JohnRileyMusic - johnrileymusic

johnrileymusic

Pianist turned lawyer turned musical theatre writer. John Riley grew up with a passion for music obtaining an undergrad degree in piano performance. Following graduation, John spent a year abroad in Korea, studying piano, learning Korean and traveling Asia. He later went on to become a lawyer and returned to Korea where he worked as a lawyer for over 13 years. Throughout this time, John continued to indulge his passion for music through improvisation and songwriting, eventually resulting in two full-scale musicals called “A Girl I Know” and “Crazy Love”. A film version of A Girl I Know is currently in pre-production in LA, and both musicals are in the late workshop development stages as featured in Playbill.

A Girl I Know tells the story of a beautiful masseuse, Jeni, who can’t stop murdering cheating men until she meets a suicidal client who thinks he can fix her.

Jeni is smart, sexy, funny, successful, and… a completely deranged serial killer (hey, no one’s perfect). Her process is pretty simple. If a married client asks for a bit more than she offers on her professional massage menu, they get tortured and killed by her dainty bare hands. She loves to hear them scream for their lives, a big part of her process…

This all changes when she meets a client who reacts a little differently to her attack… he welcomes it, even begs for her to kill him. Jeni lets him go but is intrigued by what she considers to be unfinished business. She stalks him, kills his wife, and romances him. He genuinely believes he can fix her and falls madly in love (did we mention she’s REALLY hot?). He proposes and thinks, for once, everything is going to be okay.

But the thing is…Jeni is a sociopath. This poor sap knew that but was blinded by his savior complex and perhaps a little misogyny. It turns out she was the one who was fixing him all along, giving him a life worth living…just so he would have something to fight for when she attempted to kill him again.

Feminine, fun, and fucked-up… Think Elle Woods in LEGALLY BLONDE meets Patrick Bateman in AMERICAN PSYCHO for our protagonist starring in a dark but relatable love story set to original music such as in SWEENEY TODD or LITTLE SHOP OF HORRORS.

A Girl I Know the Musical has been performed in concert in Seoul, Korea and at Feinstein’s 54 Below in New York. A movie version of the musical is currently in pre-production in Los Angeles. A pair of staged readings will be performed at the National Opera Center in New York on June 22-23rd, featuring an incredible cast and production team lead by Chloe Lower and Roe Hartrampf.

Crazy Love tells the story of a high school star quarterback, Chase, who goes insane from an on-again off-again relationship with his girlfriend Cada.

Chase is the prototypical jock, star of the local high school football team and a top recruit for Division I colleges. Chase’s dad, Mark, is an overbearing football coach who pressures his son to become a pro football player. Kelly, his mom, coaches the cheerleading team and is more concerned with Chase’s mental and emotional well-being than his football career but unfortunately her voice is rarely heard. Cada is an outsider, a student at the same high school whose father, Brett, is an abusive alcoholic, and whose mother died several years ago.

In addition to the above-song list, below are some songs featured in the musical.

A deep debt of gratitude is also owed to Jonathan Roxmouth (Phantom, POTO World Tour), Lena Chung (Greatest Showman) who did all of the original recordings from the show, as well as Samuel Tolley and Raechelle Denae who demoed many of the original songs, as well as Yves Matar for his brilliant orchestrations, and Yonghee Park and Vic Cuccia for their great engineering work.