Pasticcio espagnol

About

I had the most fantastic opportunity: a full-length orchestral concert with me as the comedic lead. I had plenty of musical comedy material, but I lacked a solid closer to the first half. This song didn’t quite get there since it’s overly long for a comedy song and dog willing it’s the longest I’ll ever write. That said, I’d dearly love to perform it in the Auckland Town Hall since it contains the following elements:

• a made-up story about my made-up great-great-great-grandfather settling in Auckland
  
• the juxtaposition of stodgy Anglo-Saxon hymnody and Spanish orchestral stylings
• a historically anachronistic reference to Auckland music shop Lewis Eady
  
• a pun in the title
  
• one true fact about spheroidal geography
  
• a gratuitously large number of voiceless dental fricatives (the ‘th’ sound)
  
• not one but two dance breaks, one with castanets
  
• a personal rant about orchestral programming in the English-speaking world
  
• throwing shade at some but not all composers named “Strauss”
  
• bald-faced self-promotion because I’d quite like to do another musical comedy orchestra gig.