Gwendolyn Fitz – Musician, Artist, and Theatre-Maker

Edition Three- Week Three:

By: Jacob West:

Recently, I had the fantastic opportunity to sit down with Gwendolyn Fitz, a jazz-pop singer songwriter who enjoys weaving stories about her life in New York into songs. Having been to a few of her live shows, as well as counting her among one of my closest friends, I always knew that Gwendolyn had an intriguing and deliciously inspiring story to tell, being a musician from San Antonio who moved to New York City to pursue a career in music. Her chief instrument is the ukulele, and she is responsible for organizing and orchestrating the Brooklyn Ukulele Festival every year, a two-day event that includes workshops and performances that are centered around this often disregarded instrument. In January of 2021, Gwendolyn wrote an entire musical, ‘Ease of a Murder’, which only used the ukulele as its instrumentation. The show went on to win Best Show with Music at the 2021 Pittsburgh Fringe Festival. In the summer of 2021, Gwendolyn was a recipient of a City Artist Corp Grant and put on a live preview production in Oct. 2021. She then went on to produce a new version of the show on March 26th, 2022, which was shown at the TADA THEATER and presented by the Emerging Artists Theatre’s New Work Series. Needless to say, Fitz is someone whose career is worth keeping an eye on.

Hi Gwendolyn! Let’s begin! Can you tell me a little bit about yourself and your artistic journey?

“Well, I started off as a singer/songwriter and ukulele player, and from there I wrote a ukulele musical during the pandemic which has fire-balled since then! So now, I’m doing a lot of Musical Theatre, which I am invested in, and I am performing Jazz Ukulele all around the city and I’m also teaching. I have quite a lot of students now and I’ve even started some ukulele programs in schools. I got into music when I was 11 – during that period from elementary to middle school when you join a band or a choir. Somebody walked up to me and said “You look like a flute player”. And I thought: “You know what? That’s a nice-looking instrument. I’ll play it”. So I played the flute all through middle school. Then I went on to college (Shreiner University) and majored in it, alongside voice. Then I graduated and started writing songs and went along the classical route. So, I had finished my degree and wasn’t sure what I wanted to do yet. All I knew was that I wanted to write songs. Guitar was too much – I tried playing it but I couldn’t really manage more than a few basic chords. It also didn’t really go with my voice. I wasn’t that skilled in piano either, to accompany myself. So I picked up the ukulele and that fit really nicely with my voice. I then fell in love with the instrument. It was also the same size as me, as I am very small!”

Tell me about Ease of a Murder. How did it come to be?

“Well, I was sitting on my bed, just writing lyrics, and all of a sudden the very first line of the show popped into my head: (sings) “it’s so easy to be a murderer”. And I thought: “whoa…am I okay?” Because…that’s not something normal to just have pop into your head! So I started writing down the next couple of lines to the opening song of Ease of the Murder, and I looked at everything I had written and I saw that it could make up a show. So I put everything together. The next day, I finished writing the first 30 minutes of the book and the lyrics, which has since developed into an hour-long show. A month later, my friend Clare and I performed it straight on YouTube. It then was performed in a room that I rented out, with great feedback from the audience, which led to more content being expanded into it. There are about 17 songs in the show now. I then submitted it to this New Works/Emerging Artist series, which takes new works in development, in order to get feedback from the audience. It is my hope that it reaches Broadway one day, maybe. I don’t know if it will happen, but I hope it does. Tell me more about the show itself. A lot of people say it is a murder mystery show, but there’s no mystery in particular about the murder. It’s more of Chicago meets a murder mystery. It’s set in the roaring twenties, and a hitman goes to take out his next victim, but then falls in love with the victim’s daughter. She turns out to not be any of what she seems. And that’s where I leave it because there are a lot of twists and turns. There are a couple of dance pieces, choreographed by Becca Bernard, but the show itself is primarily made up of ukuleles. We also have a U-Bass, which is basically a bass the size of a ukulele. It sounds closer to an upright bass, which is really cool.”

How was the process of making this show?

“You know, it’s really fun. I don’t think there’s been too much challenge. I will say, the hardest thing was getting it known and getting people to come. I believe it’s a great show and the cast was really great, and they love the show too. Getting it in front of the right people is tricky. But the process was so much fun. I love seeing people come to the table with their ideas. And seeing something that you wrote being performed is so cool! What are you hoping the audience will take away from this show? One reviewer once said that they left the show wanting to play and sing the songs. I think that my goal is very ukulele based, and I want people to walk away wanting to play the ukulele . It gets a bad rep, because of how small it is. Oftentimes, it’s thought of as a toy. But it really is the easiest and most accessible instrument for anyone to learn. I feel that music is something important, and we all need to express ourselves through it. I’ve had students from ages 4 to 70, it’s just the easiest thing to make music on and everyone should be able to play one if they want to.”

Tell me about the Brooklyn Ukulele Festival.

“I moved to New York City at the end of 2016, and I had always wanted to attend a ukulele Festival, so I looked for one here, but there hadn’t been one in years. I think the guy who used to put it together now owns a ukulele store in Long Island City. So, I made one. I thought it was very strange that the ukulele is such a widespread instrument but there wasn’t a festival, so I tried to make a community of players who could all get together in New York City. The first festival happened in 2018, so it took me a couple of years to organize. It usually happens in the summer, but we also do a lot of events between them, such as Christmas Caroling in Washington Square Park.”

So what’s next for you?

“Now that the show is done, I hope to expand it some more. I would love to find a small Off- Broadway theatre for it to be produced. But I also have a few other shows and ideas to work on. My next project is a Movie Musical I plan to release on my 30th birthday inspired by Tik Tik Boom.”

To find out more about Gwendolyn Fitz’s artistic journey, check out her website:
https://www.gwendolynfitzmusic.com/
Also her Instagram: @Gwendolynfitzmusic

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