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[0:00] Martín Acuña: Hi everyone. I am Martín Acuña and you are listening to Backstage Talk.

[0:18] Martín Acuña: Hello everyone. Welcome back. Today's guest is a long-time family friend.

[0:25] Martín Acuña: He has been my mentor, my first vocal coach, an amazing teacher. I have with me Leonardo Palacios.

[0:34] Martín Acuña: He is a Colombian musical theater music director, composer, and just an incredible and astounding artist. Leonardo, thank you for coming over. Welcome to Backstage Talk.

[0:51] Leonardo Palacios: Thank you, Martín. I'm very happy to be here with you today. Thank you for inviting me. We are together at last as any song here. Together at last. Yes, together at last.

[1:01] Martín Acuña: So, Leonardo, you've been working in musical theater for basically the past 20 years. Because we've basically shared a stage since we were little. We were basically 5, 6 years old and we've been working together. You were my teacher in college. You were my music director in college. And outside college, you were my vocal coach. So basically everything I know about vocal performance, I have it from you. You've taught me that. Today I invited you to the show to pick your brains about composition and songwriting in musical theater. Because I know that you have a vast experience on that field. So first question, what do you need to compose music for musicals?

[1:56] Leonardo Palacios: Great question. I would say first that it's very important to know voice. To know how the voice works. How the voice expresses. How the sound of the voice. To think the voice is an instrument, really. And as you were writing a song, or not a song, it's a piece, for example, for cello and piano, you need to learn about both. Piano and cello. Not necessarily to play them, but you need to be able to understand the register. How the sound is better in these moments of the song or in the piece. And just to give an example with the cello idea. But basically I think it's very, very important to know voices. And a very beautiful challenge that has musicals is that you need to write for each character.

And each character has a gender. So you have men or female. Or you have different voices. Or the characters are a princess or a prince or a witch or a soldier. Or I don't know. Or an old man. Or a monster. Or maybe a little bird. I don't know. Magical Theatre has so many characters. And in a way, their voices need to sound comfortable for them. But at the same time, you need to be very picky and have lots of care of the text of the lyrics. Because if you write something that is very high, they can sing it for sure. But maybe you're not going to understand the words. And the words are a key there. I would say that's one of my first things to say there. That is about how, what you need to know for musicals.

And the other thing, I think, is to think as an actor, maybe. Or think or has that feel or that connection with the storytelling. Something that I'm learning during this process of writing songs for musicals or to write theatrical music. Let's call it in that way, too. Not necessarily you need to write a musical to be a musical theatre composer. You can be just a composer who writes in the style of musicals. Scott Allen is doing all the time, or Joey Contreras, that I love. It's just songs that you hear that song and say, that's from a musical. It's kind of a nationality, an identity. So, that's something that I think is important. But at the same time, it's very nice that musicals are so open to diversity in all the musical genres.

So, you have salsa and at the same time opera. But at the same time, you have a classical standard. But at the same time, you have rock or pop or, I mean, tons of styles. All of them can be part of a musical. So, I love that. But at the same time, I feel that you need, when I say the words, think like an actor, is to really think in the character and not only do beautiful music. Beautiful music, it's everywhere. And for that, you can write a beautiful pop album or a beautiful ballad. So, for me, that's very, very important. And the way to do that is that you need to learn. You need to know or learn and study and hear a lot. So, as you were saying, many years doing musicals and hearing lots of stuff and new works.

And so, all the time, the brain and the ear is like when you're tasting new food. It's like, I want to try that. I love bread, but I'm going to try bread with more cheese or with chocolate or with almonds inside the bread. What is going to happen there? So, all the time, it's very important for me that to think like an actor, referring to what I was saying, and to know very well the voice and to enjoy the process, I guess. I love it.

[6:00] Martín Acuña: One of the key questions I have for you today is just like the integration of everything. Because in school, they teach us that musical theater is the integration of music, dance, and acting. But inside the music, you also have different elements that are integrated. And that's not only characters or the performance part of a song or the whole show, but you also have the music part and the lyrics part. How do you think that music is integrated with lyrics or vice versa?

[6:44] Leonardo Palacios: I think lyrics, for me, are everything, basically. Because lyrics give me completely the mood of what we need to say or what we need to tell. I think musical theater is about content. Audiences want to hear content. If not, you're going to hear a beautiful ballad again, or you're going to hear a beautiful bambuco, a llenato, or whatever music we're talking, that's Colombian rhythms. But if you want musical theater, you want to hear content. You want to hear what's going to happen to that character. And the character is going to have a transformation during the song, maybe during the song he's going to discover, or she's going to discover something, or maybe she's going to leave the place, or maybe the character is going to be in love with someone, or maybe the character is very depressed, and because of that song, is more depressed at the end, or the contrary, has a change and make you feel something different.

It's kind of the idea of defying gravity. When Elphaba says, I'm going to fly, and I'm going to defy gravity, and no matter, so that content gives you all the music. And in a way, I feel that when you have great lyrics, music starts to appear magically. That's something that I love. When I start to work with a lyricist, and I have new lyrics, I just love to start to play. And sometimes, vice versa, as you were asking, you have some ideas in the music. Maybe you said, I know it's a scene about a hug between a mother and a daughter after years of not seeing each other. And you start to think, oh, how a hug can sound in the piano? Which key works for that? And then you start to integrate, as you were just asking, that I love that question, to integrate maybe the mood with some lyrics, but with maybe some movement as well.

So you said, okay, maybe this is fast, or maybe this is more chords that are long and they're low, because you have all at the same time, as I was talking about, knowing the voice, you can play with registers. So if you want to hear something, maybe you go in the chest voice, that is more like we talk. But if you want to make very clear a lot of text that is quick, then we have a long note, you can go up. And so you change the register. But at the same time, while the voice is going up on that, let's say, climatic or important moment to be heard, at the same time, you can have lots of orchestration. Or in the piano, I can go to the down section of the low keys, so I can have extremes. So I have the accompaniment, low notes, but my voice is high.

So I have lots of sound covered there. So that's a lot to integrate. And to work with musicals, again, it's to work with content. So it's something that I really, really appreciate when the lyrics say everything. And you have tender rhymes as well. So you have, you need to rhyme something with, so you maybe find that, that note that I know the word is love. So you can have, I have an idea now, more or just words that finish with the same rhyme. So you can have notes to make, or you can have a hook. For example, into the woods, into the woods, into the woods, into the woods, out of the woods, into the woods is the hook. You can have tons of text. And Sondheim was, is such a genius of lyrics and music. And you can find in his music, all that hooks and ideas of how you can be in that world and you just start to hear. And he's like an open door to the wonderful story that you need to hear or listen.

[10:43] Martín Acuña: I totally agree with you. You've just said a lot of things. And during that creative process, because I remember when a couple of years back, when I was in college and we were doing a musical, an original musical, you wrote a song for that musical. And I was just so intrigued by your creative process. Where did you start? Did lyrics come first? Music come first? Because in that specific situation, the one that I just talked about, we already had like the storyline and we already had, yeah, like the whole show, we only needed one specific song for a specific situation in the story. So I just want to pick your brain a little bit about your creative process, writing for musicals.

[11:41] Leonardo Palacios: That's something that I really love to do. That's, I would say, basically one of my favorite parts of the process. Once the show is done, it's done. So the shows are running and that's it. And you make a recording and beautiful and you enjoy and you cry or you feel happy to do the work. But really what I really enjoy, and I share that too as an MD, as a musical director, I really prefer all the life to be on the rehearsal room than on the stage. I love to be in the rehearsal room. I love to create the characters with the actors and I love to play with them. And I think to do that a lot in my rehearsals, as I'm working here in Columbia, in MISI Productions, that we produce lots of shows all the time and I'm in charge, it's going to be 10 years this August of working for MISI as a musical director and playing lots of shows with lots of actors.

During that process and seeing them understand that language that is so particular, because it's something that is beyond words or beyond music. It's something that is just there and you feel so comfortable working on that environment.

[13:01] Leonardo Palacios: I don't know what I do. I just think that I start, I start playing the piano some, some colors of, when I say colors, it's chords, you know, like a C major, but maybe I put an F sharp. So I have like kind of, of, of, of colors. And something that used to happen to me is that I write kind of fast when I have more people around. When I'm alone is kind of harder. When I'm alone, I write more songs for myself in a way. Like I want to talk about the sky and the clouds and life and more reflexive, more personal. But when I'm in the rehearsal room, you have that energy of everybody wanting to be in the show and everybody wanting to rehearse and everybody learning the parts and everybody being there and dressed to dance and ready to take notes.

And that ambient, that, that energy makes me more creative and makes me have that, that, that, that, that, you know, it's not, I have no other words to say. And then something that today, let's say when we worked together, it was very fast and we were with Camila Brucheta, she's great and she's such a great book writer and, and, and lyricist. But I love that we were having to hear what we need and read it. And it's very usual that you never have time. So it's basically, you need the song in 10 minutes. So you need to do the song in five and then the other five teach it and then it's done. I'm just kidding, but it's kind of that. So on that process, I remember that it was there, really. I wrote the song there with you, with the students there, and I work with you there.

And maybe when I'm home, I record everything on my phone and then here and, but the other thing is that I, today that I'm working on some projects is that I love to work with lyricists. I think it's very important to work with lyricists or when you work with lyricists, it's nice because you can like try and share thoughts and propose. Or in the other cases, I was just doing a beautiful course of music composition at IMT in the courses online and they offered, and it was with Anna Jacobs and she's great. And we were doing lots of, of lyrics of other lyricists, but without working together, just they, they send us the lyrics and then we start to work. And something that I was very new for me, because I'm used to write Spanish, I, it's very, not, not very common to me to write in English, is that I found that really the, the, the song form, if you call it ABA or a verse chorus song or a free form, more theatrical way to go, it's something that you get from the lyricist more than from the music, because the lyrics can be written in a way that you can have verse chorus, or you can have A-A-B-A and you can understand how the rhymes are there and you can understand how the mood is going and you can see how the, the, the, the journey of the character during the song is going.

And I love that because when you read the lyric, I love to, to, in my process, that's something I can share, I love to really work hard on the lyric, reading it and making part, the lyric part of my language. First in the words, I prefer even no go to the piano, just read the text, understand how the, the scansion, that's a word that I learned recently, is doing. So I have, I don't know, hi, Martine, you are great. So I have like, hi, Martine, so I say, okay, maybe I can go there and then where are you from? So I want to play with that or so, and then of course it's Colombia with a lot of us, so I can just, but before to do that, I need to really see how, what the text is giving me and what I need to put on that text so that I can make the audiences understand what the lyricist want to do.

If I start to write something lot with tons of ornaments and tons of high registers, nobody's going to understand and it's going to be a beautiful song and not a theatrical song. So that's one thing that I love. And the other thing that I love to do is when I, I love to make a lot of impro. I love to play with impro and that happens to me usually at nights after rehearsal because I have lots of music inside and I, and that's something that I discovered doing warmups, vocal warmups, because I was always wanting to do like nice warmups, like interesting warmups of beautiful chords and not only a lot of time, but it's nice too, but I wanted to just do that and change like a dissonance or doing a three voice part vocal warmup.

And then that, that those kinds of exercises start to build in a way my creativity habits. So as soon as I finish a rehearsal that I just have lots of information and adrenaline and lots of things happening when you finish a rehearsal, I just love to relax doing some impro. Like, okay, I'm done, but I'm not like just jumping in the piano to the door. I just want to do some impro and some melodies are there in my pocket to use them later. I love it. I love it. And you've just let me pick your brain about musical composition. Do you have any tips for upcoming composers or lyricists that want to spend their lives working on musical theater?

[18:36] Leonardo Palacios: Yes. The first one I would say is hear lots of musicals and not only hear them and say, I love that show, but be curious about the show. So be curious about who is the composer and maybe that composer, where did he or she study? And so the teacher was another composer or see, for example, the lyricist or see the director or see the actors, or start to go to the score and start to make an analysis of how the chords work, the harmony, how the form, the forms in ABA or standard or go to, and musicals are so vast. I mean, so immense in there, as I was just talking a couple of questions ago about that musicals are in the heights, but at the same time are light in the piazza that are completely different musical styles and be true to your own style.

That's something that I love about musicals too. It's that how wonderful that a composer from another country, for example, in my case that I'm Colombian, I would love to write things with my rhythms, but in the language of musical theater, that is something that I learned a lot from Missy Murillo, the Colombian composer of musicals, that she was doing musicals, but maybe you can have a cumbia, that is her traditional rhythmic music from the Pacific Ocean or from the coasts really, but at the same time you can have a bambuco that is from the Andean region, that it's full of not percussion, only guitars or tiple or flutes, and it's such a more romantic music and so different from the coast that is full of percussion, have some like kind of African rhythm percussion and all of that, but it's something that why not try to hear stories, and something that I love too is that find someone to partner, to work with, that's something that I think is a good tip too, and don't wait too much to start.

It's not basically that you want to make a musical in, I don't know, you're just starting and one month after you're going to have a complete musical, but start modest, but start so maybe I'm going to write two songs, but it have a relation between one and the other, and I'm going to have a guest lyricist, or I'm going to, even if he's your brother, mother, boyfriend, girlfriend, neighbor, whatever, but try to, or friends that are absolutely, let's say just, I'm just was giving an example, but people that you know that maybe like that, and the only way to do it is practicing really, because it's whatever in life, but basically something to write musicals, you can study hours of books and read, and that's wonderful as well, or make lots of analysis, but start, sit on the piano, sit on the piano, or in the guitar, or in your phone with no accompaniment, only a cappella, but start, start, start, start, start, and get excited with each new adventure, with each new sound, with each new project, and with each new story to tell.

That's something wonderful about our job, is that always is a new challenge, because we have always new stories to tell, so that makes us so active and so alive, because each show is a complete new world, so that's wonderful, and maybe, and go out of your comfort zone as well, maybe that would be an advice for people who have lots of experiences in other kinds of music, you know, and say, well, I'm going to write a musical, but I've been the last 10 years writing pop, or rock, or other kinds of music, so try to go out of your comfort zone, and start to, okay, I need to write a musical, not a pop song again, that's wonderful, that you can use all the resources, and all the experience, and all the musical background that you have, but work in service of theater, not only in work of music, and collaborate, that's something that I wrote, that I read in some, in Stephen Schwartz, the Carol DeGrier book that she wrote, that is wonderful, the book is called Defying Gravity, and it's like his life, and a biography written by Carol DeGrier, and I think I wrote, I read there that Stephen was saying, if you want to work in musical theater, you need to collaborate, if you don't collaborate, don't work in musical theater, and I think that's wonderful, because musicians, we are very, as lots of artists, we protect a lot, and we have kind of an ego idea of this is my music, and nobody can say anything about it, and this is what I want, this is my sound, but it happens that when you go to a musical, no, anything of that matters, it matters that you serve to a story, you're just one more, you are not, you have a book writer, you have a lyricist, you are the composer, and then you have an arranger, and you have an orchestrator, you have a cast, you have a producer, you have so many people around that are going to be touching your material, so you need to be generous, and understand that is the process, so that's another another tip that I would include.

[24:16] Martín Acuña: I love it, thank you so much for letting me pick your brain. Before we go, I want to know your top five favorite musical theater composers, and then your shows, your favorite shows.

[24:24] Leonardo Palacios: Five and five?

[24:34] Leonardo Palacios: Okay, so I would say for composers of musical theater, I love deeply Jason Robert Brown, Pasek and Paul, Andrew Lippa, Alan Lincoln, Rodgers and Hammerstein, I would say that my five, I would have more, but I was in my five, and shows, I would say I love, I love Wicked, I love Daddy Long Legs deeply, Once on this Island, Mrs. Peter Pan, up here in Colombia, and um, hard, hard, hard, hard, let's say uh, Durham and Hanson.

[25:08] Martín Acuña: Awesome, Leo, thank you so much, it's been wonderful, I, I mean, you said a lot of things, and I just love it, thank you so much for coming over, and I cannot wait to, one, work again with you, and Teo, and see other shows that you're working on, and whatever comes in your future.

[25:33] Leonardo Palacios: Thank you, Martin, it was a pleasure to talk to you.

[25:39] Martín Acuña: Thanks everyone for listening to this new episode of Backstage Talk. Remember to follow us on Facebook and Instagram at Backstage Talk Podcast.