Concentration(s):
- Music History/Theory/Composition | International Relations – Political Economy and Society
Music Award(s):
- Marion Hassenfeld Premium ’20
- Buxtehude Premium ’19
- Margery MacColl Award ’18
Honors in Music Thesis:
- The Olive Trees: A New Musical
My thesis project is a musical called The Olive Trees which I have written the book, music, lyrics and orchestrations for. This is a show set in Kelantan, a fictional village in 1960s Southeast Asia in a country on the cusp of nation building and modernization. It tells the story of a community that works in the olive trade and of Maya, a young girl from the village who aspires to be a journalist in the authoritarian state. In its first form, this show was written as a 35-minute mini-musical with six songs and orchestrated for piano and violin, staged in Brown in March 2017. It has since expanded to a two-act, 25-song musical that runs for approximately two hours. The Olive Trees is scored for a full orchestra and has the sound of contemporary musical theatre meeting folk, rock and blues.
About Shayna
Shayna Toh is an author, composer, lyricist and singer-songwriter. Her first musical, Firefly in the Light, a 22-song pop rock musical, was an Official Selection of the 2017 New York Musical Festival. She most recently won NMI’s 2019 New Voices Project supported by Walt Disney Imagineering Creative Entertainment. Having actively music-directed, directed, acted and executive-produced for various theatre boards, Shayna is also Chair of the Musical Forum Theatre Board. shaynatoh.com
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