Music. According to Kim.

Chase Holfelder was a fairly recent discovery for me and when I was looking around for Les Mis covers and saw that he'd done this one, I was immediately intrigued. If you're not familiar with Chase, I did a video spotlight on him last month that you can read here . But he does a series on his YouTube channel where he takes songs that were originally done in a major key and puts them into a minor key. It's so interesting to hear how different this can make a song sound. Chase takes it one step farther and changes up the instrumentation. I think it's probably safe to say that you've never heard "I Dreamed a Dream" like this before! Check it out.

We continue my  Les Misérables celebration with an offering from one of my new favorite groups, 7th Ave. I've written about them before and undoubtedly will continue to do so as I have really enjoyed everything I've seen from them so far.  When I was coming up with the Les Mis related videos that I wanted to highlight, this was a pretty obvious choice and when you watch it you'll see why. It's an a cappella rendition of "Bring Him Home" and that's all I'm going to say about it for now. This cover features Kelley Jakle (the blonde one) who made the decision to leave the group earlier this year to pursue other projects. I don't think I've written about them since it was announced that she was leaving. She has a beautiful voice and I'm happy that 7th Ave introduced me to her. I wish her the best moving forward, along with the remaining members of 7th Ave. They've done some covers with some guest artists that have been great. I'm exci...

When I decided that it was time to get back to writing my blog, I decided that I wanted to focus a little more of musical theater. It's something that I've loved for a really long time. I remember going to see shows with my family at a relatively young age and seeing musicals is one of my favorite things. Last year, I dedicated an entire week to The Phantom of the Opera . Last month, I did a write-up about one of my new favorite shows Something Rotten  and now? Now I've decided to dedicate the next few posts to Les Misérables . Les Misérables  was the first musical that I ever truly loved. There'd been shows I'd seen and liked, but there was something so special about Les Mis . The first time I saw it was at the lovely National Theater in Washington, D.C. with a group from my school when I was in 7th grade. I remember sitting up in the balcony and being completely mesmerized by the show. I ended up getting both the CD and the VHS - yes, the VHS - of the 10th Ann...

      "It's a musical, a musical, and nothing's as amazing as a musical."  Yep. One of my favorite things to do is going to see a musical. I love them so much and have been lucky in that I've gotten to see quite a few of them. I've enjoyed pretty much all of the musicals I've seen, but there's a few that stand out above the rest. These are the shows that I will always want to see whenever they happen to come around, no matter how many times I've seen them already. I think everyone who loves musicals has some that fall into that category. They're the shows that you love above all others. For me, these shows include Les Miserables , Phantom of the Opera , Wicked and The Lion King . And now another musical has joined that list. That show is, of course, Something Rotten.  I got to see it back at the end of June and I absolutely loved it. I had a feeling that it would be good, but it completely surpassed my expectations. I can't rememb...

VoicePlay + Disney? Magical. VoicePlay + Broadway? Equally magical. VoicePlay + Disney on  Broadway? Extra magical! Or, to quote Igor from Young Frankenstein (the musical), it's " Right up there with the world's greatest pairs! Like Laurel and Hardy/Like Coke and Bacardi/ Like Juliet and Romeo/ Ebb and flow/ To and fro...destined to be a great pair!" Sidenote #1: I cut out a good chunk of the lyrics from fro to destined, but you get the idea. Sidenote #2: VoicePlay + Young Frankenstein?  Oh, the hilarity that could bring. But back to the issue at hand. VoicePlay's aca-DISNEY. What, you thought I was going to dedicate a month to Disney and not   feature VoicePlay at some point? Have you met me? Actually, it occurs to me that maybe you haven't. If that's the case, let me introduce myself. My name is Kim and I am a VoicePlayaholic. I've long accepted the fact that there's no help for it. It's no one's fault. Actually, scratch that. It...

September 17th, 2014. Unbeknownst to me, a group that I had never heard of uploaded a video that I wouldn't come across until sometime in January of this year. The group? VoicePlay. The video? Their ACA Top 10 Broadway countdown. Confession: I originally started this about a month or so ago and was going to use it as a way to explain my love of musicals. Upon realizing that the one year anniversary of its release was approaching, I determined that this would become more of a tribute. One in which I'm going to dissect a bit in an effort to explain why I like it so much. Now this countdown was not my introduction to VoicePlay; that was "Survivor", their collaboration with Home Free. That video made me like VoicePlay enough to watch their other videos. Starting with this one. The one that made me love them. It remains my favorite of all their videos, which is saying something since I like all of them. Seeing it performed live was worth the price of the tickets to the Sin...