The History
A few years ago Sir Winston Churchill was voted by the British public as the Greatest Briton to have ever lived, gaining more votes than William Shakespeare, Queen Elizabeth II and Margaret Thatcher put together.
Two Englishmen (Trevor Holman and Derek Charles Ash), both now living on the Algarve in southern Portugal decided that Winston Churchill's amazing life and achievements were worthy of immortalizing in a new stage musical and so they set themselves the challenge of writing the music and stage play of 'CHURCHILL - The Musical'.
The first thing Derek and Trevor did in mid 2008 was to purchase and register the domain name of the web site you are now reading : www.churchillthemusical.com.
That was quickly followed by legally forming 'CHURCHILL - The Musical' into a Limited Company registered at Companies House in the UK, with a full Board of Directors and the appointment of a Company Secretary.
Over the course of the following months Derek, a published lyricist and composer and Trevor, a long established session musician, record producer, composer, arranger and orchestrator set about writing the lyrics and composing original music for sixteen new songs along with a two act stage play. This in itself was no easy achievement and took several months of extremely hard work.
All of the songs were then recorded in Trevor's 32-track digital recording studio with a team of professional musicians and very
experienced session singers taking the lead roles and a newly formed twelve strong amateur choir.
The songs, the music rights, the stage play and all publishing rights were then legally contracted to Churchill The Musical Ltd and the stage play, music and recordings were all copyrighted and lodged with specialist media solicitors in the UK. All sixteen songs were then lodged with PRS for Music in London and they have now received full works registrations from both the Performing Rights Society and the recordings of the songs are lodged with PPL.
Derek & Trevor, who have both been awarded membership of the 'British Academy of Songwriters, Composers and Authors', met with
the Head of Communications at Anne Frank House in Amsterdam,
who stated that she and the board of directors are all very enthusiastic about the project. Anne Frank House also offered advice on scene content relating to Anne's portrayal in the stage play, with their Board of Directors also offering their best wishes for the future success of the project.
A copy of the finished stage play and a demo CD of the original music were then sent to Ray Jeffery, Trevor and Derek's first choice as Director, and much to their delight, Ray was extremely excited by what he read and heard and he immediately agreed to become the show's director.
A World Premiere in the Algarve was decided upon using really experienced professional actors from the UK in the lead roles and the rest, as they say, is history.
