PS Classics, the record label dedicated to the heritage of Broadway and American popular song, first called this release "A Jerome Kern Evening," but opted for a more song-specific title (inspired by the lyric by P.G. Wodehouse, which kicks off the 30-track album). It was recorded Sept. 30, Oct. 1 and 2. The disc stars the 2010 Merkin Hall concert's original cast — Tony Award nominee Kate Baldwin, Heidi Blickenstaff, Tony nominee Rebecca Luker, Graham Rowat and Matthew Scott. PS Classics co-founder, the actor and recording artist Philip Chaffin, fills in for Colin Donnell, who was in Vancouver filming the TV series "Arrow." Using just songs, they embody three couples telling of their joys, loves and pains in the first part of the 20th century.
PS Classics offered Playbill.com an exclusive listen to the album's "The Subway Express," a 1907 song by lyricist James O'Dea and Jerome Kern, sung by Kate Baldwin and Matthew Scott.
| "The Subway Express" |
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The Land Where the Good Songs Go is produced by PS Classics co-founder Tommy Krasker.
The revue was first produced as The Land Where the Good Songs Go at Catholic University in November 2004, as part of the Excellence in Music Theater program. New York City fans of the songs of Kern (1885-1945), the composer who helped change the landscape of musical theatre with such musicals as Show Boat and Sweet Adeline, heard his music in a fresh context in a further revision of the revue Nov. 15, 2010, at Merkin Concert Hall, where the show was dubbed All the Things You Are: Jerome Kern.
Using the lyrics of more than a dozen of Kern's collaborators — including Oscar Hammerstein II, Dorothy Fields and P.G. Wodehouse — the song cycle/revue "weaves the stories of three couples how they meet, fall in love and face life's inevitable challenges," according to PS Classics. The result "sparkles with wit, tenderness, and warmth."
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| Rebecca Luker |
Disc One
The Land Where the Good Songs Go
The Subway Express
Ain't It Funny What a Difference Just a Few Drinks Make?
(I'm Looking for) An Irish Husband
Never Marry a Girl
Rolled Into One
How'd You Like to Spoon With Me?
They Didn't Believe Me
Nesting Time in Flatbush
Let's Begin
Interlude #1
Nobody Else But Me
Heaven in My Arms/Dancing Time
I've Taken Such a Fancy to You
We're Crooks
Disc Two
Now That We Are One
A Fine Romance
The Way You Look Tonight
The Last Time I Saw Paris
My Boy
In the Heart of the Dark / Just Let Me Look at You
Go Little Boat
Interlude #2
All the Things You Are
April Fooled Me
Bill
Bill's a Liar
Smoke Gets in Your Eyes
Till the Clouds Roll By / Look For the Silver Lining
Long Ago (And Far Away)
Music director David Loud provides new vocal arrangements and orchestrations. The album was made possible by funding from David & Kim Savage.
Loud was the music director and vocal arranger of Broadway's The Scottsboro Boys. As conductor, music director and/or arranger, he has worked on Broadway's Sondheim on Sondheim, Curtains, A Class Act, The Boys From Syracuse, Steel Pier, She Loves Me and more. As a performer, he appeared as pianist Manny in Master Class with Zoe Caldwell, as Sasha in Curtains and as Ted in Merrily We Roll Along. Read about the next collaboration between PS Classics and Loud — a disc of songs by Cole Porter and Noel Coward.
In January 2013, PS Classics will release Luker's third solo disc on the label: "I Got Love: Songs of Jerome Kern," featuring 13 Kern classics not heard on The Land Where the Good Songs Go album. It's drawn from her summer 2012 concert at 54 Below; Joseph Thalken is the musical director/arranger.
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Founded in 2000 by Tommy Krasker & Philip Chaffin, and an eight-time Grammy nominee (for its cast albums of Porgy and Bess, Follies, Assassins, Nine: The Musical, Grey Gardens, Company, A Little Night Music and Sondheim on Sondheim), PS Classics celebrates the heritage of Broadway and American popular song through award-winning cast recordings; solo albums by such artists as Maureen McGovern, Victoria Clark, Steven Pasquale, Liz Callaway and Christine Andreas; and restorations of long-lost musicals, including Sweet Bye and Bye, Strike Up the Band 1930 and Kitty's Kisses. Recent releases include the 2012 Encores! recording of Merrily We Roll Along, the new Broadway cast album of The Gershwins' Porgy and Bess and its acclaimed studio cast recording of George Gershwin's earliest surviving score, Sweet Little Devil.
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Here's a photo gallery from the fall 2010 concert that inspired this new recording:
