Originally published on CastAlbums.org.
When 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
For years, the 
It’s hard to imagine an American Jew who isn’t at least passingly familiar with the character of Tevye the Dairyman thanks to the overwhelming success of the musical Fiddler on the Roof. But I suspect that most people who can belt out “Matchmaker, Matchmaker” or danced to “Sunrise, Sunset” at their wedding couldn’t identify the man who created those characters, and even fewer have actually read his original stories.
David Levy 