Andy McGregor

This week has been one of the most challenging, and exciting, that I think I've ever faced. We are just about to head into the final day of development of my new musical 'Towards the Moon' with a showing of it tonight. The four days have consisted of me working with 6 fantastic MA musical theatre students from the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland and an equally fantastic musical director on developing the piece alongside the director Michael Howell and my director-friend Emily. We started with a readthrough of the whole script with me singing the songs on piano. It's about 90 mins long. We then had some great, insightful discussions on the piece and it was fairly mind-blowing to hear the different interpretations, and therefore possibilities, of the piece. I had previously cut the show for this week as I knew the final performance was to be no more than 40 mins - however after the readthrough it became clear that a lot of work had to be done to make the piece rea...

Well... this week has been mental.  Totally mental.  I was lucky enough to receive a call from the director Guy Hollands asking if I could be assistant-director for the Citizens Theatre's upcoming production of 'Hansel and Gretel'.  This was totally unexpected but of course I jumped at the opportunity.  The rehearsal schedule is intense, with most days between 11 and 12 hours long. It's a big learning curve for me, vein thrown into this big-budget, large-scale show, but I've loved every minute.  You can check out the trailer here: On top of that I also had a gig to play at King Tuts this week with Paul McGranaghan and his band.  This went very well, it was odd being sat at the back just playing keys and singing the odd backing vocal, but was really good fun to have the pressure off and just enjoy making some cool tunes. I ALSO had graduation this week which was a lovely event with a good chunk of our course in attendance.  It was good to s...

How is this.... similar to this.... So I have been pretty busy these last few weeks recording ex-bandmate Paul McGranaghan's latest album - currently entitled 'Carry The Torch'.  It's the first time in over a year that I have been back in my studio working and recording with other musicians and, after so much time spent directing and working on plays, it struck me how similar to the two disciplines - music production and theatre directing - are. Both are about getting people comfortable and ready to be creative.  In recording this is about making sure things such as a headphone mix is as good as it can be, that the musicians can see one another and that there are as few boundaries (such as playing at a certain volume) in the way of working as possible.  Unfortunately in my studio there are a number of limitations in place but we do our best to get everyone as comfortable as possible.  I believe the same kinds of thing are important in directing...

"... the love you take - is equal to the love you make." The single greatest ending to an album ever methinks, and the only way the greatest band ever could go out ('Her Majesty' doesn't count). That's me at the end of a long, amazing road, only two more shows to go and my time as a student at the RSAMD (now the Royal Conservatoire) is over.  It has undoubtably been the best year of my life and I am sure that the friends, and arch-enemies (only joking), that I have met this year shall remain for many years to come. So what to do now that it's all over?  Weeeellllll, I have been very fortunate in that the Conservatoire have asked me back to teach their second year students about theatre in education and have also offered me a bit of directing work on their production of Twelfth Night - which is nice. I also have a meeting with the National Theatre of Scotland in a few days, they have said that they will be taking me on as a freelancer on one of ...

Tonight was dress rehearsal for 'Mother Maria' and it went very well indeed.  Despite a few initial reservations about the space, things went extremely well and I'm really excited to get the ball up and rolling tomorrow. It has been a really fun and challenging time working on this show.  We started the process aaaaaages ago, last November I think and I am very happy with the results.  The cast have given me their all and I'm sure the performances will excite and intrigue the audience. We open in the Tron tomorrow night, the opening of a show is always a nerve-wracking event but they are good nerves, ones of excitement and not trepidation!

Death of A No-One - One Man Town by A R McGregor This is an album I recorded with One Man Town last year. It was a rush getting it done before I left to go to Uni and therefore it is not exactly the fully finished product.  There are a few songs that I'm sure we would have worked on more, and one or two we would have dropped, had we worked on the project longer but I moved away and was too busy to go back to it.  Now, a year later, the others have gone off and started a new band so I decided to just draw a line and let people hear the album if they want, I may take songs from it and use melodies for other things, and I do think it's a good album, just there's a couple of tracks too many perhaps. The idea was to create a concept album about a mediocre guy's life.  I have no idea why, just kind of came out that way.  Most of the songs merge into one another and there are repetitions of themes etc - mainly to do with the sun.  I wrote all of the songs apa...

Here's a piece of orchestral music I wrote last night, for a movement sequence in Mother Maria.    Saint of the Open Door by A R McGregor