Category: Buzz

Here is what I found really moving and chilling about Sidney’s video interpretation: What she left out. What is NOT in her video gives the film a whole new and deeper meaning.

Producing Riley Max’s ROY G BIV has been both inspiring and irritating, because I also recorded my first album when I was 17, but hers is better.

Find your song.

People who love what they do are awesome. It is my honor to work with these people, not the other way around.

All the Doctor Noize albums are actually works of musical theatre. I’ve always said that the reason I got into this is kids deserve to learn longform works — things that challenge them to explore the connections between things, and get them to explore their creativity, and think about sophisticated things for more than three minutes at a time.

It’s an honor as a composer anytime a group of talented people — kids and adults — puts on a show based on characters you’ve created. I’m grateful every time it happens.

The theatrical premiere of The Ballad of Phineas McBoof happened when the Palo Alto Children’s Theatre commissioned me to write a musical based on my first two Doctor Noize albums and books. I received the commission for my first stage work for kids right as my own daughters were starting to get cast as leads in youth musical theatre. So I was really involved in that community when I got the commission, on both sides of it: as a composer and a parent.

The secret to student engagement was connecting works to their creator’s story and purpose. Learning this informed everything I’ve done as a teacher and Doctor Noize, whose albums are character-based musicals challenging kids with sophisticated fare. Students of any age will explore challenging musical puzzles when we remember: We’re all moved by people, story and purpose.

It’s been my honor to work with these creative young recording artists for the debut Regis Recording Arts album. An ensemble of students with little to no experience in the studio coming in, from Music to Nursing Majors, this recording reflects the vibrant souls I now know. We hope you enjoy Made In The Stu as much as we loved making it!

This group of students was fairly inexperienced in recording arts, which makes it all the more remarkable just how much each one of them summoned up — in honesty, artistry and work ethic — to bring these polished songs that mean so much to them into the world in a single semester.