This past year, I was lucky to work on three different projects for Disney's new streaming platform Disney+. Two were episodes of Encore! A reality show hosted by Kristen Bell, in which they reunite the cast of a high school musical 10 - 45 years after a performance, put the performers with broadway professionals and stage a single night performance of the same show they did back in high school. It's a really fun show, and interesting to see how people have changed over the years and how they haven't.

The two episodes I worked on were Episode 11 - Anything Goes and Episode 12 - Ragtime. Below are some pictures!

I just got back from spending three weeks in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia with McCoy-Rigby and Poets Road International's Production of Peter Pan. It was exciting to be in a new place, and challenging to be in a country that has had almost no musical theatre before our arrival.

We arrived and I spent almost the entire first work day hoping that eventually a drum set would arrive, as promised, from our in country producing partners. As you can see above, it did! While a Yamaha Rydeen beginner drum set and Sabian B8 cymbals weren't what I was hoping for, they worked with a little help from the gear I brought from home.

I gotta say, the drum set would have been fine if I could have found professional heads to go with it. That's a whole different saga for another time, though. 

On our days off, we did get to explore Riyadh a bit. This is Deera square, which has been turned into a cultural hotspot, at least during the Riyadh Season Festival, of which our show was also a part. It is directly across from the Masmak, an important fortress in Saudi history. 

While we saw impressive projections on the buildings, food trucks, pop up restaurants, performances from international groups and shopping, Deera square used to be the place where they carried out public executions until 17 years ago. This fact made the mood slightly more somber as we took in the sights.

This is Brent Crayon, our music director. One of the more difficult parts of the trip was a shockingly high rate of hospitalization. Members of our company got the flu, lost their voice, tore their meniscus, and one even got her abaya caught in the wheels of an ATV and rolled over herself.  In all some 11 people went to the hospital.

Brent got maybe the worst of it. He contracted pneumonia and spent the last week of our stay in the hospital. Because we were already on a very tight musician budget of only three, that left us with few options to continue performing shows. 

Thus came my promotion to "Emergency Associate Conductor." A battlefield promotion, if you will.

You can see I also had to continue covering a significant portion of the percussion sound effects as best I was able. I also still played Toms for the two Indian dance sequences. Here's my setup for the final week of shows.

While it was exciting to experience a new country, I'm very glad to be home. 

The photo below is from our week long engagement at the Soraya Center at Cal State Northridge - Way bigger pit!

Here are some pictures of my friend Mallets Malone playing with the new Pixarmonic Orchestra at Disney's California Adventure.

Pictures of my setup from a run of A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To The Forum at the Garry Marshall Theatre in Toluca Lake back in November and December. This was a reduced orchestration, with just Keyboard, Bass, Woodwinds, and me playing the assembled instruments above. Great Show!

Another great production at La Mirada! Newsies during the month of June. This time I got to play with the fabulous drummer Gordon Peeke as well as some of the usual suspects from Something Funny Happened on the Way to the Forum including conductor Brent Crayon, bass player Dana Decker, and woodwind doubler Gene Burkert.

This year instead of the usual festivities for the holidays I took a two week tour to China. This was with the American Hollywood Film Sinfonietta, a group that plays classic film scores to clips of the film projected on a large screen. The music and clips aren't synced up in any way, though, so it can lead to a few pretty funny juxtapositions, like the plaintive theme of the Shire playing as on screen the Ring Wraiths descend on the Fellowship. 

(Me with the Shanghai skyline in the background)

We played in 9 different cities, some well known here, like Shanghai and Beijing, and others I'd never heard of, such as Taizhou and Zhangjiagang, which nonetheless have millions of people.

The tour was not without challenges. Evidently people from the U.S. have the highest standard requirements when it comes the hotel rooms. So, having a glass bathroom in a room the size of a closet shared by two adult men who aren't dating is what we call a "sticking point" Here I am laughing with my roommate  Matt and good buddy Alex. Alex had been banished from his room while his roommate used the facilities, because there was no privacy at all. 

Our performances were fun. We had some classic film music scores including Schindler's List, Superman, Harry Potter, Raiders of the Lost Ark, Star Wars and also things not written by John Williams. 

We used mostly rented equipment, which was a decidedly mixed bag, from professional level Adams instruments to aluminum bell kits and timpani that seemed to have been made by someone who had only heard about timpani, but had never actually seen one. 

Pollution was a major factor in every city. Most of the musicians wore face masks at one point or another on the trip with some of the Wind and Brass players and the singers wearing heavy duty masks whenever we were outside. 
This picture is from inside a concert hall, and no, there was no fog machine. That is visible smog indoors. (Also pictured, our wonderful singer Jaclyn Shaw!)

After a pretty grueling 8 days of travel and concerts every night we had a day off in Shanghai. Jaclyn and her husband Caleb Shaw (the singers) are Disneyland Cast Members and were nice enough to invite a few of us to the Disney Shanghai Resort with them. 

Here you can see the fabulous Enchanted Storybook Castle, the tallest Disney castle in the world. It is very impressive, especially compared to the particularly small one at Disneyland in Anaheim. It was a great time visiting the park, and because it was raining, the lines were very short. 

We also got to spend the night at the Toy Story hotel, which is decorated a bit like every room is a 7 year old boy's room. 

So an adventure was had by all, and I got to have a once in a lifetime experience. Glad to be back home, though and sleeping in my own bed.