Musings With The Mouse: Dreaming Our Dreams

Note: I got lazy my last few weeks here in Orlando and neglected to keep up with my blog. I'm home in California now, however there are still a few things I wanted to share with you! This entry should have been written and posted around Monday August 9^th.

I think I may have reached the peak of my musical career last weekend with Dream Our Dreams, the summer show put on by the Encore! Cast Choir and Orchestra. This has been the most amazing production I think I might ever be part of. Not just a concert, but a full-blown 2.5 hour production put on by a cast of over 400 people! We had four performances this weekend and sold over 1200 tickets to each show. The proceeds from the show are going to the Make-A-Wish Foundation of Central Florida.

About 250 in the choir, almost 100 in the orchestra. Not pictured are our 40 dancers, 20-member color guard, six muses and six spoken word poets (one for each type of dream), and a production team of nearly 50 very talented and devoted people!

Almost every day this week I had work, followed by 3 hour rehearsals. I'm really lucky that in all of Walt Disney World, the venue is in the building right behind my work location at Epcot. I didn't get much sleep, but this was yet another experience of a lifetime that I had access to this summer. The show was nearly three hours with an intermission and contained nothing but Disney music. Take a look at the program here. The full title of the show was Dream Our Dreams! A Musical Tribute to the Legacy of Disney and was split into six different types of dreams: Dreams of Love, Fantasy, Darkness, Adventure, Family, and Discovery. Here's a clip of the opening of the show to give you an idea of how all of these performers worked together through the show: (you can see me playing a modest solo about four minutes into the clip, just under the conductor)

YouTube really doesn't do the performances justice, but here are a couple other decent clips from the show:
Finale Ultimo from Disney's Broadway Production of Beauty and the Beast: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pa5q7oKQUnI
Poor Unfortunate Songs: The Scoundrel Collection http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PT0mBZGnaLA

I also got to play in a piano quintet in the lobby as guests entered the venue. We played, you guessed it, more Disney music. It's a very different dynamic with that group of instruments, it was a nice change of pace for me.