-
NYU Master’s Recital/”My Fair Lady” – Full Live Performance
New York University, 2019. Today’s #WeeklyWednesday is the full, live performance of my #NYU Master’s recital! It’s been a lot exciting and fulfilling work to put together this program and to share it with you. I hope you enjoy it! The first half comprises solo sets of some of my favorite musical theatre pieces and a few Neapolitan songs (which I fell in love with when living in Naples, Italy, years ago…). “I Have Confidence” begins at 1:15 Neapolitan set, at 4:55 Unexpected love set, at 16:35 Adventure and longing set, at 25:00 The second half (at 34:00) is a character study of Eliza Doolittle from My Fair Lady! It…
-
NYU Recital Nov 26! “My Fair Lady” rehearsal clips
Next Tuesday is the day!! Can’t believe it’s already time for my NYU Master of Music recital! I hope you’ll join in person or via Facebook livestream! My recital begins at 8:00 pm and will run approximately 75 minutes, including a brief intermission. To join us in person, you can find details here: https://www.facebook.com/events/416738169019422/ We’ll be in NYU’s Pless Hall Black Box Theatre, which is located at 82 Washington Sq E, New York, NY 10003. I’ll also be live-streaming it on Facebook from my regular profile page (https://www.facebook.com/ashley.nicole511) and I’d love to have you join us that way! I hope to share better quality recordings from my recital directly on…
-
My Fair Lady: Understanding Eliza’s Transformation Through Language
New York University, 2019. Hey, guys! For today’s #WeeklyWednesday, I decided to share a practice take I made of a research presentation for one of my courses at #NYU (it’s weird sometimes “performing” or talking alone in my apartment in front of a camera ? I think it went pretty well and definitely felt more natural in person!). I hope you enjoy hearing my questions and ideas about Eliza’s development throughout “My Fair Lady” from a sociolinguistics/linguistic anthropology lens – and that it gives you some good food for thought! Things here are going well – just much, much busier than I’d like (it’s not a sustainable pace right now!).…
-
The Secret of Happiness
Happy #WeeklyWednesday! I love this song from the musical “Daddy Long Legs” and really enjoyed making this video – I hope you like it, too! “Daddy Long Legs” has music and lyrics by Paul Gordon and book by John Caird, based on the charming 1912 novel by Jean Webster (it’s a very sweet read!). You can sing along to the accompaniment I used by clicking here. Thanks to “The Accompanist” channel for the great track! If you like this song, check out “Like Other Girls,” also from Daddy Long Legs ? Thank you for watching, and see you next week! #AshleyWagnerArts
-
Disney Cruise Line blog
One of the highlights of my theatre career has been performing for Disney Cruise Line. In this portion of my website, I’ve re-shared many of my original posts about that experience. I hope you enjoy them! Not only was it incredible to portray characters I’ve loved since my earliest childhood memories (especially Mary Poppins), for the company who originated our modern concepts of these stories, with all that entails (the creativity, talent, and budget to stage productions in such a lavish and magical way; the ability for these performances to reach hundreds of thousands of guests) — it was a special honor to feel that through my work, I was…
-
Where Did It Go?
New work by Sarah Hirsch! Today’s #WeeklyWednesday is another demo recording from a new musical still in development: The Book of Holding On, by the incredibly talented Sarah Hirsch! The other fantastic singer you’ll hear is Dana Aber. (From Sarah:) THE BOOK OF HOLDING ON is a drama about a 13-year-old girl who is so terrified of change that she attempts to “freeze the world” by sabotaging all the change happening to her family and friends. The show explores heavy themes like teenage mental illness (particularly obsessive thoughts) while mixing in lots of humor. I’ve had the privilege of working on several new works (including another of Sarah’s, The Fall…
-
The Bear Who Couldn’t Bear to Bare His Soul
New work by Sarah Hirsch! Today’s #WeeklyWednesday is a demo recording from a new musical that is still in development: The Book of Holding On, by the incredibly talented Sarah Hirsch! The other fantastic singers you’ll hear are Ben Wexler, Amanda Savan. (From Sarah:) THE BOOK OF HOLDING ON is a drama about a 13-year-old girl who is so terrified of change that she attempts to “freeze the world” by sabotaging all the change happening to her family and friends. The show explores heavy themes like teenage mental illness (particularly obsessive thoughts) while mixing in lots of humor. (From me:) Some terribly brief context for this song – it’s one of…
-
It’s DeLovely!
Cole Porter duet with Matt Ruehlman ? Today’s #WeeklyWednesday is a throwback to last fall’s “Anything Goes” auditions! Thanks so much to my cohort friend and all-around lovely person Matt Ruehlman for singing this duet with me! Matt and I were called back as a pair for Billy and Hope, and despite having only known each other for a few days then, it was so fun (and audition-stress-relieving) to get to sing together! We recorded this a couple week’s ago after completing our first year in #NYU’s MM in Vocal Performance program! I’m so grateful for the fantastic people I get to work with every day! Cole Porter composed “It’s…
-
“Tea for Two”
This #WeeklyWednesday is certainly the most special, eventful, and personal one I’ve shared! I hope you enjoy being part of our news! “Tea for Two” was written in 1924 and featured in the Broadway musical “No, No, Nanette,” with music by Vincent Youmans and lyrics by Irving Caesar (though I modified the second verse from his original). My accompaniment is from a player piano! It’s US Roll 42296, originally played by Robert Billings. An especially big thank you to my exceptional #NYU dance instructor, Natalie Wisdom, for her original choreography! We learned this soft shoe for our musical theatre dance course this past semester and I modified it here to…
-
For Good
Duet from “Wicked” with Emily Starnes Charleton! My dear friend Emily is visiting NYC right now and we managed to squeeze in an impromptu duet!! And such a special one to celebrate a decade of friendship! ? Today’s #WeeklyWednesday is “For Good” from Stephen Schwartz’s “Wicked” ☺️ It meant a lot to get to sing with Emily again! She’s a big reason I’m at NYU right now (she’s an alumna of the program)! We were planning to get together today and decided to sing this! I hope you enjoy it, even though we didn’t have time to polish it (we literally ran through it once and then recorded this one…
