Scott Alan sings with some 'Wicked' friends tonight

July 3, 2:00 PMSF Showbiz ExaminerRobert Sokol

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Photo courtesy Scott Alan.

It’s Wednesday afternoon and New York-based composer Scott Alan is sitting poolside in Vegas. “My friend Shoshana is in Peepshow, so we’re here enjoying the Vegas sun.” That’s Broadway actress Shoshana Bean (Wicked, Hairspray) and Alan takes pleasure in using the term "friend."

“I’m still a fan,” he says of Bean and other artists who appear on his CDs Dreaming Wide Awake and the more recent Keys. Indeed, the rosters – including Kerry Ellis, Sutton Foster - now in Shrek, Megan Hilty - now in 9 to 5, Julia Murney and more - read like a Who’s Who of young Broadway. “I’ve definitely gotten lucky in my own career, but I remain a huge fan of all the great people I now get to work with. A few years ago I worked with someone I really admired and it was a terrible, miserable experience. So I made a pact with myself to only work with good people whom I admire and who treat me well in return.”

He acknowledges the interesting transition from fan to peer. “I moved back to New York, my original home, about seven years ago and started working with the new talent like Shoshana, Stephanie Block and Cheyenne Jackson. People who were just making their name in the theatre industry. Looking at their success has been very encouraging for me. It makes me want to keep pace with them.”

“My first shows to see in New York were things like Little Shop of Horrors and Into the Woods. I already knew I was in love with musical theatre thanks to my grandfather. Then I saw Les Misérables, which was a key show for a lot of younger people I meet. I didn’t understand the story. At nine I didn’t know what prostitution was, but I was so enamored of what I was seeing onstage. I became obsessed with Randy Graff, who was playing Fantine at the time, and I swore that I would work with her some day. Having her on my CD was just so incredible.”

The 31-year-old composer – “..just 31,” he clarifies – is leaving Las Vegas with his boyfriend for a first-time visit to San Francisco to debut in a late-night slot tonight at The Rrazz Room at Hotel Nikko. He’ll be met there by members of the currently resident casts of both Wicked and Spamalot to introduce his work to the City.

“Musical theatre really has become a young person’s medium. It’s changed drastically and the composers who are emerging now are going to reshape the form of it.” He acknowledges that the Internet is playing a key role in this migration. “With things like YouTube, you can reach out in ways you never could before. With the exception of people like Webber, Sondheim and Schwartz, we never really knew who was writing the songs. Now, kids in college and younger are connecting with the composers and looking to us to give them something new and exciting. It think it’s because now – and Shoshana’s sitting next to me and agreeing – we are accessible. We have websites and we’re on facebook and MySpace and making YouTube videos and they know they can reach out to us. They also think we can discover them somehow.”

It happens. Two years ago Eden Espinosa – another icon on the Wicked circuit – had to pull out of one of Alan’s projects on a moment’s notice. “I had received a fan letter from a girl named Natalie Weiss, who also sent a video clip of herself singing. She was brilliant, so I made a really unusual decision and invited her to replace Eden in the concert. The next day, all people were talking about was Natalie Weiss, and it was only through the Internet that it happened. I kept hearing ‘You were huge for Natalie!’ and I really felt that Natalie was huge for me. People were talking about this new, young talent, but they were sending around my songs at the same time.”

The songs from Alan’s hand are personal. His very first effort, “Kiss The Air,” was inspired by his parents’ divorce and speaks the words he wished his father had been able to say to his mother before leaving the family. “I didn’t have a very close relationship with my mother growing up, but I wrote it to comfort her. A lot of the newer writers are writing from an internal place rather than writing for scenes. We’re not writing story songs so much as we are writing journal songs. I get asked if I’m a musical theatre writer or a pop writer and I really feel it’s a combination of both.” He recently finished a workshop of his show Piece, the story of a homeless woman he befriended, who shared her life experiences. He hopes to see a full production open in New York in 2010.

In addition to discovering San Francisco, Alan will be making new friends. “I know Merle Dandridge, who’s currently playing Lady of the Lake in Spamalot, but I’ve never worked with any of the folks from Wicked who will be in the concert. It worked out really nicely, because when I reached out they already knew their favorite song [of mine] so they all agreed to do it, which was a comfort. It’ll be a really nice evening and I’m so looking forward to it.”

Alan cites his self-produced first CD, which will undoubtedly be available after the concert, as his proudest career accomplishment to date. “I was working three jobs – 4:30 to 8:00 in the morning at Starbuck’s, then a restaurant job from 8:00 to 5:30, and then another restaurant from 5:30 to midnight. I raised $25,000 to produce it. At the time I thought I wanted to prove myself to an industry that wasn’t taking me seriously. What I learned is that I was proving myself to myself and that was the thing that mattered.”

Introducing San Francisco to his music is high on his current excitement meter, but Alan says his next proudest accomplishment will be something more personal. “I want to settle down and have children. I want to be able to be married legally. That will be my proudest accomplishment!”