CASTALBUMS.ORG: REVIEW: Hello Again – Original Motion Picture Soundtrack

Originally published on CastAlbums.org.

Hello AgainWhen RCA released the cast album of Lincoln Center’s production of Hello Again in 1994, they introduced a bold new voice of the American musical theatre to the world: Michael John LaChiusa. While savvy New Yorkers had already encountered his complex, challenging work in First Lady Suite, that score had gone unrecorded at the time. I remember not quite knowing what to make of the score; I was a teenager who had little to no experience with the subject matter, but I could tell this was the first composer to make a case that the post-Sondheim generation could keep pushing the form in the ways he had without becoming pale imitations of the master. Continue reading

CASTALBUMS.ORG: Pat Suzuki – Complete Album Series & Singles and Rarities 1958–1967

Originally published on CastAlbums.org.

Pat Suzuki Complete Album SeriesHad Pat Suzuki only ever appeared in Flower Drum Song, her knock-out performance of Rodgers & Hammerstein’sI Enjoy Being A Girl” would have secured her place in musical theater history. How lucky we are, though, that she also had a lengthy, if somewhat forgotten, career as a recording artist. And how lucky we are that Stage Door Records is releasing two collections of her studio work: Complete Album Series (out next week) and Singles and Rarities 1958-1967, out now.

The earliest of these recordings predate Suzuki’s Broadway debut in Flower Drum Song. At the time, Suzuki was doing a club act containing (as Bing Crosby attests in the album notes) “anything from jazz to light opera.” The album The Many Sides of Pat Suzuki reflects her range, including Ellington (“Solitude“), showtunes from days gone by (“Fine and Dandy“), jazzy standards (“From This Moment On“), and fairly contemporary material (“Lazy Afternoon“). The closest she gets to light opera is “Poor Butterfly,” but that’s not a complaint. Continue reading

CASTALBUMS.ORG: REVIEW: Jesus Christ Superstar: Live in Concert – Original Soundtrack of the NBC Television Event

Originally Published on CastAlbums.org.

Jesus Christ Superstar TV SoundtrackFew scores have been recorded as many times in as many different interpretations as Jesus Christ Superstar. Perhaps owing to its origins first as a concept album, then as a concert tour, and then as a world-wide stage musical phenomenon (with each country’s production independently envisioned by its own production team) and film (created simultaneously with and distinct from the stage version), this score has never had a standard mold into which subsequent renditions must fit. Further, the recent NBC “television event” is at least the fifth English-language video production of the material, so there was no pressure to preserve a “definitive” rendition. Continue reading