The music for our upcoming world premiere musical, Folk Wandering, was composed collaboratively by nine emerging singer songwriters. In advance of our first performance on February 23, we’ll be sharing interviews with each of these composers, as well as with many of the key artists involved in the production. These conversations will bring you inside this show’s very unique process of creation, and bring you a bit closer to this brilliant and wild group of emerging artists. Today, we are pleased to bring you a spotlight on composer, orchestrator, arranger, and music supervisor Mike Brun.
Read the full interview below and get your tickets to performances February 23 – March 18 today!
Pipeline Theatre Company: How do you identify as an artist?
Mike Brun: Musician.
PTC: How did you come to work on Folk Wandering?
MB: I was invited to the 2011 workshop, like all the other composers (and many more humans). This was a period – largely spearheaded by Andrew Neisler – of building the show from the ground up through different collaborative techniques to generate material.
PTC: What has been different about this writing process, compared to others you’ve been a part of?
MB: I have never been part of developing a piece of art over such a long timescale. The first songs for Folk Wandering were written in the late summer of 2011; so that’s over 6 years of development, albeit with many breaks in there. It can be very odd and wonderful and frustrating to grapple with different versions of yourself, as represented in the shows material. What I mean is that as a songwriter, each composition can act as a snapshot of your mindset at the time of writing. So a collection of my songs, across a long period of time, can become a photo album of many different outlooks, states of mind, emotional baselines of mine. Most songwriters experience that, I bet. but with Folk Wandering, since its still in development, I find myself climbing back inside of some of those old compositions, to edit and re-arrange them. It’s almost like time-travel. When I’m making changes to pre-existing material, or I’m writing more material to interact with it, it’s like having a wrestling match with different versions of myself. Again, it’s weird and wonderful and frustrating, and at this point in my life Folk Wandering is the only piece of art that puts me in such a position as a writer.
PTC: What aspect of the Folk Wandering story do you most relate to?
MB: The never-ending pot of spaghetti.
PTC: What big dreams have you been chasing recently?
MB: Dont know if I would call it outright chasing, but I would love to score for film and video games. I’ve been trying to vocalize my interest to various people over the past year or so. I think if I keep it near the front of my mind, and keep putting out vibes about it, it will happen.
Folk Wandering begins preview performances on February 23, opens on March 4, and runs through March 18. Tickets are now available to all performances. Get your tickets today!
