book and lyrics by Brett Nicholson
music by Barry Wyner

CAST:
Tally Sessions (Phil)
Julie Foldesi (Remy)


In the first year of the Workshop, you don’t get to choose your writing partners. Composers and lyricists are paired together for each assignment. Collaborators must quickly adapt to each other’s personality, taste, and writing style, and create something out of nothing to perform the following week. It was exhilarating when the chemistry clicked, and kind of like a slow-motion train wreck (with group critique) when it didn’t. I was very lucky that for the last and biggest assignment of Year 1, everything clicked.

Most of the first-year assignments were single songs. But the final assignment of Year 1 was to write a 15-minute show.

I wrote with Barry Wyner, who has a soaring, fresh-yet-familiar style. Barry is currently winning accolades and awards for "Calvin Berger," which began as his 2nd Year project at BMI.

Like all Workshop assignments, "Dearly Beloved" was written in only a few days. It remains one of my favorite pieces.

The recording you'll hear is our live presentation to the Workshop. Barry is on piano, and the wonderful Julie Foldesi and Tally Sessions were our performers.


You can follow along with the script by scrolling through the document below.