Silent Sky

Lauren Gunderson plays tick a lot of boxes for me: Smart, capable female characters, realistic dialogue, and, most importantly, lots of room for designers to play. The epiphany at the end of act one of Silent Sky is centered around a piano concerto, meant to be played on stage. This meant I had to write a piano concerto that could be played on stage. This was terrifying for me. Additionally, this theme would also need to be the backbone of basically the rest of the sounds in the show (so no pressure or anything). I spent days smacking notes on my keyboard until I found a note sequence I didn’t hate—and, completely by coincidence, it happened to be a variation of “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star”. Beth is a much more skilled piano player than I am, so we sat down together and worked out a version that sounded technically difficult and sonically interesting, while also being easy enough for Laura to play that she could learn it quickly and act through it. The version we landed on was beautiful, simple, and sounded amazing live. Below is a demo version of this piece.