"Epic: The Musical" Spotlight Discussion

A truly epic indie musical

This is a spotlight post I’ve been wanting to write for a while, and time is running out because the project is almost completed.

This isn’t a review; the subject of this discussion is technically a monster of a concept album, but it has been released periodically in a series of EPs, with each being its own “Saga”. These Sagas have been trickling out for almost two years now, with the first one releasing on Christmas Day of 2022.

And it’s almost done.

The penultimate Saga, The Vengeance Saga, releases on October 31, 2024. Since the releases this year have been coming roughly every two months, it seems likely that we’ll get the finale for Christmas 2024.

But let me back up — what is Epic: The Musical and why should you care?

Epic is the brainchild of Jorge Rivera-Herrans, a brilliant young composer from Puerto Rico. It was originally conceived as part of his thesis project in college back in 2019. It’s a musical retelling of Homer’s The Odyssey with each character sung by a different vocalist (Rivera-Herrans, himself, sings the role of Odysseus), totalling over two hours of music. The musical also features deep and intricate instrumentation. Each character has specific instruments and hooks attached to them throughout the musical; more on that in a moment.

In January 2021, with a sizable amount of work already done, he begins sharing snippets of the project on TikTok and quickly gained a large audience.

With the project gaining attention on TikTok, he began using the platform for open auditions for various roles in April 2021, and several roles were filled this way. Rivera-Herrans announced that a full draft of the musical was completed in August 2022.

I’ve been following along with the entire process as the project evolved. The songs that have resulted are mind-blowingly good, and have generally gotten better with every new Saga. They are stupidly catchy with carefully-crafted, layered compositions with intricate subtleties and easter eggs. The noted intricacy isn’t just fan chatter, though — after a saga releases, “Mr Jalapeno” himself loves to interact with the speculation and underscore all of the nuances of various songs with video responses. In these explanations, he is frequently in a deeply infectious good mood as he giddily points out and demonstrates the work he has put into these compositions.

If you haven’t heard of this project, or haven’t listened to it, I strongly encourage you to do so. The project, as a whole, is dynamic and enthralling — and, as I stated above, it has only gotten better as it’s progressed. I expect these final two sagas, with five songs each, will be spectacular.¹

For the sake of simplicity, Rivera-Herrans has compiled the entire project on this Spotify playlist; you can also search for his name or the musical and find the individual EPs, but there are only 3-5 songs on each, so the full playlist will be better for listening straight through.

The amount of talent on display throughout this project has been breathtaking. Every vocalist has put on a brilliant performance (you can find the full cast list here), every ounce of instrumentation has been nigh on perfect, and JP Warner’s mixing feels like it’s always amplifying the right elements at the right time.

I’ve been in love with this project for a while now. With its completion right around the corner, now feels like a great time to try and spread awareness of it.

Find somewhere quiet where you won’t be bothered for an hour or two, put on your best headphones, and just let this thing play. Even with no distractions, you won’t catch everything on your first listen.

Enjoy!

1. The Vengeance Saga will finally give us the full, official version of “Get In The Water”, so I’m particularly interested in hearing Steven Rodriguez’s version of the song. While the song is meant to focus on Poseidon, Morgan Clae auditioned for the project using this song (I’m unclear if she was auditioning specifically for Poseidon; she also recorded for Antinous) and shared the video last December. Despite that she does not seem to have made the cast in any capacity, her version (though it’s only about 45 second long) instantly became definitive for many people, including myself. I get chills just thinking about it.