Suggestions from Brad Hathaway The post Holiday Gifts for Theatre Lovers appeared first on DC Theatre Scene.
SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 02:53PMSondheim music without lyrics? Two jazz musicians uncover a new sound for Sondheim lovers. DC jazz bassist Tommy Cecil tells of the time a few years ago when he was playing a gig supporting …
SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 10:42AMYou know the story by Mark Twain. You know a lot of music by Maury Yeston – composer/lyricist of Nine, Titanic, Goya, Death Takes a Holiday, many songs from Grand Hotel and the more-be…
SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 11:01AMThe name Susan L. Schulman probably doesn’t mean much to many of my readers, but it jumps off the page for me and for many of my fellow theater journalists. She’s one of the legi…
SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 11:33AMMichael John LaChiusa doesn’t write easy musicals. He writes complex, multi-themed and often huge works based on challenging material. Think of Marie Christine, the theatrical opera ba…
SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 02:10PMA new CD of a show I’ve loved from its earlier recording raises the question “Do I need another one?” Often, the answer for the normal collector is “No.” (Of …
SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 12:12PMWhen you say “the recording is better than the show was” sometimes it is a positive comment on the recording and sometimes it is a negative comment on the show. In this case, it …
SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 03:41PMMy theater shelves are already groaning with books about the history of musical theater. Some are well researched but terribly dry reference works. Some are entertaining but hardly definitiv…
SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 07:03AMGhostlight Records’ “New Broadway Cast Recording” of Pippin offers an hour of highly melodic soft-pop Stephen Schwartz music from what must be one of the most fun shows on …
SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 06:57AMFrom the opening trumpet statement of the melody for “Tomorrow” to the launch into “It’s A Hard Knock Life” and the release of “You’re Never Fully D…
SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 06:49AMThis relatively short (less than an hour) and occasionally interesting documentary deals with, as its subtitle says, “The History of L. Frank Baum’s Classic Books and Movies.R…
SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 08:30AMWriting a musical is a task that takes both talent and training. No one textbook can give you all you need even if you have all the talent in the world. However, while there are many textboo…
SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 06:35AMMichael Kantor’s documentary, Broadway Musicals: A Jewish Legacy, examines the extent to which the Broadway musical has been essentially a Jewish creation. It is a loving tribute to a …
SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 07:05AMA musical theater collection needn’t – indeed shouldn’t – be confined to those timeless hits familiar to all theater aficionados. There are so many fabulous scores that never…
SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 05:23AMIf you only have time this year to read one autobiography of an actor, make it Richard Seff’s book Supporting Player: My Life Upon The Wicked Stage. If you only have time to read one a…
SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 03:42PMIf you want to prepare for this Sunday night’s Tony Awards telecast on CBS (8pm EST), you might want to get hold of the new original Broadway cast album of the show that has more nomin…
SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 07:42AMThe series on Tony nominees continues with this look at the recently released Original Broadway Cast recording of the newest revival of Cinderella. New musical – or revival? You be the jud…
SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 08:03AMMatilda, the big London hit that has become a big Broadway hit, arrived on these shores with an original cast album already on the market. The Royal Shakespeare Company, which produced the s…
SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 06:40AMOne of the most interesting lists in the announcement of this year’s Tony Award nominees is the nominations for Best Orchestrations. The range is as wide as the types of shows involved…
SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 10:21AMThe Tony Season has officially begun. Last week’s announcement of the nominees in twenty-six competitive categories set off an avalanche of opinion, prediction and bragging that will c…
SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 07:57AMAct quickly – you only have a few days to view one of the greatest concert presentations of a musical that I’ve ever seen … the New York Philharmonic’s staging of Rodgers and…
SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 08:55AMLast week I wrote about the coming revolution in access to music, including theater music, fostered by digital technology. It was a look toward the future when virtually all available record…
SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 05:23AMA look at the top on-demand streaming music libraries “Could it be? Yes it could. / Something’s coming, something good.” So Mr. Sondheim wrote over half a century ago.The…
SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 08:58AMFrom time to time I like to pull a disc from the back reaches of my theater shelves. I like to spread the word of things the rush of recent releases might obscure. Staying current with new r…
SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 07:39AMA DVD that should have been titled “Gilbert and Sullivan and Ford” has been released on Video Artists International under the title “Gilbert and Sullivan’s Greatest H…
SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 08:55AMBritish author and record producer Adrian Wright closes a gap in the available material on musical theater with an interesting and easily read book on just what its title promises – “…
SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 08:08AMThe New Signature Theatre/Ford’s Theatre Production features new orchestrations Nearly fifty years ago, to the sound of a pit orchestra of 25, Jerry Herman’s musical Hello, Dolly…
SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 10:07AMSadly, you no longer have the option of setting aside an evening to attend Roundabout Theatre Company’s Broadway revival of The Mystery of Edwin Drood, even if you could get to New Yo…
SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 09:35AMAll of last season, the NBC television series Smash chronicled the creation of a new Broadway musical. Each episode gave fans of show music a tantalizing taste of what the score would be lik…
SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 10:18AMWith some musicals, there aren’t enough interesting things to write about to make up a single slender volume. Show Boat, on the other hand, has been the topic of a small library of int…
SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 04:37PMThe sweep of Benedict Nightingale’s “Great Moments in Theatre” covers not decades or centuries, but millennia. As if his pen were a time machine, he takes the reader back a…
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