best Leading Actress in a Musical nomination at the 2004 Tony Awards (she lost out to fellow Wicked cast member Idina Menzel) and suddenly became an omnipresent force on the small and small screen. After leaving the cast of Wicked on July 18, 2004 she starred in the West Wing and received two Screen Actors Guild Award nominations and she portrayed Olive Snook in the cult favorite Pushing Daisies on the small screen. Chenoweth has become one of the most recognizable supporting characters in film, acting in The Pink Panther, RV, Running with Scissors, Deck the Halls, and Stranger then Fiction. She has even become a noted voice actor, lending her vocal talents to the animated series Sit Down, Shut Up as science teacher Miracle Grohe and the animated film Tinker Bell.

This year she has two more developments fans may want to keep track of. First, she is releasing her fourth album. Some Lessons Learned will be released September 13, 2011 through Sony Masterworks and will include a DVD with three videos: “I Want Somebody (Bitch About)”, “Lessons Learned”, and “The Making of Some Lessons Learned”.

Second, she will be returning to television in an ABC pilot as part of the ensemble cast for Good Christian Belles, originally entitled Good Christian Bitches. Chenoweth will play Darlene and the series will be a midseason replacement for the 2011-2012 television season. The sitcom follows a divorced Dallas mother of two returning to the city where she grew up.

It is also worth mentioning that Chenoweth will be starring in a movie set to be released in 2012. Family Weekend revolved around a 16-year-old girl who takes her parents hostage to teach them a lesson for their self-absorbed behavior and the lack of attention they give to their children. However, there is no official word yet on whether or not Chenoweth will reprise her role in the film adaptation of Wicked. Since the movie is due out in 2014 according to IMDB, I think there is a better chance of Wicked tickets being available for a reprise run on the stage than in the movie theater.

About the Author

Brian Sarna is a writer for OnlineSeats, a secondary tickets broker that provides Wicked tickets to sold out and nearly sold out productions all year long.

Maks from Dancing With The Stars teaching Salsa with music.AVI

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The Music of Stars $14.38 The Music of Stars might sound like just a meaninglessly “poetic” title, but as a matter of fact, it’s merely descriptive of this strange and oddly compelling album, originally released in 2001. British composer and percussionist Morris Pert composed and recorded The Music of Stars as the first part of a loosely defined trilogy of releases sharing themes of distance and topography. The Music of Stars is quite literally a space rock album, except that instead of the sci-fi themes of Hawkwind or Pink Floyd, Pert took the amplified sound of the universe’s natural background radiation as his conceptual starting point. Basically, imagine if God had tinnitus. That ever-shifting tension between a maddening tuneless drone and otherworldly, celestial harmonies is at the root of The Music of Stars. These nine lengthy pieces, each named after a different distant solar object, unfold slowly and serenely, lacking anything as conventional as melody or rhythm. What keeps The Music of Stars from being mindless new age bliss-out music is the harshly-textured, dirty edge Pert gives much of the electronics, as well as the atonality and seeming randomness of his percussion parts. (Pert plays all the instruments, electronic and acoustic, himself.) Offsetting the quiet beauty of passages like the chiming, twinkling washes of notes that flutter across “Syrma” with sudden grinding buzzes and clatters reminds the listener that no matter how beautiful the starlit night is, that light is provided by far-off violent and destructive nuclear reactions. So yeah, it’s more than a little pretentious if you think about it too hard, but The Music of Stars remains an enjoyable listen. ~ Stewart Mason, Rovi Performers: Morris Pert – Keyboards

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Baby Sign My Bedtime Signs (I Can Sign) $174.46 New – Unlike DVDs that are designed simply to entertain babies, “Baby Signs”[registered] DVDs actually teach babies to sign by using time-tested teaching strategies for optimal infant learning, including: lots of repetition; delightful babies, characters and puppets; engaging sounds and music; and easy-to-follow pacing. “My Bedtime Signs” features the signs for: moons, stars, book, love, sleep and light. The approximate running time is 23 minutes.

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