<\/p>\n
JOHNSTOWN, Pa. \u2013 A former Bishop McCort Catholic music director\u2019s work bringing a Shakespearean musical\u2019s songs to life in Delaware has brought him back to Johnstown to record that music on a grander scale.<\/p>\n
Johnstown native Michael Meketa, a Pittsburgh resident who recently spent nearly a month handling orchestrations for \u201cTwelfth Night, O Lo Que Quieras,\u201d is working with the production company to ensure its score lives on.<\/p>\n
Until now, the music of the bilingual production was presented only through drums and layers of keyboard music, he said.<\/p>\n
In the Spotlight<\/p>\n
Over the past week, Meketa assembled a collective of 15 seasoned musicians in Johnstown to incorporate brass, strings and reed instruments. They spent several days recording this month at First Presbyterian Church on Lincoln Street in downtown Johnstown.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou can have music on paper … but without an album, nobody can really hear what this music was meant to sound like,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Meketa is a 2012 Conemaugh Valley High School graduate who got a master\u2019s degree in musical theater writing at New York University before moving to Pittsburgh. He works as an adjunct accompanist at Point Park University in Pittsburgh and St. Vincent College in Latrobe.<\/p>\n
\u201cTwelfth Night\u201d was written in the early 1600s by William Shakespeare. The romantic comedy tells the story of twins separated by a shipwreck and their romantic entanglements in a foreign land.<\/p>\n
Over the centuries since it was first performed, Shakespeare\u2019s story has been represented in a 1960s-era setting, as an opera, and more recently inspired two separate movies in 1996 and 2006.<\/p>\n
Meketa said Philadelphia-area actor and writer Liz Filios and writer Tana Marquez adapted the story with a South American twist, presenting a bilingual tale in \u201cTwelfth Night, O Lo Que Quieras.\u201d It reimagines the classic with Venezuelan twins who wash ashore as immigrants and find themselves pulled into the powerful houses of two opposing political families.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s an old story, but there are a lot of modern parallels,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Meketa said the play was featured at the Delaware Shakespeare Festival this summer. He said he can envision the story continuing on other stages in the future.<\/p>\n
Meketa said the music being recorded at First Presbyterian Church will be offered by the Twelfth Night Company as an album through apps such as Apple Music and Spotify.<\/p>\n
He said it was only natural to return to Johnstown for the right ensemble of musicians to record the score.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t know that many musicians in Philadelphia,\u201d Meketa said of the location where he originally recorded keyboard music for the play. \u201cBut back in Johnstown I know world-class musicians.\u201d<\/p>\n
That group includes performers with the Johnstown Symphony Orchestra, faculty from Penn State and Indiana University of Pennsylvania, and the local group Jazz in Your Face, he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s wonderful to be able to bring things like this back to my hometown,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
\u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n \u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.yahoo.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" JOHNSTOWN, Pa. \u2013 A former Bishop McCort Catholic music director\u2019s work bringing a Shakespearean musical\u2019s songs to life in Delaware has brought him back to Johnstown to record that music on a grander scale. Johnstown native Michael Meketa, a Pittsburgh resident who recently spent nearly a month handling orchestrations for \u201cTwelfth Night, O Lo Que […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1946120,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25172],"tags":[354721,354720,354719,354718,33829,345469,354722],"class_list":["post-1979573","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-entertainment","tag-first-presbyterian-church","tag-johnstown","tag-keyboard-music","tag-michael-meketa","tag-pa","tag-twelfth-night","tag-william-shakespeare"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/Lloyd-native-nominated-for-6-IBMA-awards.png","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1979573","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1979573"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1979573\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1946120"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1979573"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1979573"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1979573"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}