Pantages Theatre Hollywood Welcomes HAiR

The 2009 Tony Award-winning musical revival of HAIR: The American Tribal Love-Rock Musical opens tonight in Los Angeles, January 6th 2011 beginning with a Red Carpet with HAIR Alumni from the original L.A., Broadway, London West End, National Tour and Broadway Revival companies, as well as many celebrities of film, television and music, supporting. HAIR will be playing a strictly-limited three-week engagement through January 23, 2011.

In 2009, The Public Theater production of HAIR transferred to Broadway at the Al Hirschfeld Theatre, beginning previews on March 6, 2009, with an official opening on March 31, 2009. The production was greeted with almost uniformly positive critical response. The New York Times says "Diane Paulus's THRILLING, EMOTIONALLY RICH production delivers INTENSE, UNADULTERATED JOY" and Time Out New York says "HAIR SPEAKS TO A WHOLE NEW GENERATION!."
With a score including such enduring musical numbers as "Let the Sun Shine In," Aquarius," "Hair" and "Good Morning Starshine," HAIR depicts the birth of a cultural movement in the 60's and 70's that changed America forever. The musical follows a group of hopeful, free-spirited young people who advocate a lifestyle of pacifism and free-love in a society riddled with intolerance and brutality during the Vietnam War. As they explore sexual identity, challenge racism, experiment with drugs and burn draft cards, the show resonates with an irresistible message of hope more than 40 years after it first opened on Broadway.
The cast will feature members from the recent Broadway production of HAIR including Steel Burkhardt as Berger, Matt DeAngelis as Woof, Kaitlin Kiyan as Crissy, Darius Nichols as Hud, Paris Remillard as Claude, Kacie Sheik as Jeanie, Nicholas Belton, Larkin Bogan, Allison Guinn, Josh Lamon, John Moauro, Kate Rockwell, Cailan Rose, Jen Sese, Lawrence Stallings and Lee Zarrett. Additional HAIR alumni include Phyre Hawkins as Dionne and Caren Lyn Tackett as Sheila.
The cast will also feature newcomers Shaleah Adkisson, Emily Afton, Corey Bradley, Marshal Kennedy Carolan, Laura Dreyfuss, Mike Evariste, Lulu Fall, Tripp Fountain, Nkrumah Gatling, Christine Nolan, Emmy Raver-Lampman and Tanesha Ross.
HAIR is directed by Diane Paulus and choreographed by Karole Armitage. HAIR features a book and lyrics by Gerome Ragni and James Rado and music by Galt MacDermot.
HAIR was produced on Broadway by The Public Theater (Oskar Eustis, Artistic Director; Andrew D. Hamingson, Executive Director) Jeffrey Richards, Jerry Frankel, Gary Goddard Entertainment, Kathleen K. Johnson, Nederlander Presentations, Inc., Fran Kirmser Productions/Jed Bernstein, Marc Frankel, Broadway Across America, Barbara Manocherian/WenCarLar Productions, JK Productions/Terry Schnuck, Andy Sandberg, JAM Theatricals, The Weinstein Company / Norton Herrick, Jujamcyn Theaters, Joey Parnes and by special arrangement with Elizabeth Ireland McCann.

UK's UCKFIELD FM HERALDS PAUL KORDA LIVE FROM LA

Uckfield FM's Jim Richman interview with Paul Korda re-scheduled and will be live from Los Angeles on Saturday November 6th 2010 at 7pm GMT (11am Pacific time) simulcast worldwide on their site.

International Entertainment News - Wednesday October 20th 2010 - Stephen Fisher, staff reporter - Los Angeles

Paul Korda, whose work spans from being an artist and producer, recording at Abbey Road for EMI's Parlophone Records in the late 60's, as well as being in the Original UK Cast of HAiR at the same time, to his recent success, looks forward to sharing the fruits of his understanding and growth, with Jim Richman.

When asked about the upcoming interview Paul Korda said "The announcement of British PM David Cameron's austerity package this week, is an opportunity to remind ourselves of the enormous role of culture in the arts in times of frugality. The UK has always flourished artistically when creativity is the real thrill that an individual can have. In the past 20 years, we've seen mindless consumption reach the point where the planets resources have suffered with tons of plastic uselessness, and our individual nature has often been overlooked in mindless purchasing." Paul Korda went on to add that " I have survived in the precarious avenues of the music business, mainly due to my love of creativity, and I'm looking forward to discuss what I've learned with Uckfield FM's Jim Richman, who is going to air some songs from Seeds, my new album, that is a product of creating for the love of it. Let's get real. When you don't have much, you create, love and socialize more and it's about time we returned to Humanity!"

Well all I can say, as the reporter, is GET WITH IT!

Paul Korda Video Release on Brightcove

International Entertainment News, Hollywood, California The new video by Paul Korda entitled "The Language of Love" is released this week from his "Seeds" CD on Brightcove, YouTube and Google
Steve Fisher, webmaster for PaulKorda.com reported that the new video displays well on the Brightcove site, which has some of the latest video technology.
He went on to add that Google, YouTube and Brightcove are definitely supreme in trustworthiness in truly representing both artists and corporate advertising.
The Language of Love - Paul Korda

From Paul Korda's new CD "Seeds", another underblown production that shows that with a great song the music lives in your soul first and the video second! It features Paul's journey from his second birthday party to his sons Felix and Lewis growing up, his friends Chris Spedding who plays guitar on the track, PP Arnold, who recorded some of Paul's earliest songs, Sonja Kristina (Curved Air) who appeared with Paul in the original London cast of HAiR and their 2007 appearance at San Francisco's Summer of Love, as well as the Santa Ana cast of the show, along with HAiR producer Michael Butler, and Chicago guitarist Chris Pinnick who played with the Paul Korda Band at the Roxy in Los Angeles. The main reason for the songs being is the uniting power of Love that lives in the creativity of all people, no matter what background or country they are from. Creative artists swear by it as being the fuel of all great creations, as this is.

40 Years: Individuality and the Summer of Love

Editorial Opinion by Paul Korda
As the Summer of Love 40th Anniversary celebration in Golden Gate Park approaches on September 2nd a suggestion about the commercialization of individuality







Looking at the past forty years, one wonders how successive generations try to resolve the mistakes of their forefathers and foremothers, for that matter. From my own point of view, being born of two European musicians on a gig, in 1948, in colonial Singapore, leaving a British boarding school to join the Original London cast of Hair, in 1968, I had been fortunate to be able to express my feelings and my individuality through writing songs. My hopes, fears, my parent’s divorce, at age five, together with all the tests that life gives to us all, expressed through music.

Throughout my growth, rigid people often tried to get me to conform, sometimes using ruthless methods, such as a music publisher ordering me to have a haircut before he would pay me an advance on a hit I had written. When I refused to accept that kind of behavior, I faced hardship and homelessness, but I refused to give up my individual nature. After all, I knew no other way of objectively seeing things. I wrote songs against pollution, war, repression of individuality, and all before the Hippie revolution got under way. To me, these issues were no fad; they were, and still are very important to me. I was branded a troublemaker for wanting to be paid on my songs, and described in adjectives quite unbecoming to my integrity, by people who resented my liveliness, curiosity, and creativity, because they themselves were caught up in acting out what they thought other people would prefer to see them as, and not who they really were. In other words they had given up their individuality, and often for a paycheck.

As I prepare to join the cast of the musical HAiR for Golden Gate Parks “Summer of Love 40th Anniversary” on Sunday September 2nd, an event proclaimed by San Francisco’s Mayor Gavin Newsom, to celebrate Individuality, I look at my perspective of the past 40 years. The colorful individuals of the 60s who expressed their feelings, their love, their hope for an end to all warring and a pollution free planet. They enjoyed the uniqueness of everyone, it was far more interesting than mass produced entertainment. The nurturing of individuals was far better than their persecution, but now individuals are often punished for their unique perspective. Individuals are still picked on by “anti-life”, who would rather pretend that everything is going well, believing it would be too revealing to tell the truth, when in actuality they are lonely, worried, frustrated and would really like to tell someone their truth. They choose leaders with huge egos and not unique individuals whose actions are louder than their words, like JFK and Al Gore. The expression of Art has been commoditized until its message goes unheard in the empty halls of consciousness, even though many of its prophecies, forty years ago, have come true. There’s little doubt that humanity faces the decline of our paradise – Earth.

We’ll probably need to end all wars due to our troops being needed to help with disasters caused by climate change, and God forbid fighting over the ownership of water. So as the 1967 Summer of Love reminds us of a direction we could have gone, toward human reconciliation, Peace, Love and individual expressiveness, it seems important to embrace 2007’s Summer of Love with all our hearts and not look at it as a fad or a product for commercialization.

Paul Korda is a music artist and independent columnist whose work has been published by the ECT News Network whose daily publications include TechNewsWorld, E-Commerce Times, Linux Insider, MacNewsWorld. He is also the editor of International Entertainment News.

His songs have been recorded/sung by Roger Daltrey, Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons, Elkie Brooks, Italy's Patty Pravo, Robert Palmer, Dave Edmunds, PP Arnold and many others.
He was also a member of the Original London Cast of the musical “HAiR”.

Other related article by Paul Korda
HAIR EMPHASIZES PEACE AT SUMMER OF LOVE

“HAIR” EMPHASIZES PEACE AT THE SUMMER OF LOVE 40th ANNIVERSARY GOLDEN GATE PARK

INTERNATIONAL ENTERTAINMENT NEWS, Hollywood, California
Just added to the line up of San Francisco’s Mayor Gavin Newsom's officially proclaimed celebration of The Summer of Love 40th Anniversary, in Golden Gate Park on Sunday September 2nd 2007, the 60’s musical HAIR to add vitality to the anti-war movement of the 21st century

Various National and International cast members from the musical HAIR will re-unite to celebrate the beginnings of the musical, as a build up to next years 40th Anniversary of the Musicals opening on Broadway in 1968, with a re-enactment of “Flesh Failures”, to emphasize the consequences of wars to gain Peace. It is hoped that Jim Rado, the musical’s author will play Claude. Productions of Hair are currently being produced on Campus’ around the Globe which indicates that youth in the 21st Century echo the anti-war stance that Hair delivered in the Vietnam Era. “In the history of musical theater, no other production has made such a strong point, that if individuality is nurtured, peace and love will be the result”, says Paul Korda who played Paul in the Original London Cast, who is also appearing. Hair Production information is being directed by Barbara Moore
email: Hairreunion2007@aol.com Phone (925) 818-7637 c, (707) 935-1972 h
The Hair segment to be directed by Walter Michael Harris
Photograph courtesy of the Hair Archives
Other articles by Paul Korda include
40 YEARS:INDIVIDUALITY AND THE SUMMER OF LOVE