I tell women’s stories through music so that audiences can celebrate, empower and come to understand themselves and the women they know and love.
“The story never holds for a moment, every minute packed with music and melodrama, capturing a remarkable moment in world history, now more relevant than ever…The songs written by Patricia Zehentmayr and Jan Roper are absolutely sublime.”
– Noho Arts District
The Path to Catherine is the true backstory of the teenage girl, Sophie, who will eventually become Catherine the Great, and the two women who shaped her.
Princess Sophie, a prospective wife for Peter, heir to the Russian Empire, finds herself pulled between the desires of her mother, Princess Joanna, and Elizabeth, Empress of Russia. But her focus soon shifts from love to power, and she learns that greatness has a price; that price is family.
The Path to Catherine features a cast of three women and a sung-through score with modern musical elementscombining percussive grooves and soaring, emotional melodies bringing this untold, true, historic story into the 21st century.
About
I’m Patricia Zehentmayr, songwriter, book writer, lyricist. My first experience with live performance was a ballet of Peter Rabbit my parents took me to when I was 18 months. Evidently, I was completely mesmerized and made the very smart decision to begin the living of my life as a continuous song and dance. My parents found that charming, my older sister found it ridiculous and mortifying because I did not differentiate between doing this at home or in a grocery store. It’s no surprise, then, that I was dancing, singing and acting professionally as soon as I turned 16. Several injuries and a four-year illness later, I was writing music, teaching movement, meditation, and wellness.
COVID has afforded me the opportunity to focus full-time on my creative projects and I now write popular music for media placements and am developing a full-length musical (my 4th) about the early years of Catherine the Great, The Path to Catherine.