Logo and marketing collateral for Eigg the Musical

We've been hard at work with messaging and branding for our upcoming show at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. To start our art director put together a creative strategy for the graphic designer to work from. There's plenty of back-and-forth at this stage, but at the end of the day the period between the initial concepts through the final design went relatively smoothly and took about a month. Here's the final design, we'll plan to use it on our marketing collateral moving forward.

Mark your 2023 calendars!

The time has come! We've confirmed our participation in the 2023 Edinburgh theater festival. The show is now scheduled for the first week of August (7th-12th) with previews (4th-6th) and we are right on the royal mile. It's been a lot of hard work, but so fun and rewarding too. Over the next few months you'll probably see a variety of announcements here and on the festival's fringe site about the show and how to purchase your tickets, so please stay tuned.

Hopefully, the pandemic is behind us now and everything will go smoothly in Edinburgh. The extra time has allowed us to refine the script, enhance the music and put a bow on it. We're all so excited to come to Scotland and perform the work for everyone.

Script development and Cèilidh dance training

This was our first Cèilidh dance event! Here's what happened; some local theater friends volunteered to learn how to dance at a Cèilidh while April played the accordion. Back in 2019, after a short visit to the Isle of Eigg, we decided to incorporate Scottish Cèilidh music into the show. April worked with several professional accordionists on Skype during the Pandemic. Mike Aman owns Monarch Accordions and he worked on her repertoire and technique. Sandy Brechin is in Edinburgh, he's one of Scotland's best known Cèilidh accordionists and he helped with the overall Scottish Ceilidh genre.

Cèilidh Dance Training

In any case, earlier this year it felt like it was time to come out of the woodwork so I reached out to several local organizations specializing in Scottish dance and one of them connected me with a Scottish couple living in Colorado who were involved with Cèilidh dancing in Scotland. We had a Skype call to discuss the specifics and penciled in a date to get together. Everyone was eager to participate and learn more about the dances and the culture behind them too. Playing the music was the easy part and everything seemed to flow naturally. We played tune sets for a Gay Gordon, a Reel and a Jig and it was so much fun! 🎭

Creating an authentic musical score for Eigg

Here's a short article about composing for musical theatre works. The publication is based in Los Angeles, but they have a Colorado connection too. The interview touches briefly on "method composing" and the nuances of creating a score that supports the musical atmosphere found on the main islands of the Inner Hebrides. To read the interview and see all the pictures select the link below.

Read the Interview at:
https://shoutoutcolorado.com/meet-april-alsup-composer-of-musical-theatre/

Yes, we're adding plenty of Ceilidh music!

We've been hard at work preparing the various musical instrument parts for the Eigg show over the pandemic. It'll be nice to get out and finally play all this music for everyone. We've decided to supplement the Eigg score with some traditional Scottish Ceilidh music with dance sequences. They are so much fun to play and really make the show come alive!

April's Ceilidh Arrangements

We have a NEW Eigg website address!

We've decided to start using a new website address: eigg.show

The one we use today, "www.eiggthemusical.com", just seems too long and boring. We'll plan to redirect the old address for a while since lots of people use it as a link on their websites, but a few months ago the Web officially added several new internet TLD (top level domain) names and "show" is now an available as an extension.

Oxford defines the term "show as "a play or stage performance, especially a musical" and "www.eigg.show" is easy to remember and we just love it! What do you think? We'd love to hear from you!

We're adding an Accordion to the Eigg Score

We're nearing completion of the performance materials for Eigg the Musical and should start some readings soon. April had never written for a Ceilidh band before, but she'd fallen in love with the music and the people on this little island so over the last few months she's been learning how to play the accordion to fit it into the ensemble.