Blog

By Peter Filichia Wasn’t that Anyone Can Whistle Encores! concert last week sensational? Yes, the book once again let us down — though you have to admire that Arthur Laurents went out on a limb and wrote in a style unlike any he’d tried before or since. But, oh, that Stephen Sondheim score! Goddard Lieberson […]

By Didier C. Deutsch I can imagine how Ali Baba must have felt when he entered the cave where the 40 thieves had hidden their loot. A sense of awe, of wonder, almost indescribable, when confronted with the wonders that were laid in front of his eyes. I experienced something akin to it when I […]

First, there were the Jekkies – the fervently devoted fans of Frank Wildhorn’s Jekyll & Hyde. Throughout the show’s long 1995 cross-country tryout, they kept appearing at the various theaters, sparing no expense to see their beloved musical. And the Jekkies begat the Pimpies, who equally celebrated Wildhorn’s The Scarlet Pimpernel. They in turn begat […]

By David Foil Call it a tipping point. Call it a watershed. Call it, by all means, a “magic moment.” However you characterize it, Barbara Cook’s concert at Carnegie Hall on January 29, 1975, was a kind of joyous pivotal event in our love affair with classic American songs. Columbia Masterworks’ live recording of the […]

The vast majority of Broadway ballads springs from boy-meets-girl, boy-loves-girl romance. But you know that Stephen Sondheim; he’s always looking for ways to expand musical theater horizons. So while the new anthology, Send in the Clowns: The Ballads of Stephen Sondheim – now available for digital downloads — does offer odes to love, it shows […]