Join my mailing list to receive blog updates straight to your inbox! I rarely write more than once per week, so emails will be kept to a minimum.
New year, new energy. My Hound Dog castmaste Mel Hsu was in town yesterday so we thought we’d get together and JAM! We played for a little over an hour and it was so cathartic that I felt like I had just received a 60-minute massage. Enjoy a minute of our weirdness!
After 2 years of a massive slowdown due to the pandemic, 2022 felt normal again in my world of freelancing. I wanted to share with you some of my highlights of the year. Thanks for following along, coming out to shows, and making me feel supported!
Gig of the Year
This one has to go to Brass Queens at Brooklyn Bowl all the way back on February 3. This was the BKBowl debut for the Queens, and my first time playing there since 2016, having performed there previously with Trumpet Wom’ and numerous times with PitchBlak. I just love playing the Bowl because the hospitality is top notch, the sound on stage is excellent, and the food is so dang good!
Cabaret of the Year
I am not sure off of the top of my head how many times I played at 54 Below or Green Room 42 this year, but it was by far more than any year previously. It was really hard to choose a favorite, but I am going to go with an evening of Julian Hornik’s music at 54 Below. It was my first time meeting Julian and crew but I was SO IMPRESSED by all of them. They’re so talented! They’re so young! Plus it was my first time meeting The Lazours, whose music I got to play every night during Melis Aker’s Hound Dog at Ars Nova.
Honorable mention goes to Jenna Pastuszek who presented two perfectly curated nights at the Green Room 42: an evening with Judy Garland and an evening with Barbra Streisand.
On stage and ready for Julian Hornik at 54 Below
Pop Show of the Year
For our fourth or fifth show ever, Cinco12 headlined the Bryant Park Accordion Festival with a tribute to the Queen of Tejano, Selena! I simply love this music and everyone in the band. I thought we played really well that night and there was some AMAZING people watching. Every time we play this music, I watch people sing their hearts out and dance along. Couple that with the usual insanity that is Bryant Park…that place was LIT!
i am so proud of my former roommate, jenny luna, who put this band together and absolutely slays the vocals
Theater Run of the Year
Another tough choice, but I’ve gotta go with New York City Children’s Theater’s production of Dory Fantasmagory. I thought the show was charming and cute, and from the drum chair I could see the smiles on the faces of all the kiddos in the audience. It is delightful to watch children fall in love with theater for the first time! Plus I REALLY loved hanging with music director Robert Frost. I hope to work with him and NYCCT again soon!
Subbing Show of the Year
I subbed on some amazing shows this year, including Between the Lines and Suffs, but the award here has to go to Six. All of these shows included an immense amount of preparation (including having to rent a drum set in LA so I could practice at my in-laws house last Thanksgiving), but they were highly rewarding. It’s thrilling to play Six: I’m on the stage, in Tony Award-winning costume, and pretty much playing for the majority of the show. Thanks to all of my friends and fam who came out to see me play this show over the last year. It’s the best when I have people I know in the audience.
At the theater before my first night playing the show, losing my mind
on stage at the lena horne theater for my last date at six for the year, still masked but way less nervous
*****
So that’s it! I’m taking off for the rest of the year to enjoy time with friends, family, and of course PHISH, and will be back strong in 2023 with a few dates at Six and a few workshops!
Until then…Ashley
We just wrapped our shorter than expected run of Hound Dog at Ars Nova. Despite playing to full houses every night, our run was not extended as we were told it would be. We were all pretty disappointed by this decision. I won’t say much more on here about it, but theater is a business and we are all looking forward to our next endeavors.
I wanted to share some photos from our opening and closing parties. Closing was a particular highlight because it was held on the rooftop of our theater, Barrow Street Theater @ Greenwich House. After reading the wikipedia page for Greenwich House early on in the tech process, I learned that there was a playground atop the building. Because there’s also a preschool in the building, we weren’t permitted to explore other than the theater and basement dressing rooms. The building’s security guard, Calvin, kindly informed me and bassist Mel Hsu of that fact when we tried to take the elevator to the roof during our first week in the theater! Whoops!
Here are the photos, all by HanJie Chow.
The full company on our amazing set
Your truly
Hot band alert: The Flaming Sultans! Me, Sahar Milani, Maya Sharpe, and Mel Hsu
The Flaming Sultans at closing on the roof of Greenwich House
For the last few weeks I’ve been working on a brand new play presented by Ars Nova: Hound Dog. We are currently in previews and open this coming Saturday. Here’s the official blurb:
In Melis Aker’s world premiere play HOUND DOG, a young musician returns from abroad to her hometown of Ankara, Turkey to look after her widowed father. Forced to reckon with the family and community she left behind, an investigation into her grieving parent’s strange pilgrimage to Graceland unravels into a sonic mirage of memory packed with humor, nostalgia and the love we cultivate across generations.
I’ve made a lot of new friends on this show and get to play with a really excellent band, including lead singer Sahar Milani, guitarist Maya Sharpe, and Mel Hsu on bass.
Here are some setup shots:
I’m playing a delightfully acoustic setup: 5-piece Gretsch kit with darbuka, triangle, tambourine, and wood block.
The view of our lead singer, Sahar Milani, from my seat. We are on the second story of the set that has windows that open up to reveal the band.
Of course I need the Miller Machine to make this show happen!
The array of sticks I’m using
Me with Maya Sharpe and Mel Hsu. We are the Flaming Sultans!
The final installment of Ethan Carlson’s Her Sound project is out today! These 3 albums (more about the first two here) were a great professional achievement for me, as I tracked every single percussion instrument—and there were many—by myself.
When I was asked to record Vol. 1, I had one single USB microphone and could only use my weekly allotted slots at a studio space that I shared with others. I made it work. It wasn’t easy. In fact, it was downright frustrating. So frustrating that it was the impetus I needed to invest many, many dollars into recording equipment and my own studio space that I can use around the clock. These two improvements were game-changers. It was still incredibly difficult to perform and engineer at the same time, but I could now record at my own pace with much higher quality gear.
I’m really proud of this project, and of Ethan, and of producer Ryan Scott Oliver who I’ve known for quite some time. Give a listen below!
I had the great pleasure of subbing for the wonderful Adam Wolfe on an off-Broadway show called Between the Lines for the last month+. I first met Adam in 2018 while he was playing percussion for another off-Broadway show. We both come from an orchestral background and really value applying our knowledge in that realm to the theater world.
Between the Lines features a massive percussion setup, including drum set, several mallet instruments, hand drums, and electronics. While there were certainly some technical passages in the show, the hardest part was getting down the “choreography” of the book: knowing when and where to pick up which mallets, when to flip pages, which conductor camera to look off of for queues, etc… Learning this show really taught me that my MM stands for Mallet Management in addition to Master of Music :-)
Here I am with my wife and the set of BTL. I was so excited for her to see the shows because there are few things she likes more than musical theater and books, and this show is a combination of the two!
I had a blast learning and playing this book and will certainly miss the show. I am hopeful that it lives on in one way or the other after it closes this coming weekend.
Up next: Hound Dog at Ars Nova.
Major congratulations to everyone at Six: The Musical on an excellent night at the Tonys, including wins for Best Original Score (Toby Marlow & Lucky moss) and Best Costume Design of a Musical (Gabriella Slade). It is a true honor to get to play this show from time to time. Thank you to Elena Bonomo for trusting me with your chair when you’re away and to the rest of the band —Julia, Michelle, Kimi, and Marianna—for always making me feel welcomed. Here’s a little clip from last night’s performance ICYMI. I can’t wait to get behind the drums there this week!
I just wrapped a 4-weekend run of Dory Fantasmagory, Russ Kaplan and Sarah Wordsworth’s adaption of the popular children’s book. We even got a nice little Times write-up going into the last weekend!
Even though it meant giving up weekend mornings for a month, I loved showing up to work at Theatre Row to play for the kiddos. The best part was that I could see the audience from the drum booth! Each show started with an imagination exercise led by one of the teachings artists of New York City Children’s Theater and it was so fun and hilarious to get to watch the kids participate. I’m hopeful that this show will live on and I hear there may be a sequel in the works!
March has already been full of many wonderful gigs so I thought I’d share some pictures!
L to R: Your truly, Najee Gabay, Mason Griffin, Sean Stephens, and Beda Spindola
First up, Sean Stephens’ Redemption of a 90s Kid at 54 Below. To say I had the perfect shirt for this show is an understatement! This set was an absolute blast to play. We opened with Reba McEntire’s “Fancy” and I haven’t been able to get this video out of my mind since I started working on this song. Absolutely epic.
L to R: Or Matias, Shoba Narayan, James Mohamdein, and Tim Basom. Photo by Rebecca J. Michelson.
Next, I got to play with literal Disney Princess Shoba Narayan at 54. Shoba is the first ever South Asian to play Jasmine in Broadway’s Aladdin. She is stunningly gorgeous and has the voice to match! My personal highlight was playing Stephen Schwartz’s “When You Believe” with Shoba and Lindsay Heather Pearce who currently stars as Elphaba in Wicked.
Then, I got to celebrate the third anniversary of Brass Queens on International Women’s Day! Major shouts to Wandering Barman, a lovely cocktail bar here in my neighborhood, for being exceptional hosts.
I left Wandering Barman as soon as we finished playing because I had to get up at 6am to drive to PS 277 Gerritsen Beach to play with Dawn Drake’s ZapOte for the third grade class. Dawn talked about the music of the Americas and we demonstrated salsa, funk, and samba. They asked a lot of great questions and picked up on the rhythms impressively quickly! Thanks to the Brooklyn Arts Council for sponsoring this engagement.
I played Brooklyn Bowl for the first time since 2016 last week with Brass Queens. It felt so good to be back on the stage there, a place where I’ve seen countless incredible shows, ate so much delicious fried chicken, and probably had, oh I don’t know, one or two beers over the last 10+ years (it looks like Brooklyn Blast is no longer on tap which is honestly probably for the best).
I made a little highlight real from some of the clips my wife was kind enough to shoot. I was so proud of the Brass Queens that night! Everyone brought their A-game. I’m hopeful that we’ll be invited back soon!
Ashley Baier is a NYC-based drummer and percussionist.
