Cast Albums Blog
REVIEW: On the Town - New Broadway Cast Recording
Holding the new 2014 Broadway cast recording of the 1944 musical On the Town in your hands, the first thing you notice is just how weighty it is. Two discs and a substantial booklet with lyrics, short essays, and eye-popping photos from the stage production, all enveloped in a handsomely designed sleeve. This isn’t just another cast recording, but a classic of the American musical theater made tangible.
REVIEW: Side Show - 2014 Broadway Revival Cast
For those of us who grew up with the 1997 original cast recording of the cult musical Side Show, the rich score by Henry Krieger and Bill Russell combined with the Tony-nominated performances of Alice Ripley and Emily Skinner left us wondering how this fascinating show about real-life Siamese twins Daisy and Violet Hilton could have failed. Now, seventeen years later, Side Show has been reborn and rethought for a new generation under the watchful direction of film director Bill Condon (Dreamgirls). While this revival played as short a run on Broadway as did its original incarnation—perhaps Siamese twins just can’t find an audience—the winning musicality of this new cast recording reinforces just why this show has so many adoring fans.
REVIEW: Anika Larsen's Sing You to Sleep
In the liner notes to her new album Sing You to Sleep, Anika Larsen tells listeners that they can “play this album on shuffle, but if you play it in order, you’ll find the songs get slower as they go along.” Larsen’s right about the speed of the songs; but the album, a pleasing mix of easy listening, pop, and musical theater standards, also gets better as it goes on, becoming more honest, emotionally naked, and truthful with each track.
REVIEW: Kristin Chenoweth's Coming Home
If there's one word that can describe Kristin Chenoweth's new live album Coming Home, it's "heartfelt." From a song about her father to a shout out to her beloved college vocal teacher Florence Birdwell, this concert, taped in Chenoweth's hometown of Broken Arrow, Oklahoma, is full of songs, people, and experiences that have touched and shaped Chenoweth's life and career in the theater.
REVIEW: Violet and Here Lies Love
Principal among the reasons that many of us still collect cast recordings is the desire to capture the evanescence of musical theater. Indeed, cast recordings can be so much more than just a compendium of songs from a show, but instead can transport the listener deep into the theatrical experience itself by including dialogue and underscoring. With this purpose in mind, I turn our attention to two new recordings which on the surface might appear entirely dissimilar: the 2013 disco musical about Imelda Marcos, Here Lies Love, and the 2014 recording of the Broadway revival of the Jeanine Tesori-Brian Crawley musical Violet. Both shows get handsomely produced double-disc recordings that aim to capture their 100-minute productions in almost their entirety, yet each album offers a different strategy on how to preserve their “in-theater” experience which make for intriguing if slightly uneven listens.