Mal Pope's "Amazing Grace"
Musician and composer Mal Pope and writer Frank Vickery's recent musical "Amazing Grace" is the story of Evan Roberts and the Great Welsh Revival of 1904. It is has been heralded as the "first great Welsh musical", and is likely to become a historic Welsh milestone of its own!
Even though specific to the life of Evan Roberts, the show is entirely relevant in a modern-day context, as it brings to life the power of the media and the public's intense interest with celebrity and fame.
In spring 2005, "Amazing Grace" had a limited season in Swansea, Mold and Cardiff at the International Festival of Musical Theatre. The show, directed by Michael Bogdanov, played to sold-out houses and standing ovations, and was claimed to be one of the most popular shows at Cardiff's International Festival of Musical Theatre.
Steve was not involved in this version of the actual stage production of the musical, however he did perform some of the songs from it with Mal Pope at the Grand Theatre in Swansea in 2004.
Steve and Mal Pope have worked together previously over the years, and some members of Mal's band "Mal Pope and The Jacks" have also worked with Steve.
The song "Cri" which is on the the Songs for UNICEF charify recording "Dros Blant Y Byd", was written by Steve Balsamo, Phil Berry, Tim Hamil a Phil ab Owain, is much in the style of the rare and treasured by many "Living Room" recordings and features vocals by Arwel Gruffydd with music provided by Mal Pope's Band at the time (1995).
If you would like to find out more about the musical "Amazing Grace", which starred Shan Cothi (who is also in the Chimpan-A project ), and Peter Karrie, as well as Mal's more recent musical "The Contender" based on the life of Welsh boxer Tommy Farr, we encourage you to check out Mal Pope's website, which is:
In addition to Mal's projects in musical theatre, recently he recorded a couple of tracks with Merrill Osmond. You can listen to the tracks and purchase them via the 7Digital Indie Store widget on Mal's MySpace page:
http://www.myspace.com/malpope
Even though it is not specific to Mal, it is worth mentioning a link to another useful site for information about musical theatre in Wales:
