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The Wonder of Christmas
: :As part of their annual Christmas music tradition, the Mormon Tabernacle Choir and Orchestra at Temple Square perform a series of Christmas concerts in the Conference Center on Temple Square. These concerts have become the country's preeminent Christmas musical event, bringing world-renowned guest artists to a total audience of more than 80,000 concertgoers each year and millions more over national television. Now the spirit of Christmas embodied in these annual concerts is captured in Christmas at Temple Square. Featuring special guests such as Angela Lansbury and Frederica von Stade, this ...
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Sweeney Todd Live at the New York Philharmonic
:Album Description:The first complete recording of Stephen Sondheim's musical-theatre work since the 1979 original Broadway cast recording, and the first recording of the work by a symphony orchestra, captures the May 2000 New York Philharmonic concert performances in honor of Mr. Sondheim's 70th birthday, starring Patti LuPone, George Hearn and Audra McDonald. Directed by Tony Award winner Lonnie Price, the cast also includes John Aler, Davis Gaines, Neil Patrick Harris, Heidi Grant Murphy, Paul Plishka, Stanford Olsen and the New York Choral Artists. :For many, Sweeney Todd is Stephen Sondheim's masterpiece, ...
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Carousel (1994 Broadway Revival Cast)
: essential recording:Carousel may have been one of Rodgers & Hammerstein's least popular shows at the time, but it's now considered one of the duo's most compelling offerings, and there are plenty of good recordings to choose from. Nicholas Hytner's much-praised production originated in London (with a cast album available on RCA/Victor) before successfully opening at Lincoln Center in New York. The CD's nicely illustrated booklet gives a fair idea of Bob Crowley's spectacular sets and costumes, which went a long way in helping Hytner reinvent the show (he got rid ...
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Build a Bridge
:Album Description:Audra McDonald's Build A Bridge recreates a remarkable program of songs she premiered to great acclaim at the premiere of the American Songbook Series for Jazz at Lincoln Center. As the album title suggests, she combines material from precious young songwriters like Rufus Waiwright, Nellie McKay and even John Mayer with the work of frequent collaborator and Broadway innovator Adam Guettel, Elvis Costello/Burt Bacharach, Laura Nyro, and Randy Newman. : Audra McDonald may well have the best voice and interpretative skills of all current musical-theater singers. This album, though, is ...
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How Glory Goes
: essential recording:After Audra McDonald's audacious recording debut with Way Back to Paradise, a collection of newly composed, highly sophisticated theater music, this new disc dominated by Harold Arlen standards would seem to be a retrenchment. On closer inspection, not so. Anybody who would risk comparisons with Barbra Streisand and Judy Garland by recording 'A Sleepin' Bee' and 'The Man That Got Away' isn't playing it safe. McDonald comes out fine, though, not because she's better than her elders, but because she's different. What pop singers do with rhetorical flourishes, the ...
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The John Adams Earbox: A 10-CD Retrospective
from: Nonesuch
: :Having earned his composing stripes after the 1960s, John Adams had the pioneering work of Steve Reich, Philip Glass, and Terry Riley close at hand as he ventured into his trade. And, while minimalism's historical continuum helps place Adams, he used Reich, Glass, and Riley (among others) only as a starting point. And here's proof: a 10-CD retrospective of nearly all Adams's recorded compositions on Nonesuch Records, the label that also issued Steve Reich 1965-1995 and Kronos Quartet: 25 Years. Adams's Harmonium, a choral work of startling energy and effervescence, appears ...
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110 in the Shade (2007 Broadway Revival Cast)
from: P.S. Classics
:Description:Four-time Tony Award-winner Audra McDonald triumphantly returns to Broadway in the role she was born to play: Lizzie Curry in 110 in the Shade, Tom Jones and Harvey Schmidt’s heartrending musical adaptation of N. Richard Nash's classic play The Rainmaker. Amidst a heat wave in 1930's Texas, Lizzie – despite her wit, intelligence and homemaking skills – is on the verge of becoming an old maid, until a charismatic rainmaker named Starbuck enters town and her world is shaken. 110 in the Shade originally premiered in 1963 – Jones and Schmidt’s ...
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Leonard Bernstein's New York
: :Leonard Bernstein's New York is a cornucopia of tongue-in-cheek wit, unabashed romanticism, big-city loneliness, and intellectual irony. His well-known orchestral brilliance is beautifully represented under the stellar conducting of Eric Stern, but his underappreciated talents as a songwriter are what shine, elevating this recording to magic. The cast of American theater's best includes Mandy Patinkin wonderfully indulging his comic side; Judy Blazer and Donna Murphy, the shiniest lights on Broadway, demonstrating their extensive range as singing actresses; Audra McDonald making the difficult sound easy; and Richard Muenz and Dawn Upshaw singing ...
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Way Back to Paradise
: :A more explanatory title might be 'Sons of Sondheim' since this disc is the first anthology of the young, brainy, literate, hip songwriters who are influenced by Stephen Sondheim and just might turn Broadway's artistic compass several degrees away from Disneyland. Musically, they break most unwritten precepts by freely modulating into distant keys and throwing traditional notions about form and symmetry to the wind when dramatic content dictates it. Adam Guettel is the master storyteller in 'Come to Jesus' (about abortion) and 'Baby Moon' (about pregnancy). Michael John La Chiusa writes ...
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Myths And Hymns (1998 Off-Broadway Cast, Originally Saturn Returns)
: :Until this disc, Adam Guettel was best known as the mastermind behind Floyd Collins, the gut-wrenching, boundary-breaking piece of musical theater that never gained the popularity it deserved. Myths & Hymns is another beast altogether, though just as interesting. Guettel has created a song cycle based loosely on Greek mythology and lyrics he discovered in an antique hymnal. These 15 songs are a combination of art song and show tune, but all are interesting. 'Icarus' is funky jazz in which the composer duets with Lawrence Clayton. 'There's a Land' is transformed ...
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