A Tale of Two Fiddler Songs
By Peter Filichia — As we celebrate the 47th anniversary of Fiddler on the Roof this week (on Sept. 22, to be precise), let’s take a look at its most famous song — and one of its least famous songs. In 1964, when Fiddler debuted at the Imperial, Broadway was still in the era when […]
Lehman Engel 101
By Peter Filichia — We might not have had Avenue Q, A Chorus Line, Nine, Once on This Island and Ragtime and plenty of other excellent musicals without him. He was Lehman Engel, who was the musical director for thirty Broadway shows, the vocal arranger for fourteen, and the composer of incidental musical for sixteen […]
Godspell’s Discs from Stage and Screen
By Peter Filichia — There are many wonderful aspects to the “40th Anniversary Celebration” of Godspell. How often is an original cast album (of the landmark 1971 off-Broadway production) offered along with the soundtrack album (of the 1973 film version)? But here’s what might be the best aspect of this pairing of two different recordings […]
The Much Nicer Irene
By Peter Filichia — I hate to see a great cast album suffer because of a hurricane. During the last two weeks of August, “Irene” became a dirty word in the northeast. But no one should take perverse revenge by neglecting the marvelous recording of the 1973 Irene. The musical revisal featured Debbie Reynolds as […]
Wednesday’s Musical Is Full of Fun
By Peter Filichia — These days, there are some small recording companies that occasionally record cast albums for musicals that last a week or less. But paradoxically, in the Golden Age of Broadway Musicals – roughly considered to be 1943 to 1965 — there weren’t many. You may have assumed that the first was Anyone […]
