BWW TV Exclusive: CUTTING-EDGE COMPOSERS CORNER- Michael Hunsaker Sings Jeremy Schonfeld's 'Cornerstone'

This week's featured composer is Jeremy Schonfeld, who you can catch at the Cutting Room on January 27th at 8pm! Here is Michael Hunsaker singing Jeremy's song "Cornerstone" at our concert at the Canal Room. When we asked Jeremy about his process for writing this song, he had this to say:

"I wrote this song for my show "Drift", which was initially based on a concept album I recorded under the same name. "Drift" the album was created as a raw and personal account of the initial year immediately following the break-up of my marriage. "Drift" itself referred to the feeling of losing my moorings, all emotional complications of being newly single, the loneliness, and the awkwardness of adjusting to my new role as divorced father of a little girl. The fleshed out show, which included the song "Cornerstone", re-imagined these issues through the eyes of a group of men in therapy together, not just one. Craig Pospisil, wrote the book for "Drift" that helped to define and differentiate the types of men and specific situations they were going through. "Cornerstone" is the misguided attempt of the younger man who hopes in vain that he might make everything better by magically becoming who she wants. a bit of the "What a fool believes" leading to the added frustration that the group mantra ("Another day, another window into me...") is just not working. Personally, I dig a song like this because it moves around the emotional landscape a bit. I am a big fan of complicated layers of emotions being addressed through music and lyric. I'm a deep-end of the pool kinda guy a lot of the time, what can I say!"

www.jeremyschonfeld.com

Singer/songwriter/composer/lyricist Jeremy Schonfeld's compositions have won numerous awards and been performed in front of captivated crowds, but his latest project Iron & Coal is Jeremy's biggest project yet. Produced by Werner Stranka & Martin Gellner for Beat 4 feet Productions, the album was released November 2011, and received Amadeus Award nominations (Austria's equivalent of the Grammy) for Best Recording, Best Mixing, and Best Mastering.

The singer/songwriter concept album is not a new undertaking for Jeremy, his Drift album was translated into a production as a benefit concert at BB Kings in New York City starring Adam Pascal, Julia Murney, Terrence Mann, Jarrod Emick, and Adam Kantor, among others. The 2009 production at North Carolina's Hot Summer Nights at the Kennedy garnered Schonfeld several "Best of..." honors including "Best Show of 2009" from Triangle Arts & Entertainment, and "Best Original Music" from Indy Week. Drift was previously seen at the New York Musical Theatre Festival (NYMF).

Other recent projects include: the album 37 Notebooks, which featured the vocal talents of Shoshana Bean, Tracie Thoms, Amy Spanger, Lauren Kennedy, Luther Creek, and Kate Shindle, among others; the holiday musical It Happened One Christmas for the Flatrock Playhouse in North Carolina; the feature film Clear BlueTuesday, in which he was featured and wrote two songs; and the innumerable ATrainPlays. Schonfeld's new musical, Spun, was commissioned and producEd Bloomington Playwrights Project (May 2013), and will be subsequently produced by Phoenix Theatre in Indianapolis, April-May 2014. The musical Greta (formerlyKissing Frogs) was recently workshopped by Bridge to Broadway in Southern California, and will be produced May 2014 by Bloomington Playwrights Project. Jeremy is also slated to create a new, large-scale holiday production for Christmas 2014. Details to come!

Schonfeld has also contributed original music to The Broadway Dreams Foundation as well as numerous benefit concerts including "Defying Inequality", "Broadway in South Africa", "The Pink Campaign on Broadway", and "Broadway for a New America", among others. He has been the featured composer for "Monday Night, New Voices" and "Cutting Edge Composers II". Jeremy's recording, "Song for New Orleans," featuring Adam Pascal, is has been used as part of a recruitment video for the American Red Cross.

Recent stage performances include the presitigious "Hollywood in Vienna" concert in Vienna, Austria honoring James Horner, Madison Square Garden, Birdland, Town Hall, The Cutting Room, 54 Below, LPR, Joe's Pub, BB Kings, The Public Theatre, Symphony Space, and Lincoln Center, the Upright Cabaret in Los Angeles, 14th Street Playhouse in Atlanta and Boston University's "BU on Broadway" series. He's also a regularly featured performer on the Rock and Roll concert series "Rockers on Broadway."