From the composers of January Sun
Prep Time: ~ 2.5 years Cook Time: ~ 5 months Yields: ~ 400 servings per night
The initial ideas came from 3AM online plot-scribbling sessions between our music director and playwright. Although after that point, it was Sol Town that inspired our music, in whatever forms it took; the story of Sol Town, the characters, and even the cast members themselves.
If we had the liberty of browsing and picking out the ‘appropriate’ songs for A Bullet For My Valentine, creating Sol Town required much more intensive labour that was freeing in its own way. Writing music for a musical isn’t just about getting a captivating melody line. Getting to know Sol and its people was plot studies and character reimagining even months before we started composing anything, with an effort to discover all the hidden corners of a world we had to build from scratch. We would step into Sol and pretend to walk around in a stranger’s shoes and try to imagine what’s on their mind, what’s their background like, and then just let our fingers dance freely on the keyboards and take us wherever they desire. The first empty staff was clumsily filled.
We were trying to capture every spark of inspiration: phone memories occupied by voice memos, notepads overflooded with random scribbles — the pure hope of not forgetting that one melody before we got home to note it on the sheet. Some days, it was just endless scale-running to overcome a block. Of course we also took external inspirations into the creative process, but it was more about exploring new techniques rather than imitating certain aesthetics. As funny as it may sound, there was this constant fear of accidentally committing plagiarism in the back of our minds.
It wasn’t until we finalized the cast that our music took on its form. There were instances where we had to change harmonic arrangements, sometimes due to the scene rewrites and sometimes because the actors were so great we had to feature them more. But note by note, there they were: the strangers we had been getting to know, now with real faces and voices. It wouldn’t be an exaggeration to say that the original music scores of January Sun are dedicated to the original cast of January Sun.
Prepped, re-prepped and cooked til toasty brown, Sunday treats are musical stories shared with three, four composers and then a crowd of audience ears. Seeing our midnight flickers go from music sheets to harmonized worlds in front of hundreds of people was surreal to say the least. And “[...] to be honest, if FRAGMENTS asked me to collaborate to write original musicals in the next couple of weeks, I wouldn't be ready for the next challenge due to the lack of maturity in music that I have sensed right now. But thankfully, FRAGMENTS would ask me to collaborate in the next couple of years, and maybe that time I would set strong in my footholes to confidently work with them, as always I would never turn down the offer.” (Trà My, Associate Composer)
Special thanks to the composers of January Sun: Hoài Thương Liti, Hà Phương Eleanor, Trà My and Minh Đạt.