Hello everyone! I’m Alex Strachota, one of three musicians composing music for Nature Boy. I thought I’d share with you all what we’ve been up to, as music will be an important part of the show. Nature Boy, like most of Bart’s shows, won’t use many words, but instead will speak through poetic images, movement, and music. Because the puppets in the show will be traveling through a diversity of landscapes and settings, we musicians have the enjoyable task of creating “soundscapes” that suggest these beautiful and strange places. Besides this, we get to create music for the unique cast of characters appearing in Nature Boy, including the boy himself, a beautiful pigeon, a friendly snail, and a host of mean-spirited “bullies”. Last week I met with Bart and Patrick Harison, another multi-instrumentalist musician working on Nature Boy, to dream up some music. After Bart shared with us the latest in the unfolding of the plot specifics we got busy playing accordion, piano, synth, guitar, glockenspiel, harmonica, flute, and other instruments around Patrick’s practice space, forming musical themes for scenes and characters in Nature Boy. Bart sat aside, working on puppets, occasionally giving us ideas, suggestions, and sharing his vision. We had a great afternoon filling the space with sounds and musical moods of all sorts. Patrick and I will continue to work on developing the music, which we hope will eventually be graced by rhythm elements from Martin Dosh, the third musician involved. Although Martin has lately been on tour he joined us earlier this spring for a couple brainstorming sessions. Returning to Minneapolis soon, he’ll be collaborating with us in the weeks leading up to the show. I can’t wait to hear how the music evolves over these next weeks… Make art! Peace, Alex