Ep 74: Castle Gillian

Host Luisa Lyons chats with Kevin Purcell, the multi-award winning Australian conductor,  musical director, composer, and arranger whose work spans across the worlds opera, classical, and musical theatre.

Go behind the scenes of Kevin’s latest work, Castle Gillian: An Irish Tale, a full-length virtual reality musical. Discover how the musical came to be, how it was made, and the exciting new model behind its release. Castle Gillian was an official selection of the Festival of International Virtual and Augmented Reality Stories; and was recently screened at the Cannes World Film Festival where it was nominated for Best Soundtrack, and won Best 360º Film, and Best Musical Film.

Kevin also shares the inspiring story of his grandma - Dame Mary Dale, how being an opera conductor led him to musical theatre, the differences between working in the classical world and musical theatre, and working on the capture of Cats!

Kevin Purcell is one of Australia’s most distinguished and awarded orchestral and opera conductors. Currently, Kevin serves as musical director for the Australian Discovery Orchestra – one of the world’s most innovative orchestral ensembles – whilst maintaining an active freelance career in the USA. He originally studied conducting at the Moscow Conservatory with Gennady Rozhdestvensky (1992), with subsequent graduate conducting studies at the Janácek Academy of Music (JAMU) with Otakar Trhlík, culminating with a Masters degree in orchestral conducting at Bard College (NY) under the late Harold Farberman.  Additionally, Kevin studied Opera conducting with British conductor and Glyndebourne music director, Myer Fredman and Carlo Montanaro.

Kevin has previously been the musical director of the original production of CATS at the New London Theatre and for the South Korean Premiere production. More recently Kevin has conducted WICKED at London’s Apollo Victoria theatre and was the originating musical director for the first national UK/Eire tour. As a composer of musicals, Kevin has worked with his long-time collaborator, book writer and lyricist Victor Kazan on Rebecca, The Stranger from Seville and Castle Gillian.

He is a member of The Recording Academy and the Dramatists Guild. Kevin is managed by Francine Fletcher at Fletcher Associates (UK) and William Reinert Associates, Inc. (USA).

Show Links

• Castle Gillian: https://castlegillian.com/
• Kazan & Purcell: https://www.kazanandpurcell.com/

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Filmed Live Musicals is created by Luisa Lyons, an Australian actor, writer, and musician. Luisa holds a Masters in Music Theatre from London's Royal Central School of Speech and Drama and now lives, works, and plays in New York. Learn more at www.luisalyons.com and follow on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook.