Prog Jon Anderson is well known for being involved in a wide variety of different undertakings, some of which can take many years to come to fruition. One such project is his long-gestating musical, , which seems to have moved forward due to a happy accident that grew out of a time of tragedy. “The year was 1982,” Anderson tells .
“I was in the south of France and I met Marc Chagall, the artist [who died in 1985], and I wrote a musical about his life. I remember him saying, ‘Yes, Jon, it sounds like your idea is good – but it’ll take a long time.’ I said, ‘No, I’m recording at the moment.
I’ll get it done this year.’ In the end, it took more than 30 years to finish it. “It was a slow process, grabbing hold of the idea of a musical.
Then I bumped into a friend up in Napa when the California fires were happening. My wife Jane and I got caught in a hotel that was being evacuated. “We’d just started our dinner.
I said, ‘Wait a minute, what do you mean, “Evacuate now?” I just ordered my hors d’oeuvres!’ And they said, ‘Get out of here. This place is going up in flames.’ And it – so we got out of there and went to this friend’s house.
And he asked me, ‘Is there anything in your life that you’d like to get done and finished?’ I said, ‘Yeah, a musical about the painter Marc Chagall.’ Thankfully, he just happened to be a guy who liked Chagall’s work, and that’s how it evolved as a project for performance. “One of his friend.