Adding the direct address with the listener hopefully translates the vibe and sense of humor of the show. “Welcome” JR: In the spirit of the show, it would be strange to have our self-aware narrator, Karnak, not be aware that he was making an album. We also thought it would be cool as a bookend to the album experience, with the final track on the album proper being the Canadian show’s original ending, “Karnak's Theme.”Ģ. The hardcore fans might notice that this theme gets revisited in many different styles throughout the actual show, mostly in the bumpers that underscore each character’s introduction. We hoped it would feel like a grand but crooked clarion call, a “get your popcorn and take your seats”–beginning to this album experience. The organ theme is how we used to open the show back in Canada, and we liked its weirdness-the visceral magic created by a $50 thrift store pump organ. And maybe the last as well.”īM: This one is a lovely hybrid of two of our recurring musical themes. I assumed she would read a couple of them and say, “This isn’t helpful.” Amazingly, she had plucked this lyric out of the piles of writing and said, “This should be the first lyric of the show. “Karnak’s Dream of Life” JR: “I know this dream of life is never ending” was a lyrical fragment in a long list of fragments, that I had sent to our amazing director Rachel Rockwell when she said, “Send me everything!” Brooke and I took her at her word and did exactly that. The initial seed for writing Ride the Cyclone was our desire to dramatize the undramatize-able.ġ. We have all lost a loved one through some meaningless stroke of bad luck: a fire, a car accident, a freak brain aneurysm, etc. This always struck me as an unfair sentence to those who fell prey to the horrific event. Jacob Richmond: Aristotle said in the Poetics that there was nothing dramatic or interesting about an accident or natural disaster.

Sounds dark, but it's pretty much a celebration of life. Basically, it's the old theatre trope of six kids dying on a roller coaster and being brought back to a limbo existence by the fortune-telling machine in an abandoned warehouse, to sing for their lives in a Muppet Show meets Survivor–type scenario. Maxwell and Richmond walk us through the stories behind each song from Ride the Cyclone in this exclusive track-by-track breakdown:īrooke Maxwell: It's never been the most straightforward elevator pitch for Ride the Cyclone. The album features performances from Maxwell and Richmond as well as Lillian Castillo, Chaz Duffy, Scott Redmond, Emily Rohm, Tiffany Tatreau, and Kholby Wardell, with a vocal ensemble comprising Maxwell, Sarah Carlé, Richard Moody, Diane Pancel, Anne Schaefer, Aaron Scoones, and Kholby Wardell. Written by Brooke Maxwell and Jacob Richmond, the musical has played productions in Canada, Off-Broadway, Seattle, Atlanta, Chicago, and Minneapolis, and now it has a world premiere cast recording, released by Ghostlight Records earlier this year. A Zoltar-like mechanical fortune teller invites each to tell their personal story and their dreams for their future that they'll never get to see. Ride the Cyclone centers on the lives of six teenagers from a Canadian chamber choir whose life are cut short following a freak roller coaster accident.

Ballad of jane doe piano sheet music