'Blast!' receives 2 Tony nominations

For Theater and Drama Professor George Pinney, life has recently been a blast.\nPinney has served as choreographer of the Bloomington-based musical Blast! since 1995.\nAnd now the energetic visual and musical ensemble -- which has been on Broadway for three weeks -- received two Tony nominations Monday.\n"I'm a little dumbfounded," Pinney said early Monday afternoon. "It feels really wonderful - I've been giggling all morning."\nFunded and developed by local biotech millionaire Bill Cook, the troupe of brass and percussive musicians is guaranteed to take home at least one award. It's the only nominee in the "Special Theatrical Event" category, which the Tony committee added after Contact was shunned last year for lacking live music or a story line.\n"I'm really proud," Producer John Mason said. "It's in a year of powerful musicals that are setting box office records. It's really quite an honor, being the first musical to win in this category."\nMason directed an outdoor drum and bugle troupe in Dubuque, Iowa when Cook approached him in 1992. Cook sold him on his idea for a drum corps called Star of Indiana that would be geared toward young people.\nTwo years later, Mason had pieced a brass band together. Rehearsing in the gym of the old Grandview Elementary School, the ensemble went on to win the 1991 Drum Corps International World Championships.\nAfter a sold-out performance in Stillwater, Minn. a year later, Cook and Mason went out for a walk. Cook saw Star of Indiana evolving into a theatrical program grounded in the marching band tradition.\n"Up until that point, it had been 10 minute shows of just music," Mason said. "We toured all over and put on Canadian Brass kind of shows."\nThe idea fell to the backburner, and Star of Indiana continued touring and cleaning up at drum corps contests. Then in 1995, Cook watched a production of the Cole Porter musical Anything Goes in the IU Auditorium. He knew the director -- Pinney -- was just the man he wanted.\n"I saw it as an opportunity to interpret music in different ways," Pinney said. "It's really just a spectacle that defies definition. While it's percussionist and instrumentalist, all our performers are actors too."\nIt wasn't long before Blast! found its footing. It recently premiered in London, where it will set up another troupe. And the Tony nominations almost ensure its ten-week run on Broadway will be extended.\nDebuting April 17, the show has faced a chilly reception from New York's theater critics, who generally describe the show as gimmicky and hokey.\n"Blast! bored me cross-eyed," wrote Bruce Weber of The New York Times. "It was a halftime show that had wandered onto the stage at Broadway Theater, as if it got lost on the way to the stadium."\nBut, however harsh the critics have been, Blast! has been a huge hit with theatergoers.\n"We have a high level of enthusiasm from the audience," Mason said. "We've received three standing ovations every night we've been up there"