The Composers

Sam Cardon

Composer, First Freedom

Sam Cardon is an Emmy winning composer whose credits include over 30 feature films, 12 IMAX films (including 2 of the top 10 grossing IMAX films of all time) 2 chart topping jazz albums, award winning national advertising campaigns, 3 full scale musicals and music for the 1988 and 2002 Olympic Winter Games. He has worked extensively in multi-cultural musical exchanges traveling to Africa, India, Europe and many regional areas in the United States in collaborations with ethnic, blues, jazz, bluegrass, rhythm and blues and world musicians. He has performed/recorded with the San Francisco Symphony, The National Symphony (Washington, D.C.), The Seattle Symphony, Czech Philharmonic, Utah Symphony and the Mormon Tabernacle Choir.

He has worked with Kennedy/Marshall, Columbia-Tri Star, Buena Vista and other Hollywood production companies and has a long relationship with National Geographic, scoring all but one of the latter's large format films.

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The story of James Madison is classic dramatic structure because it is story about an underdog who rises against all of his challenges and is victorious. And we all love seeing the underdog win and he certainly does. And I think the audience response was a testament to that fact I think people very much enjoyed themselves and I had many people come and talk to me who shared their enthusiasm for what happened here and we are very very excited to see this launched in a bigger venue as we are.
—Sam Cardon

Cardon counts among the highlights of his career, music for the Closing Ceremonies of the Salt lake City Olympic Winter Games. He has produced national campaigns for NBC, CBS, ABC and FOX and has many television themes to his credit.

He is equally at home in front of a symphony orchestra, a jazz big band or a group of ethnic musicians. Scoring films and writing musicals are his passion and jazz his first love.

He is the father of four children. He and his wife Tammy reside in Orem, Utah.

The script is such a literary, clever, brilliant piece of work that it was very obvious very quickly that is was something I needed to be involved in.
—Sam Cardon

I was thinking about the whole relationship between artist and patrons, and many of you are familiar with the Michelangelo story and it couldn't have happened without the Medici family. And this little tiny town of 100,000 people at the most in Florence became the birth place for Michelangelo, Botticelli, Leonardo da Vinci, even Machiavelli, just an extraordinary outpouring of creative art that changed the world. And that is the result of the passion of these artists, and those patrons who were passionate about the same thing and enabled those artists to be able pursue their dreams. So we had this magical, world changing event happen, all at the same time in this little tiny place. Well, what is to prevent that from happening now? We need the same combination of passionate artists and passionate patrons who feel strongly about supporting something that literally can change the world. And we are dealing with a topic here that has the power to do that. Those who see this play will recognize immediately that there is a resonance of truth to it and there is a power to it that is really really important in our day and the issues are as pertinent now as they were in 1776. So it is something that I really do hope that we will find those people out there, passionate to get this message out there and I promise that the artists will work as hard as we possibly can to make this a world class event when it does come out.
—Sam Cardon

Rick Rea

Assistant Composer/Vocal Arranger, First Freedom

Rick was born in Gilroy California, and raised in American Fork, Utah from the age of 6. From age 4 he studied piano, and began writing songs shortly thereafter. In his junior high and high school years, he stepped away from the piano to play the acoustic and electric basses in both classical and jazz ensembles, including the Crescent Super Band. Also at this time, he started acting on stage in musicals in plays and developed a passion for musical theatre. He finally came back to the piano in high school as an accompanist for his musical theatre classes, and found that his newfound passion for theater fused with his musical abilities. In 2005, he began his schooling at Western Wyoming college as a musical theater major, both acting and music directing productions. In Fall 2006, the production of his first musical theatre writing collaberation was produced: "First Freedom." He served as assistant composer and vocal arranger to Emmy-award winning composer Sam Cardon and NY-based award winning playwright/lyricist Rob. Lauer. In Feb. 2007, he wrote the full musical score and additional lyrics for a new version of the musical "Little Women" (working title: "My Jo") with lyrics and book by Rob. Lauer. The production had an extremely positive response. Rick and Robs next musical endeavor, Geeks and Gangsters, is about the two unlikely creators of what is perhaps the country's greatest pop-culture icon—Superman. The production was produced and directed by Rob. at Western Wyoming College in March 2007.