The world premiere of the new Yusuf musical ‘Moonshadow’ featuring the music of Cat Stevens will take place in Melbourne tomorrow (May 31, 2012).
Yusuf Islam on the set of Moonshadow - Image By Ros O'Gorman
Yusuf (Cat Stevens) has been a resident of Melbourne this year while he developed the musical but told Noise11.com today that he had been working on it for a long, long time.
“It’s been a dream for more than 10 years” Yusuf told Noise11.com. “It’s been a dream for about 40 years… because I grew up in the West End and of course I was surrounded by theatres and my first great ambition was to be a composer of musicals. So, Gershwin, Rodgers and Hammerstein and Bernstein of course… they were my idols before the Beatles”.
Asking if the “great” musicals like ‘Mama Mia’ and ‘We Will Rock You’ were an artists catalogue were made into a stage show inspired him to do ‘Moonshadow’ raised a chuckle from the music legend. “The great musicals did you say?,” he laughed. “No, I mean, they’re great for this poppish era… but the great musicals are really that era of the West Side Story’s.. South Pacific and Sound Of Music. So many of those have actually created the real benchmark, I think”.
The Moonshadow musical will also feature a brand new Yusuf song titled ‘World Of Darkness’. “The story obviously has to be a story in its own right and therefore, not all of my songs would have fitted,” he said. I don’t know how we got ‘Ruby Love’ in there, but anyway… I had to write certain songs in order to progress the story, to lay the ground for the story. The first song of the musical is called ‘World of Darkness’, so it’s like a prologue where it describes the world we’re about to enter, the world of endless night”.
‘Moonshadow’, featuring the music of Cat Stevens starts tomorrow (May 31) at Melbourne’s historic Princess Theatre.
Noise11.com was at the media call today and will bring you footage from ‘Moonshadow’ and our talk with Yusuf tomorrow (Thursday).
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