At age 27, Milwaukee native Karl Hinze is already an established composer, music director, vocal coach, arranger and accompanist, holding a Masters from Stony Brook University and currently pursuing a PhD there in Music Composition. Hinze has also been long at work on a musical with playwright Becky Goldberg and this year, a full-length production of their show 210 Amlent Avenue will be presented at the 12th New York Musical Theatre Festival (NYMF), the largest annual musical theater festival in America. The Shepherd spoke with Hinze to learn more.
What got you hooked on the musical theater genre?
I’ve loved musical theater from a very young age. I remember watching a VHS tape of the original Broadway production of Sondheim/Lapine’s Into the Woods at a family party and being completely enthralled. I was also taking piano lessons and started writing songs from a young age, but didn’t start doing it seriously until high school. By the time I was 18, I knew I wanted to write musicals.
Can you tell me about your journey with 210 Amlent Avenue?
I started brainstorming for this show in college, so when I met Becky in grad school at Stony Brook University (she was getting her MFA in Dramaturgy and I, my MA in Music Composition), I already had a rough outline and a handful of songs. I saw a short play she had written about a family considering physician-assisted suicide and I was amazed by how truthfully she was able to write about such a difficult family experience. I knew this new show I was dreaming up was going to work with similar themes (shifting family dynamics, coping with loss), so I approached her and pitched the show. From there, we started working together and have had five staged readings of the piece over the last five years. Each time, we have learned so much about the piece from hearing it out loud and listening to the responses of our audiences.
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The most rewarding and most challenging thing has been seeing this full production go up at the NYMF. We had a staged reading as part of last year’s NYMF and learned so much from that experience that we decided to re-submit a revised version of our show this year. The fact that we made it through the blind judging process and grand jury selection to be chosen as a Next Link Project show tells us that our work is ready to be seen by a larger audience, is ready for a full production. I’ve been involved with NYMF for several years, first as an intern and then as a volunteer script-reader, besides assisting with several other productions in past years. It’s very exciting and an honor to be returning this year as a producer/writer to put up a story I really believe should be told.
Can you share with me in your own words what 210 Amlent Avenue is about?
210 Amlent Avenue is a story about searching for family and coming to terms with the past. A group of extended friends and family gather at a house in the Hamptons to remember those they’ve lost, but along the way secrets are revealed that make each of them question their ideas about family and, for some of them, destroy the very things they hoped to protect.
What is most exciting about being a musical theater composer?
It’s thrilling to watch such a diverse group of people—actors, directors, stage crew, musicians, designers, and then audience—come together and be moved by your work. It’s also humbling to put yourself on a team with those same talented artists who are all bringing their own experience and skills to the project. I think in so many art forms (novel writing or perhaps opera composing) there’s a bigger sense of “the author as king” who has ultimate control over the entire enterprise. Theater, and especially musical theater, is so collaborative that you cannot be precious about too many things. You have to choose what to hold onto and what to let go, but in exchange you get a living, breathing product that might be different (and hopefully better) than you ever could’ve imagined. Also, as someone who loves writing music and storytelling, it’s a great privilege to get to combine those two things, to write music for characters in service of a story or an emotional moment.
How would you describe the music you compose? Any specific influences?
I have always loved musical theater, and have also spent my time as a graduate student honing my skills in classical composition, so now I like to think that my musical lives somewhere in-between the worlds of classical musical theater, contemporary art-music and pop music. I'm very inspired by the work of Adam Guettel, William Finn, and Jason Robert Brown (as well as the inimitable Sondheim), each of whom manages to find intensely personal ways for their characters to express themselves through music and lyrics.
Will 210 Amlent Avenue be coming to Milwaukee stages any time soon?
I hope so! Though our story takes place in the Hamptons, the ideas we’re tackling—family, memory, jealousy, love—are truly universal and I know the smart theater audiences in Milwaukee would enjoy the show.
