#also really recommend ghost quartet musical it has beautiful songs by Dave Malloy and also references to Edgar Allan Poe

[cutetanuki-chan]

they're everything to me

song 'Four Friends' from 'Ghost quartet'

[superfallingstars]

for the playlist prompts how about songs you think remus would play in his classroom during his time as a dada professor? he feels like the type of teacher who would let soft music play while the students did their work or as he graded papers imo

send me playlist prompts!

Ha this one is fun! I like the idea of Lupin playing music during class - he’s already the “cool” professor, so this seems like a no-brainer! It was hard not to be influenced by the PoA movie, what with its lovely little Boggart montage set to jazz music, but I decided to roll with it and make Professor Lupin’s curiously curated lo-fi beats to relax and study to. My jazz knowledge is pretty limited (compared to my knowledge of, say, shitty 90s alternative rock bands), and I also felt like this playlist should be mostly instrumental, so I initially felt a little constrained with these selections. I ended up choosing a few lyrically topical songs, while the rest are just my personal instrumental jazz faves that I thought were fitting. Overall I’m quite pleased with how this came out – so I hope you enjoy!

Track list:

Sun Ra - I Could Have Danced All Night: I adore this entire album, it’s just so beautiful and wistful. I also find that I’m quite productive while listening to it, so I feel like it would work in a classroom setting…

Chet Baker - But Not For Me - Vocal Version: This is suuuuch a perfect Remus song to me omg. Everyone is in love except for ME and it’ll never happen for me (because I’m fundamentally unlovable because I’m a werewolf!!!)

Shira Small - Lights Gleam Lonely: Jazzy 70s pop. I love this song, I think it's sooo Lupin, and Icouldn’t resist putting it on here (also if you've seen the other playlist asks you know how obsessed I am with this album)

Dorothy Ashby - By The Time I Get to Phoenix: gorgeous 70s jazz harp (yes, harp!)

Ella Fitzgerald - No Moon At All: when I was making this playlist I was searching for jazz songs about the moon, only to find this one about how romantic it is when there is no moon, which is honestly a thousand times better than anything I could have imagined. 10/10 Remus moment

Thelonious Monk & John Coltrane - Ruby, My Dear: Gorgeous relaxing piano/saxophone song. I only know this song because Dave Malloy plays it in Ghost Quartet and if that sentence means anything to you then PLEASE TALK TO ME

Sun Ra - You Never Told Me That You Cared: from that same album as other Sun Ra one (I seriously can’t recommend it enough!). It's so crazy to feel heartbroken from an instrumental song like. This is literally just Notes and now I’m gonna start crying

Stanton Moore - Magnolia Triangle: another of my personal jazz instrumental faves. I’m just so impressed that something in 5/4 can sound this smooth and catchy

John Coltrane - My Favorite Things: this song is one of MY favorite things. The first time I heard it was because one of my teachers played it during a work period, so... rather fitting, right? Also it's SO long sorry about that

Miles Davis Quartet - That Old Devil Moon: there are plenty of vocal versions of this song, but I wasn't really feeling them... Sorry Frank Sinatra, Miles Davis is my best friend now

Thank you for the ask, this one was really fun! I hope you enjoy the playlist!

[princeandreis]

how to try out ghost quartet

I’ve started telling some of my friends in real life about ghost quartet and they of course think it’s weird, but if you give it some time it really grows on you. so I thought I’d make this for those of you who are curious about it but don’t want to be too confused. I’m no expert on the plot and probably couldn’t explain the whole thing if I tried, but I do know a lot about the “easier” songs. these don’t really say much about the plot but give you a good sense of what the music is like, and don’t need to be listened to in any order. I highly recommend following along on Genuis, though the notes might confuse you. so anyway here goes! 

1. I Don’t Know - the first song on the album. it’s the four actors singing about the plot and their characters in only the vaguest terms, and is an absolute bop. very catchy and extremely lovable even as a standalone song. (to be a little more specific, this is one of a few songs that exists outside the plot and serves to give us more insight into all of the different characters. I read somewhere that these songs are just the musings of all the ghosts hanging out together, so that’s cool too.)

2. The Camera Shop - one of my absolute favorites. it’s so catchy and is kind of the starting place for the narrative (though in reality the story is circular so there’s no true starting place). summary: a woman named rose enters a camera shop and meets the owner, whose family has owned the store for four generations. she notices a fiddle on the wall, which the owner tells her was made from the breastbone of her great-grandmother’s sister. strangely, the owner’s great-grandmother was also named rose. the shop owner decides to tell rose the beginning of the story of the fiddle. I won’t transcribe it here, but the lyrics tell you what you need to know. this is the best place to start listening, plot-wise, because it kind of sets you up for why everything else happens. a wonderful song plus an A+ transition into the next song:

3. Starchild - is just stunningly beautiful. in my opinion this is Brittain’s best song on the album (that or Hero but I’m partial to this one). it’s another one of the songs which doesn’t have to do with the plot necessarily, it just gives us insight into an otherwise mysterious character who disappears quickly. this was the first song that caught my attention my first time listening to the album. even if you never get into ghost quartet, I seriously recommend this song because it’s so beautiful and haunting and uplifting.

4. Any Kind of Dead Person - this song is fun. it’s hilarious, and is also detached from the plot. it’s literally one of the two actresses (Brittain) singing about why she’d want to be a ghost as opposed to a different kind of dead person (like a zombie, poltergeist, etc). it’s super catchy and well-sung. and correct me if I’m wrong, but I think that this is one of the songs where they hand out instruments to the audience at shows, which is super fun, too. I love this song so, so much.

5. The Astronomer - another character song, sung by the composer Dave Malloy himself. if you learned about the plot of the two sisters from The Camera Shop, you’ll see that this is the song telling us about the character of the Astronomer from that story. it’s poignant, witty, and easily sticks in your head.

6. The Telescope - another one about the Astronomer (played by Dave). this is the song I’m currently obsessed with. it alternates between a weird creeping harp-like sound and Brittain’s beautiful honeyed voice ruminating on the stars. this is also part of the story of the two sisters, which in my opinion is the easiest place to begin piecing together the plot. basically what happens in this song is an expansion of what Gelsey tells us in The Camera Shop: Rose writes poetry about the stars for the Astronomer, with whom she’s in love. but he plagiarizes her and falls in love with her older sister Pearl. tbh this song is so gorgeous and just really tends to stick with you. (the recorded version sounds better than the live one.)

there you have it, this is what I consider a good starting place if you’re curious. if you use this to listen please drop me a line and let me know what you think!!! I really hope this helps more people understand how incredible ghost quartet really is.

thanks for reading!

[fourteenacross]

what is ghost quartet about?

That, my friend, is the $64,000 question.

I’m only slightly joking.

Ghost Quartet is a musical in the style of a concept album by Dave Malloy, originally starring Brittain Ashford, Gelsey Bell, Brent Arnold, and Dave. It’s very simple, with no real costumes and very little movement. The four actors play all the instruments and generally stay in their designated corners for most of the show.

The show is told non-linearly, with 5-6 plotlines (depending on your interpretation) populated by different characters in different time periods. Reincarnation is a big theme of the show, and it’s implied (and maybe outright stated) that the character each actor plays in each story is the reincarnation of the same soul.

With me so far? 

I swear the show is actually pretty easy to follow if you have that in mind and maybe read the Genius annotated lyrics as you listen to the cast recording (I recommend the Live at the McKittrick version, which is on YouTube in full and available to purchase at Dave’s BandCamp).

Plotline one: Rose Red and Pearl White:Rose and Pearl are sisters in folklore olden times. Rose is in love with The Astronomer, who’s kind of a douchebag and steals her poetry about the stars and publishes it under his own name. As she grows to hate him for that, he falls in love with her sister. Enraged, Rose goes to The Bear and asks him to kill the Astronomer and turn her sister into a crow, sealing them together into a cave until the crow has to either starve or eat her lover’s corpse. The Bear promises to do so if Rose retrieves one pot of honey, one piece of stardust, one secret baptism, and a photo of a ghost. After going through several lifetimes to get these things, she presents them to The Bear, who refuses to kill the Astronomer and turn Pearl into a crow–he just wanted her to bring him honey. Rose, in a rage, kills the Astronomer and drowns her sister in the river.

Plotline two: The Ushers/Starchild:(Note: This story is a twist on the Poe story “The Fall of the House of Usher”) Rose steals a baby from her teenage mother and baptizes her in the ocean. The baby, Starchild, grows up apart from the rest of the world after being baptized into a strange faith against her will. The Starchild’s mother is Roxie Usher, and Roxie is so devastated by losing her child that she falls ill and dies. Her mother orders her corpse to be locked into a vault in the basement for two weeks. Her brother, The Fool, decides to leave the house and go to NYC to play cello in a rock’n’roll band. One night, during a storm, Roxie breaks free of the vault and stumbles into her mother’s bedchamber. The shock give her mother a heart attack and she dies. This plotline also includes some flashbacks to when Roxie and The Fool were young children.

Plotline three: Arabian Nights:Rose/a reincarnate of Rose in the form of Dunyazad approaches Scheherazade of “1001 Nights” fame. As an ancient, Rose/Dunyazad requests a piece of stardust in the form of an untold story. Scheherazade isn’t sure that she has any, but tells Rose/Dunyazad of a dream she had of meeting a younger version of herself. Also in this plotline is Shah Zaman, who (in this story) is the king demanding stories from Scheherazade, and David, a piano player trying to connect with the ghost of Thelonious Monk.

Plotline four: Soldier and Rose:Rose/a reincarnate approaches a soldier in Sarajevo in the early 90s, attempting to seduce the soldier to get her jar of honey. The Soldier tells Rose she can have the honey, but first she must dance with The Soldier and then kill her to get it, but it would be a mercy killing. It’s implied that Rose does this.

Plotline five: The Camera Shop:A modern day Rose enters a camera shop manned by a descendant of folktale olden time Rose. She claims to have lost her camera, but really she smashed it after taking a photo of a “ghost:” on a subway platform where she was waiting for a train, The Pusher pushed a modern Pearl down in front of the train. The Driver didn’t have enough time to stop and, instead of helping, Rose took a photo just as Pearl was struck by the train, her photo of a ghost.

Plotline six: Other:This is my own designation/interpretation of several songs outside the narrative. These four characters, Rose, Pearl, David, and Brent, fully aware of their past lives for the first time, reflect back on the chaos and sorrow of their past while also accepting they can’t change it. This is “I Don’t Know,” “Any Kind of Dead Person,” “Four Friends,” and a couple other songs that fall outside of our narrative.

Again, I swear, if you really pay attention and listen to it, it’s not super hard to follow. Because it’s a musical “concept album,” the tracks are designated during the show, along with titles that make it clear what plotline you’re in for each song. And the show is really beautiful. Dave wrote it specifically for Brittain, Gelsey, Brent, and himself, so it really showcases Brittain’s voice and Gelsey’s nine million musical talents and Brent’s cello playing. It is a very cool, very weird little piece of theatre, and if you’re in the Seattle area in January, I highly recommend you check it out!

(And, if you’re looking for any more clarity around any parts of the plot specifically/have any more questions, let me know!)