Andrew von Gregor: Superhuman



Superhuman - EP Andrew Gregor
1 Beings of Invisible Light: Equetrialus Blu (Prelude)
2 Ode to Joy (Live)
3 Foe Toes: Soothing Foot Music for Jill O'Steinig
4 Amazing Grace (Live)
5 Phallopian
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Andrew von Gregor
Composer · Arranger · Guitarist
Miami & Los Angeles

My website is being redesigned; to contact me in the interim,
please email: Andrew[at]AndrewVonGregor[dot]com


   
This video is from a holiday stage play I wrote with choreographer Jo Ellen Hoffman called "The Holidays Before Christmas"—it's an homage to Tim Burton's "The Nightmare Before Christmas" (my favorite movie!). This sequence is "Toccata sans Fugue," based on the famous organ composition "Toccata and Fugue" in D minor by Johann Sebastian Bach. (...I titled it "Toccata sans Fugue," sans being the French word for without or absent, because, after I learned the whole Bach piece, we found it to be too long for the show [almost 9 minutes], so I had the good Dr. Finkelstein enter from stage-right and interrupt me with news of the mummies in the cemetery growing restless, due to getting a sugar-high from eating too much Halloween candy.) The play chronicles the various holidays leading up to Christmas, by way of various musical and dance numbers. In addition to performing several instrumental guitar songs at different points in the play; i.e., "Auld Lang Syne" à la Carlos Santana (New Years Eve), "The Star Spangled Banner" à la Jimi Hendrix (Memorial Day), "Toccata sans Fugue" à la J.S. Bach (Halloween), "Christmas Time Is Here" à la Steve Vai (Christmas), etc., I was dressed as Jack Skellington and acted throughout as the Master of Ceremonies and narrator of the whole show, too. It was fun as Hell!! (...But VERY difficult to play all of those complicated guitar parts while wearing that crazy full-head mask!!)

NOTE: The video footage used herein was captured from various performances of the show and edited together over one of the audio tracks of my playing on one of the nights. The people who did the video production edited for presentation and, not being guitar players, didn't realize that a lot of the scenes they cut together do not sync correctly with respect to my fingers and the music I was playing. Oh, well. Enjoy!
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Andrew von Gregor - "Toccata sans Fugue"


Andrew von Gregor playing Steve Vai's arrangement of "Christmas Time Is Here," written by Vince Guaraldi and Lee Mendelson for the 1965 prime-time animated TV special, A Charlie Brown Christmas. ©2010 FamewalkFilms
Andrew von Gregor - "Christmas Time Is Here"

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