The Florida Bjorkestra reconvenes for a ‘Buffy’ salute

Toot the horns, wake the kids and phone the neighbors. The Florida Bjorkestra is back.

Jeremy Douglass and 29 of his closest friends will descend on the Palladium Theatre Saturday for Buffyfest: Once More With Feeling, their first concert in six years. Douglass, a keyboard player, arranger and composer, will lead this group of bay area professionals – singers and musicians – through the songs from a 2001 episode of the supernatural drama series Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

During the show’s penultimate season, creator Joss Whedon wrote and directed an episode wherein his characters, under a spell, suddenly broke out in song. He titled the episode “Once More, With Feeling.”

“There’s a handful of cult shows that have done musical episodes,” Douglass explained. “A small handful. Buffy stands out amongst the handful, but actually holds its own against other, legitimately good musicals that aren’t musical episodes of television. It’s actually a really, really well-made piece of work.

“In the world of that show, all seven seasons, that episode is an enormously pivotal moment. You can basically draw a line: Everything before that episode, and everything after.”

This will be the third Buffyfest for the Florida Bjorkestra, which has also performed labor-of-love concerts of music by the likes of Kate Bush, David Bowie, Joni Mitchell, Peter Gabriel, Tori Amos, Nick Drake and, yes, Bjork. Eclectic stuff. Until the pandemic, there was one concert every year. Sometimes two.

“Buffy,” said singer/actress Colleen Cherry, who co-founded the group with Douglass, “is different from the other Bjorkestra shows. People love what we do – but there’s a whole different set of people that come for Buffy, from out of town. The fandom is large. It’s kind of similar to Rocky Horror, the love and adoration for it. The musical episode means so much to people.”

From a previous Buffyfest: Spencer Meyers and Amy Elizabeth Gray. Photo provided.

After the first, riotously fun Buffy show in 2017, the ad hoc band re-assembled and did it again in 2018. The group was scheduled to Buffy-ize the Palladium once more (with feeling, of course) in April 2020; rehearsals had begun, and posters were printed up.

But everyone scattered to the wind as Covid cancelled all live performances, and the Florida Bjorkestra quietly went on hiatus. Douglass threw himself into theater work, and became the fulltime musical director for Jobsite, the resident theater company of the Straz Center for the Performing Arts. Today he is an indispensable member of the creative team.

Jobsite artistic director David M. Jenkins will provide the between-songs narration Saturday, stitching together pieces of the “Once More With Feeling” storyline.

The performance will also include a set of the songs from Whedon’s 2008, internet-only science fiction musical Dr. Horrible’s Sing-along Blog. Douglass: “It’s goofy, it’s campy … and the songs are good. Like legitimately good.”

The lead singers, each of whom “plays” a character, include Cherry, Whitney James, Spencer Meyers, Kasondra Rose, Jonathan Harrison, Clay Christopher and others. “It’s staged as a concert, but there are some theatrical elements,” Douglass said. “It’s all my musician friends and all my music theater friends coming together to do something that’s not quite 100 percent either/or.”

Added Cherry: “The conceit of musical theater is like ‘The feelings are so big, you have to sing about them.’ So that’s the conceit of this episode – all these characters are hiding different things, or they have secrets, and it all comes out in their songs.”

The Florida Bjorkestra requires Douglass to multitask like a musical octopus. He writes the arrangements for every song, for every vocalist and instrumentalist (including five horn players and a string section). “For this show, I transcribed what I heard,” he said. “There’s no book for it, so I had to go and listen to it and write down ‘This is what the strings are doing …’ It’s a lot of work to put together this kind of show.”

Such is Douglass’ talent, easygoing nature and infectious sense of humor that several longtime members of the Bjorkestra, even though they’ve since moved out of the bay area, readily agreed to return just for this concert.

“I love Buffy, and I’ve always been a fan,” enthused singer/actress Amy Elizabeth Gray, who lives in Colorado. “And any time you get to sing in front of a 20-something piece band, that’s just beautiful.

“Not only does it bring together my love of performing, but performing in front of a band, performing with friends … performing a cultural icon of a show. A beacon of culture for us in the ‘90s and early 2000s.

“It’s kind of like ‘We’ll pay you to come and do something that you love.’ Well, OK! Twist my arm!”

For singer and guitarist Ed Woltil, a longtime local performer who recently relocated to the Midwest: “If I had to distill it into three words, I love Jeremy. And he isn’t always available when I’m doing a show, but I always ask him first if I need a keyboard player. He’ll go out of his way to do shows with me. So it’s kind of a mutual admiration society.

“And everybody else is great, too. It’s a fun project regardless of what music we’re tackling. Myself possibly not included, everybody’s of a very high caliber of musicianship, skill and dedication.

“In a way, the concept is so loopy. And so Jeremy.”

Vocalist Whitney James is flying in from Texas, saxophonist David Gambino from Louisiana.

Singer/songwriter Kasondra Rose’s restaurant and barroom gigs evaporated during the pandemic; after things opened up, she realized she wasn’t all that interested in picking them up again. “I couldn’t stomach the thought of begging for work from places I just didn’t want to be any more,” she said.

Rose, who sometimes performs with Jobsite, is an emcee, singer and aerial artist for Emerald Rabbit Cabaret, which regularly performs at the Floridian Social.

But she eagerly answered the call: “Jeremy’s one of those people that if he asks you to do something, you just tell him yes.”

Douglass is quick to give credit to the others in his musical gang. “I do take a lot of pride in the fact that this is a completely local production, made with local talent,” he said. “Nothing is outsourced.”

As for the future of the Florida Bjorkestra, it’s probably not a good idea to ask. Like the magic spells in Buffy the Vampire Slayer, there’s just no way of knowing what’s in store.

“In my ideal world, if this project continues and grows, it becomes a theater company,” Douglass said. “Behind the scenes, it operates like a theater company and not like a band.

“I like that hierarchical structure – somebody’s sending out contracts, somebody’s scheduling rehearsals, somebody’s doing the marketing, everybody’s got a little corner … and all I have to do is show up and just think about the music.”

For tickets to Saturday’s concert, visit the Palladium website.

When the scheduled April 11, 2020 Buffyfest was canceled due to the pandemic, musical director Jeremy Douglass created this Zoom video. Every member of the Florida Bjorkestra recorded and video-taped his or her part separately; Douglass then mixed the music and created this.

In this video …. Vocalists: Colleen Cherry; Jonathan Harrison; Kasondra Rose; Ed Woltil; Tania Navarro; Spencer Meyers; Ronnie Dee; Whitney James. Horns: Richard Saez; James Suggs; Austin Vickrey; Cathy Lopez; David Russel; David Hope; David Gambino. Strings: Molly Crosby; Rebecca Zapen; Gina Castellano; A.J. Vaughan; Melissa Grady; Tom Kersey. Rhythm Section: Jeremy Douglass; Daniel Navarro; LaRue Nickelson; Joe Coyle; Lance Cox. Narration: David Jenkins. Narration text by Gina Vivinetto.